Resident says to ‘become an army’ against the mine
January 25, 2020
Eagle Herald
Dear Editor,
As the people went about their daily lives in the town of Brumadinho they were completely unaware that the massive tailings dam at the mine was getting weaker every day. Then maybe just a small section started to fail, just a little. Then a little more gave way on the massive wall. That wall held the safety of every man, woman and child in the town, those working at the mine and every living thing below it. When it could no longer hold its contents the wall exploded with the sound a jet makes when it breaks the sound barrier. A force that could be heard and felt inside of every living thing. then it was over. It was just a matter of minutes and it was over. Hundreds were buried alive before they could even tell the ones next to them that they loved them. Two hundred and fifty lives were extinguished in a snap of a finger. Men, women, children and babies, precious pets, livestock and the town of Brumadinho died a terrible suffocating death under a wall of mud.
The horror of that day continues there, while here Aquila plans to build that same kind of dam just 50 yards from the banks of our Menominee River, next to the Menominee Tribe’s sacred burial grounds and very near our towns. The thought makes me physically nauseous and I try not to visualize our name in the headlines of yet another tailings dam collapse.
Each night I pray for our safety and ask for the strength for us all to continue this fight against the Back Forty Mine. I ask for the strength to continue to be able to inform people any way I can. Each one of us can only do so much. We are so small alone but if we stand together we can become an army and we can defeat this impending disaster looming over us.
We must stand, speak and be heard. We must stop the Back Forty Mine.
Mary Hansen
Peshtigo