by Gabriel Caplett
In crafting its Part 632 regulations for nonferrous metallic sulfide mining, the State of Michigan may have stopped short of passing a law fully protective of public health, the environment and indigenous cultural resources on reservation lands. Now KBIC Proposed Mining Ordinance December 2008 that would create one of the most stringent mining laws in the world.
While Michigan’s law fails to protect sensitive, water-rich areas from proposed mining activity, KBIC’s law would deny an application if “the proposed site is not suitable for mining.”
While, in 2004, Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) Deputy Director Skip Pruss informed a legislative working group that even a discussion of Wisconsin’s strict mining laws was not permitted in the Michigan process, KBIC is taking Wisconsin’s lead even further by asserting responsible local control over mining practices.
Although some Michigan environmental groups agreed to the compromise set by state and mining company representatives, KBIC refused to endorse the rules. In 2005, KBIC President Susan LaFernier told the DEQ, “Our community agreed to participate with the work group in the hope that…degradation to the environment and risks to human health…likely to result from sulfide mining would be reduced. After reviewing the…proposed rules, the community has concluded that this goal will not be accomplished.”
Mining company representatives and their political allies disagree.
At an August 2005 visit to the Keweenaw Peninsula, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm’s Upper Peninsula director, Matt Johnson, said Michigan’s mining laws would be “some of the strongest in the nation.” Johnson now works as a lobbyist and community relations manager for Rio Tinto.
At an April, 2008 meeting, Rio Tinto’s CEO Tom Albanese told company shareholders and the British press that Michigan now has the “strongest nonferrous mining laws in the world.” Rio Tinto is the parent company of Kennecott Minerals, which seeks to open a metallic sulfide mine on the Yellow Dog Plains, in northern Marquette County.
KBIC’s proposed law would present a sharp contrast with Michigan’s weakened policies.
Strong Exploration Standards
The proposed “Mineral Exploration and Mining Regulatory Ordinance” will likely include stringent requirements for exploration, such as detailed water usage reporting requirements, and suspend all current mineral exploration activities on KBIC lands until a proper permit is issued.
Rio Tinto has been exploring about eight miles from L’Anse, on reservation land. The sarcastically named “Keweenawan BIC” (“KBIC”) project is located at a prominent outcropping adjacent to a portion of the Escanaba River State Forest. Uranium prospecting has also been occurring on tribal lands. These projects would fall under KBIC regulation if the ordinance is approved.
The new law would include a provision requiring a United States Geologic Service (USGS) hydrological data survey of the area potentially affected by a proposed mining activity.
In 2005, under public pressure, some Marquette County townships, including Powell, as well as the Marquette County Board of Commissioners and U.S. Representative Stupak, pressed the DEQ to contract with the USGS to perform a hydrologic study of the Yellow Dog Plains to provide an independent assessment of the situation. Those requests were denied.
Wisconsin’s Influence
In a key provision, the proposed law contains requirements even stricter than Wisconsin’s moratorium on metallic sulfide mining. The Wisconsin law, widely considered one of the strongest pieces of mining legislation in the world, requires a mining company to provide separate examples of a mine that has been closed for 10 years and one that operated for 10 years without adversely affecting the surrounding environment. Since the law was passed, no company has seriously attempted to file an application in the state.
If the KBIC ordinance passes, a mining company will have to prove that it has successfully operated a mine, similar in design and location to that proposed, without polluting groundwater or surface water, degrading the environment, natural resources, health or welfare of the public or culturally-significant sites for at least 10 years and that the same mine has been closed, and has followed the same criteria, for a period of at least 20 years.
Cyanide Banned
The KBIC law would ban the use of cyanide and percolation processes in exploration and mining activities. The percolation, or heap leach process, is typically used at gold operations where cyanide is sprayed over piles of crushed ore and percolates down, attracting and segregating gold particles from other constituents. Aquila Resource’s Back Forty Project, located on the banks of the Menominee River, would use a cyanide process to extract gold from a massive sulfide ore deposit.
Polluters On Alert
In one of the stronger departures from the weak Michigan law, KBIC’s proposed ordinance would require consideration of a company’s environmental track record before
an exploration or mining permit is issued. If the KBIC law is passed, companies that have been listed on the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Superfund National Priorities List will find it difficult to obtain a valid mining permit to operate on KBIC lands. Cliffs Natural Resources (formerly Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company) and Kennecott Copper, two companies actively mining or exploring in the Upper Peninsula, would potentially fail to obtain a valid permit under this new standard. Cliff’s and Dow Chemical owned a former wood tar waste dump in Marquette that continues to contaminate area groundwater with benzene, phenol, xylene, chloroform, and other toxic substances. Cliff’s is also known in the county for contributing to mercury toxicity in Deer Lake, north of Ishpeming. The lake is considered by the US and Canadian governments to be a Great Lakes “Area of Concern.”
Kennecott is enrolled in the Superfund program due to its copper operations north of the town of Magna, Utah, The site consists of a 5,700-acre tailings pond, a slag pile, a refinery evaporation pond and contaminated residential soils. Kennecott’s active copper mining location, south of Magna, was also considered for listing on the Superfund list. In 1995, the company was able to convince the EPA to defer listing of the “South Zone,” based upon projected clean-up activities. In September 2008, the EPA withdrew its proposed listing of the South Zone as a potential Superfund site.
As of this writing, KBIC’s proposed ordinance was under tribal council and legal review.
LSMN
Eve Divine
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