Wal-Mart's major announcement Thursday that it would soon lower the cost of nearly 300 generic drugs to just $4 per prescription got pretty much buried hereabouts, thanks to the boulders, trees and dirt still rumbling onto Route 65 three days after the giant landslide began.

Though pharmacy customers in Florida started benefiting from the massive retailer's buying power on Friday, the big Wal-Mart story around here -- for now and the next few months -- is likely to be: "We told you so."

Opposition to developing the long-unused Kilbuck site was lengthy and multifaceted. Some people spoke out because they didn't think a shopping plaza anchored by a Wal-Mart Supercenter was the right choice for the location. Some people opposed it because they don't want a Wal-Mart to go anywhere.

It will be a shame if last week's landslide further muddies the issues surrounding this big-box bogeyman, especially since some of them are both political and illogical.

Only in Pittsburgh could such a huge and controversial project proceed with so many problems so unsatisfactorily resolved.

It's the downside of public life in this highly fractured region, a daily reality show -- "Extreme Government: Allegheny County" -- in which 130 municipalities compete against each other but rarely form alliances and usually produce far more losers than winners.

Officials in Kilbuck (population, 723) were determined, laudably, to bring new, tax-paying life to the site of the former Dixmont State Hospital.

But residents of the communities bordering Kilbuck's sliver of Route 65 complained that the impact such a high-traffic destination would have on the surrounding area was inadequately addressed.

Protest signs and lawsuits abounded.

There will be even more now, and rightly so, since Kilbuck officials had granted variances to allow steeper slopes at the site than their standards demanded, and since much of the site is now lying across a major highway.

A formal investigation may determine whose fault that is, but given the state of our polarized public discourse, much of the anger over this huge, expensive mess will end up at Wal-Mart's door.

Wal-Mart is the favorite whipping boy of those who have lately taken to calling themselves "progressives." They complain about Wal-Mart's low wages and high number of employees (54 percent) who do not qualify for its health insurance plans.

(Funny, but these critics don't hurl the same complaints, though they could, at the more-stylish discount retailer Target.)

Lately, more analytical and less partisan voices have risen to point out the enormous economic good that Wal-Mart has done for lower-income Americans.

Studies show that Wal-Mart's discounting on food alone saves shoppers $50 billion per year; it does one-fifth of the country's grocery business and the typical shopper saves an average of 17 percent. Compare that benefit to the federal government's $33 billion food-stamp program.

Critics also complain that 5 percent of Wal-Mart's workers are on Medicaid. But as Sebastian Mallaby pointed out in The Washington Post last year, that number is typical for large retail companies, and the national average for all private companies is 4 percent.

So when one local anti-Wal-Mart group uses the name "Communities First!," it raises questions. How exactly do you define community? The neighbors who'd like to cut their grocery bills? Those who want a job that pays, on average, nearly double the federal minimum wage?

If you're asking us to shut out a beneficial big guy to favor the little guy who can't offer as much but charges more for it, then no thanks. That's not how free markets work.

I'd like to see Wal-Mart give away more of its profits to employees -- its own here in the United States as well as its suppliers' workers in China. Sure, more applicants flock to those jobs (in both nations) than there are positions available, but Wal-Mart's immensely rich owners can afford to soften the laws of the market with a little grace.

It would also be smart for them to voluntarily repay the costs incurred for all the officers reassigned to conduct rush hour traffic on the landslides' very congested detours. A goodwill gesture could defuse the irritation I see in commuters' faces on these roads every day.

But asking Wal-Mart to do more good freely is a far cry from trying to regulate it out of the market.

It's odd that the corporation's mostly left-wing critics, including politicians who presumably want to win public office, would expend so much energy bashing a store where 127 million Americans shop each week.

I hope to be one of them -- if the roadways, and the debate, on Route 65 are ever clear.