ruth erickson remembers the early days, before the trouble started.body that came here to work was in -- [ dog barks ] shush! -- was in bad shape economically. and reserve built the town, they furnished us with our medical facilities, fire, ambulance, everything. um... i can't say enough good things about reserve mining. schoumacher: taconite contains iron. not a lot, but enough to make a profit, if you know how to crush it and separate the grains of iron from the rest of the rock. and reserve knew how. but the refining process requires vast amounts of water and produces 2 tons of sandy residue, called tailings, for every ton of iron pellets. and that creates a problem. those tailings have to be put somewhere. and for years, the cheapest place to put them was the lake. that upset a lot of people, like environmentalist alden lind. the save lake superior association started in late '69 and came about largely because of concerns of people who lived in the silver bay vicinity about the impact of the tailings disposal on lake superior. schoumacher: it wasn