Standing Firm In Difficult Times: Fishkill Ridge Community Heritage Update Report
RE: Thalle Mine Expansion

“Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport this world affords.”
-Theodore Roosevelt, quoted on the Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery memorial to those who died in the Spanish American War.

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”
- Tom Paine, “Common Sense”

“No Compromise”

The melting temperature of ice is not a matter of opinion. Both Science and Nature are notoriously obdurate in matters of compromise. In a like manner, there is one and only one substantive position on the permitting of the expansion of Thalle Mine. Fishkill Ridge Community Heritage has held that single position from the beginning. Inasmuch as the mine expansion concerns science, ethics, or justice: compromise is neither an issue nor a possibility.

The events leading to the Deputy Commissioner’s decision to deny our appeal and the decision itself have raised serious and far-reaching issues. Some of these issues concern the very structure of the DEC. Others concern conflicts of interest, and the relationship between the DEC and Scenic Hudson. There is also the issue of Scenic Hudson’s peculiar role in the matter of permitting the expansion of Thalle Mine.

It is entirely understandable and comes as no great surprise that Fishkill Ridge Caretakers chose to support Scenic Hudson, Inc., especially in view of Scenic Hudson's enthusiastic support for the Thalle Mine expansion. One wants and expects to be able to support a land trust, especially one as famous and powerful as Scenic Hudson. Scenic Hudson's involvement in the Thalle Mine expansion is another matter entirely; one we shall explore.

Context Matters:
We hold our community heritage in trust for our children and their children‘s children. We choose to embrace the opportunity to salvage what remains, rather than to advocate the expansion of the Thalle mine. We oppose this mine in behalf of our children, because mining here destroys an ecosystem with qualities so special, they transcend the right of any group or individual to destroy them.

Mining violates the sanctity of ground our forebears once held in trust in our behalf and that properly belongs to all generations, past, present, and future. This ground and the surrounding area comprising the site of the Continental Army’s Northern Supply Depot has been hallowed by the deeds and sufferings of our Revolutionary War Continental Army, many of whom lie buried in close proximity to this site.

In the 18th century wives and children often accompanied soldiers into camp where they became an important, loyal and dedicated labor and nursing force; one that continued to operate throughout the war, even in the heat of combat. Many of these non-combatant family members fell victim of the privations and diseases of camp life as well. This immediate area contains the largest known military cemetery of the Revolutionary War. In addition to our volunteer soldiers, the graves contain men, women, and children, including Black American and Native American soldiers. The graves are unmarked and the cemetery’s exact location is unknown. The main grounds of the Northern Supply Depot extended from the earthwork defenses at Fort Hill (the likely site of an earlier Native American fort) just south of the Wiccopee Pass to just north of Route 84. For all loyal Americans worthy of the name, this is sacred ground.

Route 9 follows the ancient trail that starts as Broadway in Manhattan and continues northward to Albany. Daniel Nimham, chief of the Wappinger tribe had a fort here at the Wiccopee Pass as well as another where he lived nearby. Wappinger Indians met in this immediate area every summer, as groups of Indians had done possibly for thousands of years, and as they continued to do within our living memory, as late as the 1950s.

Reduction to Absurdity:
As Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the Federal District Court in Manhattan was recently quoted "You can't design a system that's perfect and due process is, by definition, what is reasonably due, not what is perfect." It should be noted that what Judge Rakoff is talking about is not intended to provide an excuse for avoiding the hard work of thinking the matter through. What is "reasonably due" is intended to be part of the process.

Legal remedies only concern issues protected by law. Because the Eastern Timber Rattlesnake is the only part of this unique ecosystem adequately protected by law, our search for a legal remedy to stop the destruction of mining had to be entirely focused on this single issue. Consequently, we have been ridiculed and made to appear as though we place snakes ahead of people. In fact, we place health, American values and patriotism far ahead of the monetary greed of a private corporation.

Many things have been legal that were, and continue to be, unquestionably wrong. There was a time, in Dutchess County, when the court would have defended your right to own another human being. Slavery was legal, yet totally unethical and contrary to Justice.

Opinions may vary; facts do not. Even though Deputy Commissioner Carl Johnson of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has denied our appeal of the decision that cleared the way for the expansion of Thalle Mine, the facts continue to support our position. It is now legal to expand Thalle Mine. It is also wrong.

We must all live with the consequences of this decision, yet nothing is more certain than change. Political winds change, laws change, and opinions change. Facts alone remain immutable. Never doubt that democratic change, sped forward by our continuing efforts, shall ultimately prevail. When it finally does, it shall more accurately reflect the interests of science, ethics and justice.

Read "Compromise, Hell", by Wendell Berry