Private Mining Interests Try to Put a Price on Michigan’s Waterways
by Dick Huey

Amid the ancient forests and rocky outcroppings of the Upper Peninsula’s Yellow Dog Plains, the beautiful Salmon Trout River cuts a serpentine path as it alternates between flat water and cascading rapids on its way to the world’s premiere fresh water body—Lake Superior.

This river, set in pristine surroundings, is far removed from the hustle and bustle of Detroit and Lansing, but has nonetheless become a symbol of the best and worst of Michigan. The river is a testament to a state fiercely proud of its natural assets but increasingly neglectful of them in the face of budget crises and political combativeness.

While citizens discuss the economic future of the U.P. in terms of a clean environment, recreation and tourism, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) has revealed that its priorities lie elsewhere. The MDEQ is bumbling its way through a faulty review of a permit application to blast an acid-generating mine right beneath one of Lake Superior’s premiere tributaries, the Salmon Trout River. Despite an outcry from concerned citizens, the review of this proposed mine has taken place with the apparent blessing of a so-called ‘environmental Governor,’ who has consistently ducked and dodged the issue while the future of the Great Lakes hangs in the balance.

Read the rest of Not For Sale in Critical Moment magazine.

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).