What is Sulfide Mining?

Metallic sulfide mining (aka hard rock mining) is the practice of extracting metals such as nickel, gold and copper from a sulfide-rich ore body. Sulfides are a geologic byproduct of mining in this area, and by exposing sulfides to the air and water in our atmosphere, sulfuric acid can be created — threatening to poison the nearby water, environment, and communities.
Why Is Sulfide Mining Dangerous?
  • If sulfide ore or sulfide tailings are exposed to water and air during mining, a chemical reaction creates sulfuric acid – basically battery acid.
  • There has never been a sulfide mine that has not polluted nearby water resources.
  • Pollution from sulfide mining is very expensive to fix, and a burden for taxpayers.
  • The legacy of sulfide mining is Acid Mine Drainage. AMD poisons water forever (2,500 – 10,000+ years); once AMD pollution begins, it is very difficult to contain or remediate the problem.
  • Acid Mine Drainage is a long-term pollutant. form multi-colored sediments in the bottom of streams and can disrupt the growth and reproduction of fish or kill aquatic plants and animals.
  • Mining in wild and remote areas of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula threatens to destroy the essential wild qualities of the place – forever. Each mining project requires an array of changes related to infrastructure and industrialization. EXAMPLE:  In the case of the Eagle Mine, constructed on the remote Yellow Dog Plains of northern Marquette County, the impacts have been staggering:
    • seasonal logging roads have been turned into a paved highway ending at Eagle MIne’s gate
    • industrial vehicle traffic runs 24-hours a day, including ore trucks, gravel and sand trucks, tankers containing water, drilling fluids, waste, and chemicals used by Eagle Mine, delivery trucks, Eagle Mine employee vehicles, contractor vehicles, and traffic related to widespread mining exploration on the Plains
    • sound and light pollution from drilling rigs in the Eagle East exploration area
    • the mine’s twice-daily underground blasts can be felt several miles away, and only one test (conducted prior to Eagle’s full operation) has been done to determine whether there are harmful seismic impacts on the viability of fish eggs in headwaters of the Salmon Trout River, directly above the orebody
    • a cloud of light pollution has spread over the Plains, clearly marking the location of Eagle Mine and industrial truck traffic along the new highway
    • a new trucking facility (MJ Van Damme) has been constructed near Eagle Mine to support the mine’s ore trucks, further expanding Eagle Mine’s industrial footprint and environmental impacts
    • the mine facility has been completely cleared of vegetation; the industrial site can be clearly seen from satellite imagery
    • the mine’s exhaust vent (Main Vent Air Raise, or MVAR) has no filter; the mine’s unfiltered air pollution plume (containing vehicle emissions, blasting chemicals, and particulate matter containing heavy metals and sulfides) are blown out over the Yellow Dog Plains every day
    • the mine’s treated wastewater is being discharged into a shallow groundwater aquifer; this groundwater is modeled to be moving NE toward springs that feed the headwaters of the Salmon Trout River
    • water monitoring in the area of Eagle Mine shows regular “exceedances” although these exceedances have failed to reach levels that would result permit violations
    • groundwater dewatering (drawdowns) near the mine’s freshwater well are greater than anticipated

Why Is Sulfide Mining A Bad Deal for the U.P.?

  • Michigan’s Upper Peninsula has 1,700 miles of shoreline along the Great Lakes.
  • There are 12,000 miles of rivers and streams and 4,300 inland lakes in the U.P.
  • It takes over 190 years for contaminants to cycle through Lake Superior!
  • The Great Lakes contain 18% of the world’s freshwater, a globally precious resource.
  • Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality appears to be unable or unwilling to properly regulate Part 632, the State’s sulfide mining law.

What About Jobs?

  • Mining is a boom and bust industry that produces only short-term economic stimulus. Over time, mining destabilizes and hinders the growth of local economies.
  • The mainstay of Upper Michigan’s economy is tourism. Punching multiple heavily polluting mines into our wild areas threatens water and natural resources as well as the future of eco-tourism in the U.P. – worth 20 million in revenue to a small city like Munising Michigan alone.
  • The future of Michigan’s U.P. is increasingly reliant upon “jobs and local economic vitality” tied to where people “prefer to live, start a business, retire, go to school, or business” – a “quality of life economy.”
  • In “The Economic Impacts of Renewed Copper Mining in the Western Upper Peninsula of Michigan” (PDF), Dr. Thomas M. Power writes: “Despite the high wages paid in metal mining, the communities that rely on mining have not, in general, shown signs of widespread prosperity and economic vitality. Employment, population, and total community income have grown much slower in mining communities than in communities not dependent on mining. Often unemployment and average income per person have also been lower.” Economists call this the “curse of natural resource abundance.”
What’s Happening With Sulfide Mining in the U.P.?
  • Rio Tinto was the first global mining corporation to apply for a permit to operate a sulfide mine in Michigan, 30 miles north of Marquette on the Yellow Dog Plains near Lake Superior. In 2013, Rio Tinto sold Eagle Mine to Lundin Mining. Eagle Mine began operation in 2014. In 2017, they announced the discovery of Eagle East, a nearby sulfide orebody. Eagle Mine is connecting to Eagle East via 8 miles of tunnels.
  • The Michigan DEQ granted permits to Eagle Mine under Michigan’s new sulfide mining regulations, Part 632. In 2018, Eagle Mine worked with Senator Tom Casperson worked to further limit opportunities for public input through an amendment to Part 632.
  • Eagle Mine blasted their mining portal through the Eagle Rock outcrop, which is considered a sacred site to indigenous people of the region.
  • Polymetallic orebodies may be located throughout in the Lake Superior Basin. Multinational mining corporations are actively exploring for copper, nickel, uranium, and more – in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, in northern Wisconsin, in northern Minnesota, and throughout Ontario.
  • The Copperwood Mine project (now owned by Highland Copper) originally received its mining permit under Part 632. Copperwood Mine’s wetland permit, which will destroy wetlands and streams, was approved in 2018. The proposed Copperwood mine would be located on the shoreline of Lake Superior, directly adjacent to the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. The mine intends to pull water from Lake Superior for their operations, milling ore on the site, and leaving enormous tailings basins (covering 300 acres) – a permanent feature of the landscape.
  • Highland Copper is conducting additional exploratory drilling in and around the Porcupine Mountains, and is contemplating future mining underneath the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park.
  • Highland Copper has proposed a new project, White Pine North, redeveloping the historic White Pine mine site near Ontonagon; historic tailings basins at this site are so large they can be seen from space, and the legacy of heavy metals contamination from the White Pine Smelter are only now becoming clear, thanks to research into the deposition of metals in wetlands, and bio-accumulation of mercury in the U.P.
  • The Aquila Back Forty project is located on the bank of the Menominee River, and would result in the excavation of an 800′ deep open pit, just 100′ from the river, and total wetland impacts of more than 40 acres. Despite overwhelming opposition to the Aquila Back Forty project, the Michigan DEQ issued a mining permit, a NPDES permit for industrial discharges to the Menominee River (which requires native mussels to be moved), and an air pollution permit. The mining permit covers the initial “open pit” phase of the mine only, and is already out-of-date due to radically changed facility designs.
  • In 2018, the DEQ unjustly approved a controversial permit authorizing destruction and impairment of wetlands at the Aquila Back Forty site, a decision widely condemned as political, and a violation of the Clean Water Act.
  • As of 2019, Aquila has applied for significant amendments to their Mining Permit and their Clean Air permit, and an alarming new Dam Safety permit that would authorize the construction of huge tailings dam on the site, at least 140 ft tall, using the riskiest “upstream” method of tailings dam construction. The “upstream” method has been banned in several countries, and has resulted in catastrophic collapses of mine waste dams around the world, including Mount Polley disaster (Canada) and the Brumadinho disaster (Brazil).

Learn More

Wetland Regulations