In the two decades since an Army ammunition depot closed and stripped this town of more than 500 jobs, Edgemont has tried to find another healthy payroll, even courting a string of potentially hazardous industries. A uranium mining and milling operation succeeded for a while, then closed. Town leaders also wooed companies that proposed a low-level nuclear waste dump, a sewage ash processing plant, a munitions testing site and, most recently, a landfill for municipal waste from Northeastern cities. For various reasons, including opposition from environmental groups, all the proposals failed. A farmer raised pigs on the base for a time but recently pulled out because of falling pork prices. ``We need more jobs, and we're still looking,'' Mayor Pete Ziemet said. ``The only thing we have going for us, which I guess is both bad and good, is the notoriety Edgemont has had.'' Other civic leaders fear they may never find the industry needed to fill the empty houses and stores in this town sitting on the southern edge of the Black Hills, where pine-covered mountains give way to rough grasslands covered with sagebrush and yucca plants. ``Everything just seemed to go haywire. ... Just little by little, everything went wrong,'' said former Mayor Matt Brown. ``I've been here all my life, and so help me God, I can't put my finger on anything that will salvage the town. Maybe we can be lucky.'' A Defense Department survey of 100 communities that lost military bases from 1961 to 1977 reported that some towns prospered by converting the bases to other uses. But Edgemont is one of the places that has never recovered after the military left town. The Black Hills Army Depot, which stored ammunition in concrete bunkers at a place called Igloo eight miles south of Edgemont, was opened in the 1940s and closed in 1967. Brown said Edgemont not only lost 500-odd civilian jobs but also many long-time Edgemont residents who were transferred to civilian jobs at other military bases. Four local businessmen bought the 15,000-acre base to prepare it for other uses, but it still lies empty. Rows of concrete igloos sit like loaves of bread on the prairie. Near the base entrance, houses and administrative buildings are falling apart. Edgemont's population grew to 1,772 by 1960, but fell to less than 1,200 within a few years of the base's closing. The town's economy and population recovered in the 1970s, with the uranium mill and a Burlington Northern Railroad crew-shift station both busy. Ziemet estimates Edgemont now has only 1,130 people, a drop of about 20 percent since 1980. The mayor said 70 houses out of several hundred in town are empty, and 27 should be razed because they're falling apart. People trying to sell homes will be lucky to get 50 cents on the dollar, he said. The railroad is still a bright spot in the local economy. Burlington Northern switches crews at Edgemont and provides a good national connection, Ziemet said. The uranium operation closed due to lack of demand, and the 110 people now cleaning up uranium tailings will be out of work when the cleanup is completed next year, he said. City and state officials have provided financing to help re-open a factory that makes wooden bowls and other items from walnut, and the plant should employ up to 30 people. But the town has yet to find an industrial use for the abandoned ammunition depot. Cattle are grazed on the base, but an operation that raised hogs in the concrete igloos has been stopped at least temporarily. A plan to use the igloos for grain storage also washed out, Ziemet said. In 1983, Chem-Nuclear Systems Inc. proposed burying up to one-third of the nation's low-level nuclear waste at the base. The plan was scrapped after geological tests showed the site was unsuitable, and state voters rejected a proposed multi-state compact that would have allowed the dump. Consolidated Management Corp. of Reno, Nev., last year hauled almost 300,000 tons of incinerated sewage from St. Paul, Minn., to the old base, where the company planned to build a plant to extract gold and other precious metals from the ash. The company missed several deadlines to start the plant, however, and the state now is searching for a way to dispose of the ash. Honeywell Inc. wanted to set up a munitions testing operation in a canyon near Edgemont but abandoned the plan after a coalition of Indians and others opposed it. Edgemont now is working with South Dakota Disposal Systems Inc., headquartered in Colorado, on a plan to bury 1 million tons of municipal garbage a year. Edgemont could get more than $1 million a year from the plan, which also would create up to 50 jobs, company officials have said. The succession of proposals dealing with hazardous materials has angered some local residents and environmental groups across South Dakota. Ruth Kern, who lives on a ranch south of town and opposes all the waste disposal ideas, said Edgemont is gaining a reputation as a place willing to become the nation's dumping ground. Kern said residents are partly responsible for the base closing 20 years ago because they complained all the time and didn't want the ``riffraff'' from the base in town. She criticized Edgemont officials for seeking hazardous dumps that she said wouldn't provide enough jobs to save the town in any event. ``I don't want to see it go under, but neither can I support it when they want to do something to pollute my environment,'' Kern said. ``I'm tired of having everybody in the United States look at us as someplace they can bring in stuff to dump.'' Kern's stance has drawn criticism from townspeople who want jobs, whatever the industry. Brown is upset that environmental groups have been able to block virtually all the town's industrial proposals. ``For some reason, we can't seem to whip it,'' he said. ``I'd like to win one for a change.'' Ziemet, who's been mayor for the past decade, said he wouldn't support any industry that would contaminate ground, air or water, but he believes state and federal officials can make sure the proposed garbage dump is operated safely. Some of the national publicity has upset Ziemet and others. A recent Wall Street Journal story said the state and town acted too hastily when they allowed the Minnesota sewage ash to be hauled to the abandoned base. Ziemet said no one could know the company would run out of money before it built the processing plant, which he said would have been an environmentalist's dream had it succeeded in tranforming sewage into worthwhile products. He compared the town's situation to someone without a job. No one would criticize the person for taking a job on a garbage truck, he said. ``All we want is a job,'' he repeated. ``I believe something is going to come.''
