In February, the US Environmental Protection Agency issued a strong condemnation of the environmental review of PolyMet’s proposed NorthMet mine. The project, and its environmental review have been heartily endorsed by state and federal politicians, including US Senator Al Franken and US Representative James Oberstar.
According to EPA statistics, PolyMet’s “draft environmental impact statement,” (DEIS) is incredibly incompetent. Less than 0.4% of all such reviews obtain such a bottom-of-the-barrel rating.
Disturbingly, PolyMet’s amateurish DEIS was conducted by a firm working with Aquila Resources to develop a zinc-gold mine on the Menominee River, in Michigan. In December Al Trippel, an environmental consultant with Environmental Resources Management, gave a presentation on PolyMet’s DEIS that outlined environmental concerns related to the review as well as unrelated information claiming the project would benefit the regional economy. Trippel has worked with Aquila as a consultant since at least 2004 and conducted studies necessary for that company’s own environmental impact statement.
From the Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness (March 5):
Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency gave the PolyMet mine draft environmental impact statement the lowest possible rating the agency can assign such a document. Citing incomplete work and unacceptable pollution, the EPA assigned the project its “Environmentally Unsatisfactory – Inadequate” rating.
The rating highlights the extraordinary threats represented by the mine to clean water. The agency does not assign such ratings very often. In the past 23 years, the EPA has reviewed 11,834 EISs and gave the rating it gave to PolyMet to only 41, or 0.3 percent. In the upper Midwest region, the agency gave the rating to just 0.2 percent of the 844 EISes it reviewed.
Yesterday, PolyMet released a statement seeking to control the damage the EPA’s rating has done to its credibility. Unfortunately, the company included a statement in their press release that is blatantly false:
“The EPA’s rating of the draft EIS as unsatisfactory appears to have been based on the ‘proposed project’ without consideration of alternatives or mitigations discussed in the document.”
This is false. In page two of the EPA’s letter, the agency states:
“This rating applies to the Proposed Action, the Mine Site Alternative and the Tailings Basin Alternative.”
There is no way to excuse such a misleading statement as PolyMet has made. Rather than offering specific details that respond to the EPA’s criticisms, the company has chosen only to muddy the waters.
LSMN
Eve Divine
doncorvette
If polymet is not a go what alternative lifestyle has the federal government planned for the property owners and all who live in the dwindling economic region of the Iron Range.
Sometimes when we overgraze our environment we have to move on. There is however a EXTREMELY Vibrant Clean Tourism economy in this region. Adaptation/evolution/entrepreneurial skill.
This is the future as we need these minerals for green technology. This is safe mining and will have a huge economic impact on this depressed area of Minnesota!