By: Bob Tammen, Duluth Budgeteer News

We care about our watershed. The Lake Superior Watershed Festival brought out hundreds of visitors to Lake Superior College Saturday to learn about threats to Lake Superior. One of the biggest future threats will be copper mining in the Duluth Complex of minerals. Mining promoters have an impressive array of talking points. Unfortunately, they don’t have a scientifically acceptable mining plan.

Polymet’s draft environmental impact statement got the lowest possible rating from the EPA, which issued a letter detailing the inadequacies of the EIS. We shouldn’t be surprised by the lack of a decent mining plan. The taconite industry has been flying under the radar for years with the pollution of our ground water and surface water. We need more public discussion of the dead zone for wild rice in the Saint Louis River that’s over a hundred miles long. The mining industry tries to frame the debate as finding a balance between economic development and environmental protection, but the sad truth is that mining is no longer a viable model for building a healthy economy.

The Mesabi Range is over a hundred miles long with six operating mines, but with at least two dozen communities along the Range, you can’t find a single healthy main street. Virginia, MN has three operating mines within a rifle shot, and the last census documented a loss of population in their district.

Instead of generating talking points and promotional brochures for mining corporations, our universities in Duluth should be analyzing the resource curse as it applies to Minnesota. The resource curse is the economic theory that selling off non-renewable resources usually creates a lousy economy. It would be crazy to damage our watershed for a copper mine that would just be a wetland killer, an energy pig, and a resource curse.

Bob Tammen

Soudan