Minnesota Public Radio recently reported that CURE‘s Duane Ninneman:
said the quarry would cause environmental and economic damage. ‘It will have a direct impact on people who live close to the quarry. And that’s what we’ve been doing from the beginning, is representing their interests…We feel that their property values are in jeopardy. And that their health and welfare, and tranquility, their way of life, is being threatened.’
There is some irony that a quarry is being opposed in Big Stone county as threatening citizens’ “way of life” when granite quarrying has been a way of life in Big Stone county and elsewhere around Minnesota for some time, as illustrated by the antique post-card of a granite quarry in St. Cloud, Minnesota.
On the other hand, (1) the proposed quarry is not in my backyard, and (2) we can all agree that we should not take the ecological ramifications of the proposed mining for granite.