MARQUETTE — The Marquette County Board expressed support and encouragement for Kennecott Mineral Company’s plans to reuse the abandoned Humboldt mill.

Kennecott would use the facility to refine rock from its proposed Eagle Project mine on the Yellow Dog Plains.

While the county board has not gone on record specifically supporting the Eagle Project, it has officially given its backing to mining operations that comply with state and federal laws and regulations.

During its regular meeting Tuesday night, board Chairman Gerry Corkin read a letter addressed to Eagle Project Manager Jon Cherry stating the county’s support for the Humboldt project.

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Coaster Brook Trout

Action: Comment on listing the Coaster Brook Trout on the Endangered Species List

Comments must be submitted by May 19, 2008

Directions: The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has made a finding that the petition to list the coaster brook trout as an endangered species does in fact present substantial information warranting consideration. Based on the finding, the USFWS is in the process of reviewing the status of the coasters. Please contact the USFWS to share your information on the coasters to ensure that the status review is complete. We strongly encourage you to write and mail your own letter. However, click here if you would like to submit comments electronically.

Please note: if you do submit comments, the USFWS will post the comments on their website, including your address.

Talking Points

~ Thank USFWS for the positive finding, and let them know we appreciate their work to restore coasters.

~ Coasters are an emblematic species for the Lake Superior community and we would like to see them return.

~States, tribes, and organizations have been engaged in activities to help restore the coaster brook trout for several years. The restoration activities have not been enough, as coaster populations remain small and unstable.

~ Kennecott’s proposed Eagle Project is likely to destroy, modify, or curtail the habitat of the coasters.

~ Siltation from road crossings, traffic, logging, etc. is one of the primary causes of habitat degradation. If you have personally observed washouts or other siltation problems in UP streams, please describe this in your comments.

Note: you must include your address for your comments to be considered

Please submit written comments to the address below or Click here to submit comments electronically and to read more about the listing of the coasters

ATTN: FWS–R3–ES–2008–0030
Division of Policy and Directives Management
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
4401 N. Fairfax Drive, Suite 222
Arlington, VA 22203

For Lobbying purposes in the State of Michigan,
KENNECOTT MINERALS COMPANY has hired:

Click here for more information

Financial Information for KENNECOTT MINERALS COMPANY
is available from the following financial reports:

Racing the devil: Kennecott kept quiet while fixing dangerous dam

Tribune Editorial

Article Last Updated: 03/27/2008 05:22:27 PM MDT

Store a mountain of mine tailings behind an earthen embankment that hovers over homes. Saturate with water, trapped by an impermeable base. Shake vigorously in an earthquake until the sopping wet waste liquefies – think milkshake – and exerts tremendous pressure on the base of the dam. And then run, really fast.
What you have is a recipe for disaster. If the dam breaks, it will unleash an avalanche of viscous mine sludge that consumes everything in its path.
That’s the scenario that residents of Green Meadows Estates, an enclave of more than 200 homes on the outskirts of Magna, unknowingly and unnecessarily faced for years, thanks to collusion between a cold, callous, calculating company, and an uncaring and seemingly incompetent state agency.
Kennecott Utah Copper Corp., according to a confidential self-investigation conducted by the company in 1997 and obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune, became aware of the danger posed by its tailings pond as early as 1957 in a report issued by Arthur Casarande, known as the “father of soil mechanics.” Subsequent reports commissioned by the company in 1966, 1974 and 1983 also raised the potential of dam failure, and the susceptibility of the mine tailings to liquefaction.
By 1988, when a definitive study was commissioned by Kennecott as it considered expanding the then-82-year-old tailings pond, the picture became crystal clear. When the big one hits, consulting engineers said, the impoundment would likely fail, burying homes in Green Meadows.
But instead of notifying the community of the danger, as recommended by attorneys who warned of punitive damages and criminal liability if lives were lost and property damaged, Kennecott kept it quiet.
Hoping to avoid “panic and (law)suits,” then-company president Frank Joklik orchestrated a cover-up, a cover-up made possible by state regulators who lost sight of their mandate to protect the public, and kept their lips zipped and their fingers crossed as hazard mitigation efforts ensued.
State dam safety officials were briefed on the problem as early as 1989. According to the company’s internal investigation, a state official assured Kennecott that he had no intention of “going public” with the dangers, and, to circumvent open records laws, advised the company to withhold from the state any and all written records it didn’t want the public to see.
Its secret safe, the copper company began clandestinely buying up homes in Green Meadows and leaving them vacant in an attempt to establish a buffer zone. Unconscionably, the homes were later resold to unknowing buyers in the mid-1990s.
Kennecott also ordered an actuarial study to determine the costs of a breach, a study that callously affixed a dollar figure to residents’ lives. And it launched a project to replace, stabilize and dewater the tailings pond, hopefully before an earthquake struck.
Kennecott, it appears, won its race with the devil. And Green Meadows residents, who could have moved to safety had they been warned, apparently dodged a mudslide.
In the past two decades the company has replaced the tailings pond with a modern impoundment, and spent $13 million to strengthen and dewater the old pond, and shield residential areas with berms, in an ongoing stabilization project that will last another 10 years. According to company studies that have been reviewed and accepted as gospel by the state despite the company’s penchant for hiding the truth, only a small area on the southeast corner of the old tailings pond falls short of state earthquake standards, a problem that will soon be remedied.
So, no harm, no foul. Amazingly, that’s the analysis offered by David Marble, current chief of the state Dam Safety Office and the man in charge of protecting you from unsafe dams.
Marble praised Kennecott for working closely with the state to devise and implement an effective hazard mitigation program. He defended the state for not revealing the danger for all these years, noting public notification is the responsibility of the dam owner under state statutes. He questioned whether public notification was even required because the threat of a dam failure from an earthquake does not meet his dictionary’s definition of an “emergency.” And he said the state is not required to inspect tailings ponds that have been drained of surface water and are not in current use, regardless of the residual danger they may pose.
Kennecott officials are more humble than Marble. The company has apologized for the previous owners’ past practices, and promises that things would be handled differently today. But the apology rings hollow because The Tribune, not the company, disclosed the past and present danger.
So what should happen now?
Kennecott attorneys had warned of criminal liability if the company failed to reveal the danger. That indicates an investigation by the state Attorney General’s Office is warranted.
The state Legislature needs to update dam safety statutes to provide for the ongoing inspection of unused tailings ponds, to require public notification if a dam is susceptible to an earthquake-related failure, and to designate the Dam Safety Office, not dam owners, as the party responsible for issuing warnings.
And the Dam Safety Office needs to conduct its own study, or commission an independent third-party study, to determine if the old tailings pond is safe, instead of relying on the company’s data. After all, Kennecott already fooled us once.

The Institute on Lake Superior Geology is a non-profit professional society with the objectives of providing a forum for exchange of geological ideas and scientific data and promoting better understanding of the geology of the Lake Superior region. The major activity of the Institute is an Annual Meeting with geological field trips and technical presentation.

The 54th Annual Institute of Lake Superior Geology is sponsored by MTU (Ted Bornhorst) and the Seamans Museum. May 6-10 in Marquette at the Ramada Inn. Featured speaker for the Thursday night banquet: Jon Cherry – Eagle Project. Jon will also be hosting a field trip to the Plains on one of those days. Heads up to any who wish to attend or wish to be aware.

Register here 

Dr. Konak studied the strategies, networks and discourses of the movement.

What types of strategies/types of actions that the movement actors use?
What are their networks, what are their contacts?
How the actors frame or define the issues, problems, what are their concerns?
Did the movement reach its ultimate goal?  How and why or why not?

Dr. Nahide Konak, Sociology Candidate Presentation

Monday, April 7^th, 4:00pm, Brule Room UC

April 3, 2008

For Immediate Release

Great Lakes Author, Historian: Michigan’s Hypocrisy May Kill Great Lakes

Compact

Analysis shows Michigan must act swiftly, aggressively to protect water from withdrawal and

establish conservation practices

Great Lakes historian and author Peter Annin, in an article in today’s Detroit Free Press, warns that the eight-state Great Lakes Compact water protection pact may fail – partly due to Michigan’s historical hypocrisy in blocking withdrawals while failing to respect or conserve its own water resources.

The analysis painfully illustrates the need for Michigan legislators to enact strong state water protection laws along with their approval of the Great Lakes Compact.

The urgency was elevated this week when Ohio’s Lt. Governor, Lee Fisher, suggested that Great Lakes water might be sold to buyers in other parts of the nation.

“If the Compact fails, federal protection against Great Lakes diversions hangs by a tenuous legal thread,” said Hugh McDiarmid Jr. of the Michigan Environmental Council. “There are plenty of people and entities outside the Great Lakes waiting for that legal thread to snap.

“If Michigan’s legislature approves strong laws to keep our water where it belongs, it will be their everlasting legacy that they established a firewall against future abuse of our water resources whether the Compact becomes law or not.”

Annin gives the Compact a 50 percent chance of passage. Four states have passed it. Michigan and Pennsylvania are expected to approve it, while it has run into roadblocks in Wisconsin and Ohio. If approved, it would need Congressional approval and the President’s signature to become law.

Annin said suspicion over Michigan’s historical double-talk has helped fuel opposition in Ohio and Wisconsin. Michigan has strenuously opposed – and even legally blocked – proposed diversions outside the Great Lakes. The hypocrisy became apparent, however, when our state then failed to establish meaningful water conservation practices and flaunted its lack of water regulations.

Proposed state legislation would change that image by establishing conservation rules within the state, protecting Michigan’s streams and inland lakes from excessive withdrawals.

The Great Lakes, Great Michigan coalition – numbering more than 60 organizations and businesses – supports House legislation that comes closer to achieving the stringent protections that Michigan needs.

Competing legislation introduced in the Senate is far less protective, failing to designate groundwater as a public resource, foregoing public input into large-scale water withdrawal plans and allowing up to 25 percent of some stretches of Michigan streams to be drained with minimal or no oversight.

“Because Michigan is the only state entirely within the Great Lakes drainage basin, we have the most to gain from the Great Lakes Compact, and the most to lose if we do not establish our own standards,” said Dr. Grenetta Thomassey, Policy Director at Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council. “We are hopeful our legislators act to ensure that water users within Michigan do not drain rivers and dry up wetlands.”

The Free Press’ article with Annin’s analysis can be found at:

Click here to read more

Contact:

Hugh McDiarmid Jr., Michigan Environmental Council: 248-660-4300

Grenetta Thomassey, Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council: 231-838-5193

                                                                                            Brian Beauchamp, Michigan League of Conservation Voters: 734-904-9915

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