Mining Again in a Montana Town That’s Fallen on Hard Times

In Butte, Mont., miners are returning to the Continental Pit mines. The mines closed three years ago, when electricity prices soared in the West.

By JIM ROBBINS NY Times

Burned by the promises of a New West — an economy based on the Internet and telecommunications — this city high in the Rockies is celebrating a return to the Old West, as hundreds of copper miners return to work.

This month, the last of more than 350 workers is expected to be on board at the Continental Pit mine, which is being brought back on line by the Montana Resources Inc. with the help of a $2 million loan from the state. The mine was shuttered three years ago when electricity prices soared to record highs in the West. Reopening it will also create hundreds of jobs in support industries, from steel to tires to fuel.

The opening of the mine is both an economic and psychological relief for a city that has had little but bad news in recent months because of electrical deregulation and the decline of the Internet economy.

"The reopening of the copper mines is symbolic," said Evan Barrett, head of the Butte Local Redevelopment Corporation. "It says this town will not die. It’s not in the future of the people to give up."

Butte has been plagued by lost jobs, business failures, population declines and festering toxic waste.

But the demise this year of Montana Power, the state’s largest electric company, was the worst economic news in recent years. Montana Power was an economic mainstay here for decades, with more than 500 high-paying jobs. In 1997 the State Legislature, led by Gov. Marc Racicot, a Republican, passed legislation to deregulate power companies. Montana Power, with headquarters here, sold off its electrical business and became an Internet service provider called Touch America.

In August, Touch America’s stock price plummeted from a high of $65 a share to a few cents, and the remains of the company were sold to a Canadian company. Anger toward Touch America, whose demise was part of the decline of the Internet economy, still runs deep here.

"The first layoffs were done by e-mail," said Judy Jacobsen, chief executive of Butte-Silverbow, a combined city and county entity. "They e-mailed them and said `you’re done.’ " There are still 70 to 100 jobs, but no one knows if they will remain.

Meanwhile, Northwestern Energy, which bought Montana Power’s assets and has more than 500 employees, recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, citing losses at its nonutility businesses, including Expanets, a telecommunications company.

In still more bad economic news, a marketing company called Teleperformance USA announced last week that it would close its Butte office, throwing more than 100 people out of work.

Several years ago Butte landed a Washington-based silicon-manufacturing company, ASiMI, which built a plant on the outskirts of town that employs some 250 people. Local boosters named the area Silicon Mountain. But with the computer market in trouble, ASiMI is the only resident.

"We’re not making money, but we’re going to muddle through," said Dave Keck, vice president for business development at the plant. "Everyone in the industry is suffering now."

Much of western Montana has thrived in an economy driven by retirees and others moving to claim a piece of unspoiled Big Sky Country. But it is more difficult for Butte to lure companies and others here. One deterrent is a 2,200-foot-deep, milewide pit on the edge of downtown filled with a reddish-brown water so acidic that birds that land on it die. Much of the city is part of one of the largest Superfund complexes in the country. It sprawls for miles around, a legacy of decades of mining and smelting copper ore.

"Overlooking the north side of Butte you realize that history is not always a story of progress," said Pat Williams a nine-term congressman from Butte, who now teaches at the University of Montana, adding that the town’s heyday in mining "extracted a terrible price."

Now, as a result, hundreds of thousands of square feet of office space here, in some of the West’s most elegant architecture sit empty and boarded up.

And so Butte has welcomed back the copper miners, though it is a far cry from its heyday.

In the early 1900’s, this was Montana’s largest city, with more than 80,000 people. While much of the West was wilderness, Butte was a thriving, often bawdy metropolis, with an opera house, restaurants and rows of houses of prostitution. Thousands from England to Czechoslovakia came here to work the mines. With three shifts operating, bars often stayed open around the clock.

In every census since the 1920’s Butte has lost population, and now about 34,000 people live here. Like the miners who called this place home, the city of Butte prides itself on its feisty, blue-collar character. That attitude of the city, which sees itself as a fiercely independent entity, is summed up on a recorded message that runs on a local rock station between songs: "The Spirit of Butte, America, will never be broken."

Few, however, think the mine will assure Butte’s future. A safer bet is attracting small to medium-size companies, Mr. Williams said.

"The future of Butte is hitting singles, not home runs."