From the Traverse City Record-Eagle and Detroit Free Press:

Let’s join voices to protect environment

BY WILLIAM G. MILLIKEN

No resource is more important to Michigan’s future than the Great Lakes. They literally surround us, leading to our identification as the “Great Lakes State.”

Any action that could threaten the quality of the Great Lakes must be approached with extreme caution, particularly by the State of Michigan. That is why all people who care about the future of this state and of the Great Lakes should be very concerned about a proposal now before the state Department of Environmental Quality to blast a nickel mine in the Upper Peninsula under the headwaters of the Salmon Trout River, one of Lake Superior’s primary tributaries.

The mine being proposed by the Kennecott Minerals Corp. would be much different from the iron ore mines that now exist and have existed in the U.P. for decades. It would involve blasting into underground sulfide ore deposits that contain nickel being sought by the mining company. Sulfide ores leach acid as soon as they come in contact with water or air.

Underground water seeping into the mine itself would create sulfuric acid, resulting in acid mine drainage of the equivalent of battery acid that would run off into rivers, contaminate groundwaters and end up in Lakes Superior and Michigan…

Read the rest of former Gov. William G. Milliken’s op-ed about sulfide mining in the Record-Eagle or in the Detroit Free Press (with photo but Freep only posts stories for a few weeks).