Westwood High School, Ishpeming, Michigan – Perhaps reflective of a general lack of responsiveness at the state level on the metallic sulfide mining controversy in Michigan, few attended a hearing on Rio Tinto’s proposed Humboldt Township milling facility, located in western Marquette County. As with a previous hearing, in February, employment, water quality, worker safety and incompetence at the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and Rio Tinto were primary themes.
Baraga County Mine Inspector, Don Carlson, expressed concern that fugitive dust leaving the proposed mill site could affect worker’s health and the health of their families since he has not seen an adequate plan to both capture and dispose of the fine material. Carlson also highlighted Michigan’s poor economy – Baraga County has one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates - and said that any mining jobs need to be performed by union workers, citing the closed White Pine Mine as a good example of how workers could be treated.
“When this company comes to the area are the area people going to be hired or are the companies going to bring the people from other areas,” questioned Carlson. “We have an influx in Michigan of no jobs, people being laid off every day, all these types of things and these workers aren’t being able to go and get a job, a union job, with these companies.”
Rio Tinto, a notorious anti-worker company has drawn the ire of union workers around the world and is currently attempting to bust Local 30 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, AFL-CIO, at the company’s large open pit Borax Mine, in California.
Chris Mofatt, a Marquette County prison worker and lifelong Upper Peninsula resident said, “I don’t oppose mining, I don’t oppose jobs, but I do oppose liars and I think that Rio Tinto and the DEQ are not credible.”
“Rio Tinto’s track record is poor,” said Mofatt. “They want to come in here and do the same thing in the UP they’ve done in other countries. I oppose that. Michigan deserves better than that and we’re not getting it right now. Our corporate government wants to run an eighteenth century industry down the throat of twenty-first century enfranchised Americans. . . we deserve better and so does everybody in the world because we have twenty percent of the fresh water.”
According to Keweenaw Bay Indian Community geologist, Chuck Brumleve, the DEQ’s approval of the Humboldt Project is currently opposed by both the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Yet, in an interview with WLUC-TV6, the DEQ’s director of the Office of Geological Survey, Hal Fitch, claimed that approval of the Humboldt Mill project “hasn’t been a controversial issue.”
Reading from an EPA statement, Brumleve reported that the agency is “concerned the currently proposed project may have significant adverse impacts on the ecosystem. We object to the issuance of a permit for this project.”
Brumleve said that the US Fish and Wildlife Service requested “that the MDEQ not issue a permit for the proposed work.”
Brumleve expressed concern if toxic materials enter into the Middle Branch of the Escanaba River, already contaminated by high selenium levels coming from Cliff’s Natural Resources’ Empire and Tilden iron ore mines.
“The Escanaba River watershed is one of the Upper Peninsula’s major watersheds,” said Brumleve. Any discharge “will ultimately affect the Escanaba River and discharge into Lake Michigan. The Escanaba River already has a number of fish advisories.”
At a previous Humboldt Mill hearing, in February, Ely Township resident and miner, Stephen Johnson, said that he lives along the Escanaba River and has seen fish die off.
“Since the thirty years I’ve lived here I’ve seen the Middle Branch of the Escanaba deteriorate as a quality watershed,” Johnson said. “We used to have brook trout galore in it some thirty years ago and I’m not aware of anybody catching a brook trout down by my residency in the last fifteen years.”
Marquette County Commissioner, Deb Pellow, read a statement in support of Rio Tinto’s milling plans, saying that the “reuse of the abandoned industrial site is an outstanding opportunity for environmental clean-up with the cost borne by Kennecott.”
“At the end of the mine’s life the site and surrounding area will have to be reclaimed to establish a self-sustaining ecosystem that does not need ongoing care.” [to view Pellow's public comment, see video below]
Indirectly countering Pellow, Brumleve said that while “we’re all in favor of” reusing old industrial sites, “instead of creating news ones,” Rio Tinto’s application makes clear, in at least two sections, that they are not required to leave the site cleaner than it currently is, nor do they intend to do so.
Quoting from Rio Tinto’s application, Brumleve said “the final land use of the reclaimed area of the Humboldt Mill site will remain as restricted industrial uses consistent with [Rio Tinto's] acquisition of the site.”
“They apparently do not intend to remediate these conditions,” said Brumleve.
Cynthia Pryor, Big Bay resident and former executive director of the Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve, outlined other deficiencies. Pryor said that contingency plans required under Michigan law for a ‘spill prevention control plan’, ‘pollution incident prevention plan’ and monitoring of surface water sediment and fish tissue, as well as designs for “liners, covers, leachate collection systems [and] tanks” were not included in the application.
“Those designs should have been a part of the application,” said Pryor. “In order to demonstrate that you’re going to be capable of doing something, you should have the design available for people to look at, for you to evaluate and for us to comment on.”
Pryor said the DEQ failed to request additional information from the company regarding designs for a water treatment plant, as well as a containment wall to prevent toxic tailing waste from entering into area wetlands and the Middle Branch of the Escanaba River.
“If it is not done, if it is not there, then your job is not done and neither is theirs,” said Pryor. “It is the law. . . the application, therefore, is not complete.”
The DEQ’s Hal Fitch maintained that Rio Tinto has met all requirements.
“We’ve looked at it, at every aspect of it,” Fitch said. “The requirements, the statute, and our rules and we feel that it meets those requirements and with those revisions and provisions Kennecott has provided us.”
Richmond Township supervisor William Luetzow joined supervisors in Humboldt, Republic and Michigamme townships in offering “one hundred percent” support of Rio Tinto’s proposed milling facility. Luetzow, likely among the minority of American citizens that trust politicians, said that he resented public comments suggesting that Michigan politicians were corrupt and working on behalf of Rio Tinto’s interests.
“It was brought up twice here that politicians are corrupt or they’re part of this Kennecott thing. I truly don’t understand that because politicians are voted by the people, for the people,” said Luetzow.
Some Rio Tinto supporters attacked local opponents as “anti-mining” and opposed to jobs. James Sodergren claimed that, “many of the folks who make up the anti-mining group are not residents. I’m certain that they have spent millions and continue to spend more in their effort to stop mining in the UP” and Deerton resident, John Hongisto, claimed that Rio Tinto opponents were “telling lies about mining and Kennecott.” [see video below]
Later public comments countered the claim that Rio Tinto opponents were opposed to mining or jobs. Big Bay resident and schoolteacher, Gene Champagne, said, “You hear a lot of talk about jobs tonight. Yes, we need jobs in this area. Who in their right mind is against jobs?”
Champagne said that he does not belong to an environmental group and that Rio Tinto’s own actions led him to not trust their mining plans.
“In the time that I’ve been opposing I’ve never heard one person in the opposition, in so-called environmental groups, say one thing about being anti-mine or anti-jobs,” said Champagne.
Champagne called the approval process a “farce” and said that, while “we need the jobs here, nowhere in the law does it say that it has to provide jobs to get a permit.”
“The law says it does have to protect the safety of the workers and the safety of our environment,” said Champagne. “The DEQ needs to follow the law.”
A couple comments in support of reopening the Humboldt Mill were seemingly heartfelt and compelling, especially considering that Michigan currently has the highest unemployment rate in the country.
Jay Mathews, with the local carpenters and millwrights union, said that his family has a long history of working in the mines and construction.
“It’s been our heritage for four or five generations,” said Mathews. “All of my family has been supported by mines or by the jobs that came around with the mines.”
Mathews said that his sister worked for the Republic school system and lost her job when Cleveland Cliff’s eponymous mine closed.
“When they closed the schools, she was out of a job, said Mathews. So it’s not just the mine workers that work, it’s everybody around. It’s a big picture that we need now, as far as the economy goes.”
For other local coverage, read Johanna Boyle’s article, at the Marquette Mining Journal.
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The facts are straight. Thanks for all your hard work LSMN!
And thank you, Mr. Scotman, for reading and commenting.
[...] a December public hearing on the mill, Keweenaw Bay Indian Community geologist, Chuck Brumleve, noted that the DEQ’s [...]
[...] Speaker Cynthia Pryor, Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve, forcefully read from a long and detailed list of items wherein Kennecott had not met the requirements of Part 632 of the Michigan Mining Law by [...]