Retail Strip Mining

By Chuck Robinson

I grew up in rural Illinois surrounded by fields of corn and soy beans and … coal mines. Unlike Whatcom County's coal mines, which left subterranean tunnels under parts of the county (including downtown Bellingham), these were strip mines that left deep, often water-filled pits and piles of soil and rock. Strip mining destroyed acres and acres of productive farmland and left in its wake large areas of unusable land. What I witnessed as a child was captured in song by John Prine when he wrote Paradise. Though writing about Kentucky, the words could well be applied to the place of my childhood as well:

And Daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg county,
Down by the Green River, where Paradise lay.
"Well I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'."
"Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away."

Though the days of that kind of strip mining have passed, many of the scars on the land remain. While there's no doubt the coal was needed -- I grew up in a coal-heated house --its method of extraction and the absence of land restoration certainly were a high (and hidden) cost to pay for it.

Whatcom County is no longer a source of coal but, in my opinion, the shaft mines of old have been replaced by a modern form of strip mining. That strip mining takes the form of out-of-state, corporate retail companies building their big-box stores to extract, not coal, but dollars from the local economy.

Of course we need (or, at least, want) many of the goods the big boxes sell. But, at what (hidden) cost? Are we willing to sacrifice local businesses that contribute more dollars to the local economy and fund nonprofit organizations at a much greater level than non-local, corporate companies? Are we willing to have empty big-boxes dotting the landscape when one national company decides to take market share away from another? Are we willing to give up the civic involvement that locals engage in? There are certainly hidden costs to the retail strip mining that is rolling across Whatcom County. And, we can make choices that avoid those costs and negative consequences.

I hope that this generation's children and grandchildren will never have the occasion to sing (with apologies to John Prine) these words to Paradise:

And Daddy won't you take me back to ol' Whatcom County,
Down by the Nooksack, where Paradise lay.
"Well I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'"
"Big Retail's cash train has hauled it away."

Chuck Robinson is owner, with his wife, Dee, of Village Books in Bellingham, Washington. This column originally appeared in the Summer 2004 edition of the store's The Chuckanut Reader: A Magazine for the Northwest's Most Avid Readers.