Delay And Harass Tactics Of Groups
Letter To Editor - Mesabi Daily News
It is not surprising that the “Friends of the Boundary Waters” and the Sierra Club lied about the number and origin of the signatures they had collected opposing copper mining in this area. This is very typical of the kinds of methods they have been using for years.
My wife was secretary for CWCS, (Conservationist with Common Sense), when we both watched the entire fiasco of the “tests” the two organizations conducted to show it was feasible to use portage wheels across Trout Lake Portage instead of any kind of mechanized transportation. Motors up to 25 h.p., plus a trolling motor, were allowed in Trout Lake.
First, the president of the “Friends,” Kevin Preschold, showed up in a pontoon boat with the front of the pontoon up on shore close by and they sat and watched everything that was going on. The only reason they were there was so Kevin could get them to donate money to the cause.
Next, 12 people in their late-teens showed up in 20-some-foot canoe. They beached the canoe and got out. Six of them grabbed the gunwale on each side and they took off across the portage. The only thing in the canoe were the paddles.
Two women who could have been linemen for the Vikings showed up in a small 14-foot aluminum boat and shipmotor. The only thing in the boat was the oars, two cushions and the portage wheels. I asked them what they were going to do with two boats like that in Trout Lake on a windy day. They just ignored me. They easily got the boat on the portage wheels and took off across the portage.
I was standing alongside the road when a young man carrying a canoe came by. He told me, “It makes me mad to see a tire track on the road.” I told him, “Why don’t you use the other portage? It follows the river and you can see and hear the rapids. It is only half as long and you won’t see a tire track.” He gave me a dirty look and went on his way.
Everything the “Friends” and Sierras did was a complete farce. They never came anywhere near trying the portage wheels using the boats, motors and equipment that were commonly used to go into Trout Lake.
The so-called “dog sled trip” to St. Paul with the false information about the signatures was the same way, for show only.
Now they are putting false information on billboards along the highway saying that copper mining will pollute Lake Superior and all the lakes in northeastern Minnesota.
This is the creed for the “Friends” Sierras and similar-thinking wackos, environuts in various organizations.
We are right, everybody else is wrong. We will use any and all methods to get what we want, legal or not. If we can’t stop something, we will delay it as long as we can. We have no regard for any negative consequences of our actions.
The “Friends” Sierras and their shyster lawyer, Brian ONeil, used lies and false information to convince the “boneheads” in the right places that using portage wheels worked just fine. There were no longer trucks at the Trout Lake, Prairie and Four Mile portages.
CWCS kept fighting to get the portages reopened and eventually we did get the Trout Lake Portage and the Prairie Portage between Moose Lake and Basswood reopened. Today four-wheelers and trailers are used to haul boats in and out of Trout Lake. The system works very good and does zero harm to anything or anybody.
The only thing the wachos accomplished was to put the portage operators out of business for a number of years and prevent a very high percentage of people from going into the lakes. The closing needlessly prevented my wife and I from camping in Trout Lake during the last years we were physically able to do so.
Frank Franson
Tower
