Tag Archives: Economic

DEQ Grants Final Kennecott Permit – Ignores Native Rights

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The DEQ has granted Kennecott the final permit for the Eagle Mine project on the Yellow Dog Plains, ignoring Judge Richard Patterson ruling that Eagle Rock be honored as a Native American sacred site.

Read The DEQ’s press release

Eartha Jane Melzer writes:    http://michiganmessenger.com/33340/controversial-kennecott-mine-permits-okd-at-11th-hour

For further information,  read article by Gabriel Caplett

Comments from Cynthia Pryor, YDWP Sulfide Mining Campaign Director, 360-2414

What just happened here? The DEQ, as party to a State of Michigan Administrative Contested Case process, just unilaterally bypassed both the legal process and Administrative Law Judge Patterson in making a sweeping declaration and finding of law. This sweeping “judgment” was made not by Judge Patterson, not by past DEQ Director Stephen Chester, not by the interim DEQ Director Jim Sygo, but by a Senior Policy Advisor within the DEQ. This was done as a final  DEQ action on the matter – on the day before the DEQ was to be dissolved and the new DNRE Director was to take office.

How blatant can this be? This is the dramatic action of a DEQ that hopes as a last ditch effort to resolve the Kennecott issue and allow this mine on the Yellow Dog Plains – before their authority is superseded by a new agency. Delegation of DEQ Director ‘final decision’ on the matter, was given to Senior Policy Advisor Frank J. Ruswick, Jr. two weeks ago. There was no known correspondence from Judge Patterson to the DEQ, Kennecott or the petitioners during this time frame. But out of the blue, a day before DEQ dissolution, this DEQ policy advisor made a judgment, ruling and order granting Kennecott both a Part 632 mining permit and a ground water discharge permit AND vacating a remand order made by then Director Stephen Chester concerning Eagle Rock as a “place of worship”. A policy advisor of the DEQ became a Judge and a DEQ Director and has so ruled – and we must accept that?

This is an egregious act that now will absolutely require appeal to a higher court and should require an appeal to the new DNRE Director Rebecca Humphries and the Governor of this state. We should not sit by and accept such action as the accepted mode of “lawfulness” in this state.

Please call the office of the Governor and lodge your complaint: 517 373-3400 or 517 335-7858.

I would expect letters of protest by every environmental group in the state and we will certainly be writing the Governor. Her contact information is:

Governor Jennifer M. Granholm
P.O. Box 30013
Lansing, Michigan 48909

PHONE: (517) 373-3400
PHONE: (517) 335-7858 – Constituent Services
FAX:(517) 335-6863

Minnesota PolyMet Project:Public Opinion

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Published December 20, 2009

Dissenting view: Creating our own Appalachia means giving up too much

By: Marc Fink, For the News Tribune

Over the years we’ve seen, in the Appalachia region of West Virginia and eastern Kentucky, what happens when a single industry becomes a sacred cow, supported by politicians across the spectrum for their own self interest and political survival. The end result has been tops literally blown off mountains, vanishing streams and continued poverty in local communities.

This scene, unfortunately, now seems to be playing out in Northeastern Minnesota as our local, state, and national politicians compete with each other to see who can offer the loudest support for corporations entering our state to strip-mine copper, nickel, and other metals from the Iron Range.

Lost in the politicians’ rush to support this new type of mining in Minnesota is not only the horrid record of similar projects across the country, but facts disclosed in the just-released draft environmental review for the PolyMet proposal.

Continue reading →

Mining company surrenders claim to native land in $5-million settlement, opening Ontario’s far north

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TORONTO — From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail Published on Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2009

The Ontario government is signaling that the province’s far north is open to business with the settlement of a lawsuit pitting a tiny exploration company against a native band.

The government announced yesterday that it will pay Platinex Inc. $5-million to surrender its exploration claims near Big Trout Lake in Northern Ontario. Platinex has also agreed to drop its lawsuit against the province and Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation, a fly-in community 600 kilometres north of Thunder Bay that vowed to stop the company from drilling for platinum on its traditional lands.

The settlement comes just as pressure is growing to open up the northern wilderness. Fast-growing, emerging countries such as China and India are helping to drive up commodity prices, and that has led to unprecedented exploration in Ontario. The number of exploration claims in the Ring of Fire, a mining exploration area in the James Bay Lowlands of Northern Ontario, has more than doubled to 8,200 over the past two years.

The settlement lifts the uncertainty that has hung over those proposals.
“There’s no question that finding a resolution to this very, very difficult situation brings closure to a chapter that certainly in the history of the province is a relief for almost everyone,” Michael Gravelle, Minister of Northern Development, Mines and Forestry, said in an interview yesterday.

Anna Baggio, director of conservation land-use planning with Wildlands League, an environmental group working with the community known as KI, said she is relieved at the settlement, but has mixed feelings about the money Platinex will receive.
“Nobody likes to see bad behaviour rewarded,” she said yesterday.

KI chief Donny Morris and five other residents were sentenced to six months in jail last year for disobeying a court order to allow the Toronto-based company to explore on their territory. After they served almost 10 weeks, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled in May, 2008, that the sentences were too harsh and reduced them to time served.

Christopher Reid, a lawyer representing KI, said the dispute could have been avoided if the government had negotiated a land-use plan with the community.
“KI never wanted taxpayers to have to pick up the tab for this,” he said.

The province has since reformed the province’s mining rules, but the portion that would introduce a new mechanism for addressing disputes has not yet been proclaimed into law.
Ms. Baggio said the rapid increase in mining activity is turning the boreal forest into a “wild west free for all,” where exploration is taking precedence over protecting a region that has remained virtually undisturbed by human activity since the glaciers retreated.

While the Ontario government has declared a huge swath of land in the boreal forest off limits to industrial development, it has not yet drawn the boundaries for the areas to be protected.

Doctors resign en masse over uranium exploration

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The Montreal Gazette
December 4, 2009 1:58 PM

MONTREAL – Twenty doctors have handed in their resignations at the Centre hospitalier régional de Sept-Îles.
In an open letter addressed to Quebec Health Minister Yves Bolduc, the physicians say they have quit, as a group, to protest plans to build an uranium mine on the North Shore.
The protest comes on the heels of the introduction new government mining legislation, which does not impose a moratorium on uranium exploitation in Quebec.
The doctors say they fear for their own families’ health as well as for the health of the population in the region.
The letter’s signatories say they plan to leave the region and, in some cases, the province.
Lorraine Richard, the Parti Québécois MNA for Duplessis, says the doctors’ departure will be a disaster for health care in the Sept-Îles region.
The town of Sept-Îles, with a population of 26,000, is located on the shores of the St. Lawrence River, about 915 kilometres northeast of Montreal.
© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

EPA: Uranium From Polluted British Petroleum Mine Found In Nevada Water Wells

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SCOTT SONNER | 11/21/09 06:31 PM  Huffington Post

YERINGTON, Nev. — Peggy Pauly lives in a robin-egg blue, two-story house not far from acres of onion fields that make the northern Nevada air smell sweet at harvest time.

But she can look through the window from her kitchen table, just past her backyard with its swingset and pet llama, and see an ominous sign on a neighboring fence: “Danger: Uranium Mine.”

For almost a decade, people who make their homes in this rural community in the Mason Valley 65 miles southeast of Reno have blamed that enormous abandoned mine for the high levels of uranium in their water wells.

They say they have been met by a stone wall from state regulators, local politicians and the huge oil company that inherited the toxic site – BP PLC. Those interests have insisted uranium naturally occurs in the region’s soil and there’s no way to prove that a half-century of processing metals at the former Anaconda pit mine is responsible for the contamination.

That has changed. A new wave of testing by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has found that 79 percent of the wells tested north of the World War II-era copper mine have dangerous levels of uranium or arsenic or both that make the water unsafe to drink.

And, more importantly to the neighbors, that the source of the pollution is a groundwater plume that has slowly migrated from the 6-square-mile mine site.

The new samples likely never would have been taken if not for a whistleblower, a preacher’s wife, a tribal consultant and some stubborn government scientists who finally helped crack the toxic mystery that has plagued this rural mining and farming community for decades.

“They have completely ruined the groundwater out here,” said Pauly, the wife of a local pastor and mother of two girls who organized a community action group five years to seek the truth about the pollution.

“It almost sounds like we are happy the contamination has moved off the site,” she said. “But what we are happy about is … they have enough data to now answer our questions.”

“Prior to this, we didn’t really have an understanding of where water was moving,” said Steve Acree, a highly regarded hydrogeologist for the EPA in Oklahoma, who was brought in to examine the test results. “My interpretation at this stage of the process is yes, you now have evidence of mine-impacted groundwater.”

The tests found levels of uranium more than 10 times the legal drinking water standard in one monitoring well a half mile north of the mine. Though the health effects of specific levels are not well understood, the EPA says long-term exposure to high levels of uranium in drinking water may cause cancer and damage kidneys.

At the mine itself, wells tested as high as 3.4 milligrams per liter – more than 100 times the standard. That’s in an area where ore was processed with sulfuric acid and other toxic chemicals in unlined ponds.

Moving north toward the mine’s boundary and beyond, readings begin to decline but several wells still tested two to three times above health limits.

“The hot spots, the treatment areas on the site, are places you totally expect to see readings like that,” said Dietrick McGinnis, an environmental consultant for the neighboring Yerington Paiute Tribe. “But this shows you have a continuous plume with decreasing concentration as you move away from the site.”

The new findings are no surprise to Earle Dixon, the site’s former project manager for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which owns about half of the property.

An administrative judge ruled last year that the BLM illegally fired Dixon in 2004 in retaliation for speaking out about the health and safety dangers at the mine.

“The new data depicts the story that I had tried to hypothesize as a possibility,” Dixon told the AP.

“It was speculation, because I didn’t have the dramatic evidence they have now. You just had all the symptoms,” he said from New Mexico, where he is now a state geologist.

“The way the state has been telling the story and BP and Lyon County … is this is mostly all natural. Well, no it’s not,” he said. “We now know for a fact that most of this uranium as far as 2 miles out from the mine comes from the mine.

“This site becomes a poster child for mining pollution.”

Officials for BP, formerly known as British Petroleum, and its subsidiary Atlantic Richfield have insisted until now that the uranium could not be tied to the mine. They maintained the high concentrations were due to a naturally occurring phenomenon beneath Nevada’s mineral-laden mountains.

The new discovery has Pauly, McGinnis and others renewing a call for the EPA to declare the mine a Superfund site – something the state and county have opposed despite a new potential source of money to help cover cleanup costs that could reach hundreds of millions of dollars.

Jill Lufrano, spokeswoman for the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection, said an investigation into the source of contamination is continuing but “the new finding does put scientific confirmation behind the theory that this would migrate off site.”

She said the new evidence doesn’t change the state’s opposition to Superfund listing. Nevada has a long tradition of supporting mining and now produces more gold than anywhere in the world except China, South Africa and Australia.

Copper first was discovered around Yerington in 1865. Anaconda bought the property in 1941 and – fueled by demand after World War II – produced nearly 1.75 billion pounds of copper from 1952-78.

A mineral firm launched a then-secret plan to produce yellowcake uranium from the mine’s waste piles in the 1970s. An engineer reported in 1976 that they weren’t finding as much uranium as anticipated in the processing ponds. “Where could it be now?” he wrote. “Should we continue to look for it?”

Had they continued the search outside the processing area, Wyoming Mineral Corp. likely would have detected the movement of the contamination. But the market for uranium dipped and the company scuttled the venture.

Pauly never suspected the mine was leaking contamination when she and her husband finished building their home in 1990. They drank water from their well until 2003 – and used it to mix formula for a baby from 1996-98 – before becoming suspicious as rumors swirled about the contaminated mine.

“Everybody said it was fine,” she said. “Legally they didn’t have to disclose anything because technically there was nothing definitive then that showed the contamination was moving off the site.”

BP and Atlantic Richfield, which bought Anaconda Copper Co. in 1978, have stopped claiming there is no evidence the mine caused any contamination, but they aren’t conceding anything about how much.

“We know the mine has had an impact but to what extent is not really known at this time,” Tom Mueller, spokesman for BP America in Houston, told The Associated Press in a recent e-mail. He said the sampling “remains inconclusive regarding relative impacts from the mine” compared with other potential sources.

Yerington Paiute Tribe Chairman Elwood Emm said he hopes the new findings help expedite cleanup. “In the meantime, we continue to lose our water resource,” he said.

So who will pay for the cleanup?

“That is the million-dollar question,” Dixon said. “Every Superfund site needs an advocate or two or three and in my view there are none for Yerington except for Peggy Pauly.”

Regardless of who pays, Acree said, it likely will take decades to clean up.

Rio Tinto drops Prospecting Permit in Ottawa National Forest

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IRON RIVER, MI

On November 6, Rio Tinto notified the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Ottawa National Forest (ONF) that it no longer wishes to pursue mineral exploration in a 395 acre parcel of the Ottawa National Forest in Iron County known as the “Bates Parcel.”

Read:     rio_tinto_letter_terminating_prospecting_permit_on_bates_parcel1

This is good news to concerned residents and landowners who have been monitoring Kennecott’s mineral interests within the Ottawa National Forest and Iron River area.  Bob Rivera, concerned citizen says,

“Having grown up in the “dead zone” on the Iron River, a third of a mile from the Buck Mine, I am relieved that yet another site of potential pollution will not afflict our county which suffers from a higher than normal incidence of cancer.  Both the Buck and Sherwood mine sites are known to contain uraninite, a uranium-like mineral, which leaches into the Iron River and, perhaps, the watershed.

In the case of the Buck Mine, which continues to leach sulfides and other contaminants after decades of remediation, the DEQ’s supposition that the source is tailing heaps and old settling ponds (which overflowed directly into the river in the day) is based on shaky, conjectural science.  This stretch of river is riddled with abandoned mining works.

Unhappily, the State does not test for the presence of uranium-like minerals.  The absence of rigorous testing and sampling standards and effective enforcement procedures should further alarm any community faced by the depredations of a corporation infamous for its disregard for human (and other) life.  Anyone who tells you “Michigan has the strongest mining laws in the world!” is either duped or lying to you.  Rio Tinto’s abandonment of exploration at the Perch Lake site, while a small success for our movement, will have to be repeated many times by aroused and informed citizens if we are to preserve a viable environment.”

Read more  http://lakesuperiorminingnews.net/2009/11/19/rio-tinto-drops-michigan-exploration-proposal-on-public-forest-land/

Lawmakers downplay possibility of U.P. uranium mining

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But mining company spent more than $700,000 on U.P. uranium exploration in 2009

By Michigan Messenger’s: Eartha Jane Melzer 11/13/09 2:12 PM

http://michiganmessenger.com/30150/lawmakers-downplay-possibility-of-u-p-uranium-mining

Upper Peninsula lawmakers are railing against a ballot measure to create standards for uranium mining, claiming that no uranium ore has been discovered in Michigan. However, a Canadian uranium mining company says it’s found uranium in the U.P., scientists have warned that its uranium exploration could harm groundwater, and the Western Upper Peninsula Health Department is warning that residential wells in several counties already have elevated levels of the radioactive metal.

In a statement this week, Sen. Mike Prusi (D-Ishpeming), Sen. Jason Allen (R-Traverse City), Rep. Mike Lahti (D-Hancock), Rep. Steve Lindberg (D-Marquette) and Rep. Judy Nerat (D-Wallace) accused sponsors of a proposed 2010 ballot measure on mining of talking about uranium mining in order to scare people and destroy the mining industry.

“No ‘uranium mining’ activity has ever existed,” the lawmakers stated, “nor has any uranium ore been discovered, in our state.”

However, according to a July 2009 financial report from Bitterroot Resources Ltd., a 17-hole uranium exploration drilling program concluded last December “identified several areas which warrant additional exploration.” The company said it spent $717,403 on Michigan uranium exploration in the first nine months of 2009.

On the sections of the company website devoted to its Upper Peninsula uranium exploration Bitterroot states that early drilling “encountered a 0.6-metre interval containing 75 ppm U, including two 0.12-metre intervals containing more than 100 ppm U. These intervals are significant as they confirm that uranium-bearing fluids have been mobile within the Jacobsville Basin.”

The presence of uranium in this area is also known to local health officials. The Western Upper Peninsula Health Department has issued a uranium advisory.

“Scattered drinking water sources in the Western Upper Peninsula have been found to contain uranium in amounts that exceed the federal Maximum Contaminant Level,” the health department states. “The source of the uranium may be the shale deposits that run inconsistently through the Jacobsville Sandstone formation. Water supplies with radioactivity have been found in Baraga, Gogebic, Houghton, Keweenaw, and Ontonagon Counties.”

The department states that uranium-laced water may be associated with kidney damage and cancer and that people with wells constructed in the Jacobsville Sandstone formation should have their water tested for uranium.

Last year the National Forest Service granted permits for uranium exploration in the Ottawa National Forest and spokeswoman Lee Ann Atkinson told Michigan Messenger at the time that 50 test wells were authorized.

During the public comment period on this uranium exploration proposal by Trans Superior Resources, a subsidiary of Bitterroot Resources Ltd., Todd Warner, natural resources director for the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, noted that the company’s plan to bury drill cuttings on Forest Service land could result in radioactive compounds leaching into area groundwater.

“If a uranium ore body is disturbed in its natural geological setting, radium and polonium will inevitably be released into our environment,” Warner wrote in comments entered into the record. “The Forest Service has not noted that any additional or added precautions or testing is being required due to the potential or likely presence of uranium, radium, polonium and other radioactive elements.”

Because of the risk of chemical reactions that can cause minerals to contaminate the water supply, metallic mining requires permits from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, said Hal Fitch, director of the agency’s Office of Geological Survey. But due to what Fitch called “a weakness in the statute,” exploratory mineral wells in the rocky western half of the Upper Peninsula are exempt from permit requirements.

In the case of the uranium test wells in the national forests, the DEQ will visit and observe operations after being voluntarily contacted by the mining company, Fitch said.

The Michigan Save Our Water Committee says U.P. lawmakers are mischaracterizing their proposed ballot initiative.

“We are not talking about banning future uranium mining,” said spokesman Duncan Campbell. “We don’t have any regulations covering uranium, all we are asking that we have some regulations to cover uranium.”

Read more!

Houghton Mining Gazette writer, Kurt Hauglie covers the issue:

http://www.mininggazette.com/page/content.detail/id/507472.html

Gail Griffith responds to Shawn Carlson Letter to Mining Journal Editor:

No U.P Uranium?

In a recent letter to the Mining Journal titled “No U.P. Uranium”, there is a statement:  “There is no uranium ore anywhere in the state of Michigan.” The important word here is “ore”, which is defined as a naturally occurring material that can be profitably mined. This does not mean that there is no uranium in the state of Michigan. It means that no one has yet found of a profitable ore body.

The evidence for the presence  of uranium in the U.P. is strong.  The Western Upper Peninsula Health Department has issued an advisory for people with water wells in the Jacobsville sandstone formation in the Keweenaw Peninsula to have their water tested for uranium, because a 2003 study by a group at Michigan Tech found that about 25% of 300 wells tested in the area had levels of uranium  above what is considered safe by the national Environmental Protection Agency.

Since 2003, Bitterroot Resources has been exploring for uranium in the Ottawa State Forest in the Jacobsville sandstone.  In 2007, they found small amounts of uranium in drill cores.  Cameco, a Canadian company that is  one of the world’s biggest uranium suppliers, has given Bitterroot $1.7 million to do further exploration on the site.  New drilling was done in 2008, and the results are now being evaluated for follow-up.  Given that uranium prices have gone down from a peak of $140/lb. in 2004 to about $45/lb. today, even if this uranium body is large or rich, it may not be profitable now, but may well be later.

Mining for uranium is currently done by an process called in-situ leaching (ISL). This method does’t bring any ore to the surface, but rather pumps chemically-treated water into and through the ore body to dissolve the uranium and brings it to the surface, where it is extracted.  Treated water is pumped back in to dissolve more uranium.  The question is, where does the water come from, and where does it go?

Uranium deposits suitable for ISL are found  in permeable sand or sandstone that must be protected above and below by impermeable rock, and which are below the water table. This means that if there is any connection or leakage into any other water source, that water will be contaminated with uranium.   Further, the water used in the ISL process can’t be effectively restored to natural groundwater purity.

Michigan’s new Nonferrous Metallic Mineral Mining law.was written to deal with the threat of pollution by metallic sulfide ores and wastes that can create acidic, metal- laden water that must be carefully purified before being  released into the environment.  During the rule-making process, it was pointed out that uranium is a nonferrous metal, and could be mined under these rules, even though there were no provisions for the special precautions needed for radioactive materials.  The response by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality was that, yes, the “rules would apply to uranium mining, however, if uranium mining appears imminent, then the DEQ will review these rules for their adequacy to regulate such mining and determine revisions that may be needed”.

Part of the proposed  MIWater Ballot Initiative language speaks to this issue by  prohibiting uranium mining until new rules have been established.  It is clear that such rules are needed now, and a vote for the initiative would ensure this.  It’s all about our  water.

Gail Griffith
Retired Professor of Chemistry
Northern Michigan University

No U.P. uranium

To the Journal editor:
We’ve all heard the arguments. “Michigan must preserve its proud mining heritage.” Then the counter: “Our environment must be protected from sulfide and uranium mining.” And so the tired argument trudges on, the latest installment of which being known as the MiWater Ballot Initiative. An argument with no clear victors, perhaps for good reason – both sides have some fair points: mining is a valuable industry, but the environment is important, too. If only there were a tie-breaker, something to tip the scales and guide the undecided. Well perhaps there is – the issue of education.

One of the goals of the MiWater Ballot Initiative is to restrict “uranium mining” in Michigan, in response to local activists’ proclamations that “uranium ore” has already been found and that mining could be imminent; one popular calendar says uranium mining has already been proposed and another Web site calls it planned. The problem is, none of that is true.
As contributor to the “Mineralogy of Michigan” textbook and recipient of the Friends of Mineralogy award for a study of Michigan uranium, I present my knowledge as authoritative, so here are the scientific facts.

There is no uranium ore anywhere in the state of Michigan. And since there is no uranium ore, there are neither proposed uranium mines, nor planned uranium mines; statements to the contrary are absurd.

Yes, there has been uranium exploration throughout Michigan since about 1949, but this work has found squat; in the words of one geologist, “If you took all of Michigan’s uranium and threw in 50 cents, you’d have enough to buy a cup of coffee.” Michigan simply lacks mineable uranium deposits, and the finest mineralogists alive today (e.g., George Robinson, Michigan Tech University) do not believe any will be found – ever.

One of the concerns of environmental activism is the lack of credible scientific information within these groups, as exposed in a recent Newsweek article (April 2008). And that’s a problem. At a time when the greatest questions facing us globally (climate change), nationally (energy independence) and locally (mining) all involve science, we owe it to our children to teach real science – not pseudoscience.

I therefore ask readers to oppose this new ballot initiative. Supporting it isn’t necessarily a vote to protect Michigan water; that remains to be seen. But it is a vote against the integrity of science education. And that’s unacceptable because it damages us all.

Shawn M. Carlson
Adjunct Instructor
Northern Michigan University
Marquette

MIWater Speaker in Marquette, Thursday, November 12

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Save the Wild UP will host its Annual Fall Fundraiser Social on Thursday, November 12 at the Upfront & Company, downtown Marquette, from 6:30 – 11:00 pm. The evening will include a silent auction, appetizers, cash bar, guest speaker, Duncan Campbell, and live music by the Amnesians, a local classic rock band.

8:00 Rally for Water!!!    Speaker: Duncan Campbell

Highlighting the evening will be Duncan Campbell, member of the Save Our Water Committee speaking at 8:00 about the 2010 ballot initiative to protect Michigan’s fresh water resources. Campbell is treasurer for the  Committee and is directing its MiWater ballot initiative campaign. He states, “It is clear the only way to give voice to this threat (sulfide mining) and win the battle for pure water is to take the message to Michigan voters directly via a ballot initiative campaign. This is a powerful and effective tool and provides a grassroots political front to let people take action not only throughout the Lower Peninsula but across the Great Lakes Region and beyond.”

MiWater members will be on hand with information and handouts all evening.

Film Premiere! Minnesota’s sulfide mining controversy

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Please join us for a special film premiere!
Precious Waters: Minnesota’s sulfide mining controversy

7 – 9 p.m. – Wednesday, November 11
FREE and open to the public!
John B. Davis Lecture Hall, Ruth Stricker Dayton Campus Center
Macalester College, 1600 Grand Ave, St. Paul

“Precious Waters” is a new short film produced by the Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness and award-winning Fretless Films. The film takes a hard look at the sulfide mining industry’s history of failed Continue reading →

Mining ballot initiative raises real, not disguised, issues

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By JON SAARI

POSTED: October 29, 2009

The recent Mining Journal editorial (October 21) on the proposed statewide ballot initiative for November 2010 was generally factual and fair-minded. It argued the importance of clean water as well as jobs, of tourism and recreation as well as mining; and it urged U.P. residents to study the issues and ask tough questions.

Only in its conclusion was the editorial mean-spirited and misleading, in claiming that the REAL issue is about a group of people who want to prohibit all mining in Michigan by any means and are using the water angle to dupe voters.

I resist being pigeonholed into some secret cabal. My interests in the issue of mining and water protection are multiple, like those of most people. I am the grandson of a Finnish immigrant miner, the nephew of a union negotiator, a professional historian, a believer in regional land protection, and a supporter of this ballot initiative.

Is it vain to hope that the statewide discussion of this ballot initiative over the next year will remain civil and issue-focused? That it will not degenerate into name-calling, emotional slogans, and charges of conspiratorial scheming by corporate or environmental elites? That we can all acknowledge and respect that U.P. residents (whether Yoopers or transplants, retirees or young workers) have differences in values and perceptions about our region’s history, current state, and future prospects?

Let this be an issue-oriented debate, and let the people indeed make up their own minds and vote on this ballot initiative.

That said, I see four important questions that the ballot initiative highlights:

Is all mining the same, as the Mining Journal editorial assumes, or are there important differences among the types of mining? The ballot initiative is quite specific about amending Part 632 on Nonferrous Metallic Mineral Mining; it separates out sulfide and uranium ores because of their water-destroying potential. It does not impact the traditional mining of iron oxide ores in the Upper Peninsula.

Should there be site-specific criteria that make sulfide and uranium mining more difficult in water-rich environments? Part 632, unamended, assumes that the permitting process will take care of protecting sensitive sites. But what if the ore body is right under a river, and there are serious questions of mine stability and collapse? Or a world-class natural area of headwater streams like the Michigamme Highlands would be threatened by a new industrial mining zone? The ballot initiative raises the bar on water protection by placing a buffer zone around water bodies.

Should an independent hydrological assessment of the water resources be required in any permit application to mine sulfide and/or uranium ores? This seems like a no-brainer, and has been recommended in the past by reputable observers. It is not, however, required by Part 632.

Given that all mines pollute, should not prospective mining companies be asked to demonstrate that somewhere in North America, under similar environmental conditions, a successful minimally polluting mine has existed and been closed? This provision is similar to Wisconsin law, which resulted from a 20-year struggle to develop reasonable and protective legislation for sulfide mining.

The big question in most people’s minds is whether sulfide and uranium mining can be done safely. Proponents of the ballot initiative ask us to err on the side of caution in answering this question. Too much is potentially at risk long-term with a new industrial mining zone in our valuable and irreplaceable Great Lakes watershed. We have forums – our State permitting and enforcement agencies as well as the courts – for weighing and deciding these questions, but ultimately stronger legislation and a vigilant citizenry might be our best protection.

We do not want to wake up one day to discover that our short-term employment gains have left us poorer overall. “Currently” we need these jobs, argues the Mining Journal editorial, but when the mines are gone, as they inevitably will be sooner or later, what will we be left with? Will we still enjoy the hunting and fishing, the berry picking and recreating and emotional healing that the wild lands and waters provide for us today?

Editor’s note: Jon Saari is president of the Upper Peninsula Environmental Coalition, which has endorsed the ballot initiative.