"There is nothing rare or holy about growing corn."

"Actually, they are superstitious and bitter people, whose hatred of technology and sense of arrogant moral superiority causes them to believe their minority view is more important than the best interests and public opinion of this entire region."

"Must a living civilization take a back seat to a dead one? "

"The folks whose religious views we are supposed to accept as superior to our own believed that the world rested on the back of a turtle."

Prologue

This page was prompted by comments made by a member of the media which appeared in a local newspaper in late February, 1997. It was he who posited the quotations above. The full text of his article can be found by clicking here... While, the original plan by AZKO Nobel to "rebuild" their mine has been cancelled, there is now a new plan to rebuild...this prompted by local entrepreneurs.

Scars resulting from the original mine collapse dot the landscape...two sinkholes hundreds of feet in diameter gobbled farmland and swallowed 70-foot-tall-trees. A bridge collapsed. Dozens of wells were sucked dry. Svereal square miles of the Genesee Valley sank eight feet, with entire area over the mine complex expected to follow (the underground mine area is calculated to be as large as the island of Manhattan). Small tremors have continued almost mothly and hip-deep cracks have opened in farmers fields. Malodorous hydrogen and explosive methane continues to seep from the grouds. Wells drilled to vent the gases burn continuously and light the skies at night

Most of the salt mined was used for road salt for New York State, New York City, and for New England.

Your support is urgently needed...please read on and then respond via the input form at the bottom of this page...

History, not just salt, is underground in this Livingston County town.

A proposed mine at Hampton Corners would disturb or destroy Native American artifacts, some dating back to 6,000 years B.C.

More recent artifacts are from the Senecas, a tribe that dominated the Genesee Valley until a series of 19th-century treaties stripped them of vast tracts of land.

"We're not fighting the mine," said Nount Morris activist Melissa Jacobs, an organic farmer whose husband is a third-generation miner. "We're fighting the spot."

The new operation - American Rock Salt - would replace a 111 year-old mine in nearby Retsof owned by Akzo Nobel Salt Inc., a Dutch conglomerate.

Akzo's Retsof mine, a maze of tunnels the size of Manhattan, partially collapsed in 1994 and then flooded with water.

A lawsuit by Jacobs and others is one of the hurdles facing a group of New York investors willing to plunk down $130 million for a new salt mine.

At least eight archaeological sites - identified by experts during a three-year study - are squeezed onto the 186-acre plot where a new mine would be built.

Included are remnants of pottery, tools, weapons and campfires. Old documents also indicate a burial mound on the site.

Another ceremonial burial site found east of the mine site, call the Viper Mound for its winding snakelike shape, was largely paved over by Interstate 390 in the mid 1970s.

The proposed mine is on a Seneca tribal site once called "Chenussio," near the confluence of the Genesee River and Canaseraga Creek. It marked the intersection of a network of trails heading west and south to the Mississippi River and Virigina.

Peter Jemison of Victor, the Seneca Nation representative for the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, opposes the mine plan, It would disturb archaeological sites and never resolve whether a burial ground is there, he said.

Worse, he said, the plan would sink mine shafts into a Native American site - but deliberately avoid the nearby remnants of Williamsburg, the first white settlement in the Genesee Valley.

For the old white village, "the plan was avoidance," said Jemison. "For the Indian site, the plan was destruction."

Jemison is a seventh-generation descendant of Mary Jemison, a famous white captive of the Senecas who later befriended the tribe.

At the Hampton Corners mine site, a strip of land between Route 63 and I-390, artifacts would be covered with a rail line, salt holding pads, dentention ponds, roads, parking lots and at least one mine shaft.

American Rock Salt, its backers say, could start up as early as summer of 1998, create 200 permanent jobs and dig up 2.5 million tons of salt a year.

Two lawsuits now awaiting a decision by a state Supreme Court Justice mention archaeological sites likely to be disturbed by the mine.

"If there's something that has to be done to perserve the project, we'll do it," said Rochester lawyer Gunther K. Buerman, who is overseeing plans for the new mine.

In the meantime, he said, investors are protected by mining permits already granted by the state - after a process that included archaeological reviews.

But Buerman promised to take issues like the artifacts into consideration. "We want to be good neighbors," he added.

Backers of the plan say the new mine would stabilize Western New York road salt proces and bring jobs to hard-hit Livingston County.

But Jacobs said the site would make more money - and preserve history - as tourist site, drawing crowds from nearby Letchworth State Park.

A team of archaeologists from the Rochester Museum & Science Center studied the site from 1994 to April 1996, when Akzo ended its plan to develop a mine there.

Twenty-seven sites were investigated. Some are as small as a bucket and others the size of a small room, said Rochester Museum research archaeologist Brian L. Nage, who oversaw the Akzo-financed project.

Eight could be considered for inclusion on a nation register of historic places, he said. Williamsburg, settled in 1793, is already registered.

In cases in which development conflicts with historic sites, there are two choices, said Nagel: Redesign the project or undertake "data recovery." That means studying the site, taking carbon samples for radiological dating and removing artifacts for museums.

That was Akzo's original plan, which Buerman is willing to continue. "People feel this mine is the last chance," Buerman added. "And I think it is."