Should the state’s regulatory authority over the metallic mine permitting process be dramatically reduced to accommodate the wishes of a mining company to receive a permit in record time? This is not a hypothetical question.

Gogebic Taconite (GTAC) has met with several legislators about its proposed open pit iron ore (taconite) mine along the border of Ashland and Iron counties to push legislation that would drastically speed up the mine permitting process.

The present review process, which was the result of hard-fought environmental battles in the 1970s, can take several years, depending on the complexity of the mine plan and the potential environmental impacts of the project. However, Sen. Rich Zipperer (R-Pewaukee) and state Rep. Mark Honadel (R-South Milwaukee) plan to propose legislation that would reduce the review to 300 days. GTAC President Bill Williams told a reporter that his company may abandon its plans for a $1.5 billion taconite mine and processing plant if the process takes too long.

Ever since a grass-roots Indian and environmental alliance defeated a proposal to build a metallic sulfide mine at Crandon, the international mining industry has considered the state among the least favorable places for mining investment.

In 1998, the state passed the Mining Moratorium Law, which requires that before the state can issue a permit for the mining of sulfide ore bodies, potential miners must provide an example of where a metallic sulfide mine in the United States or Canada has not polluted surface and groundwaters during or after mining. In 2003, the Sokaogon Chippewa and the Forest County Potawatomi tribes bought the Crandon mine property for $16.5 million and ended a 28-year conflict over the mine.

GTAC now wants to turn back the clock on environmental protection and respect for the rights of indigenous peoples. Gogebic Taconite is a limited liability company registered on the Toronto Stock Exchange and owned by the Cline Group, a coal mining company based in Florida. Christopher Cline is a billionaire who owns large coal reserves in Illinois and Northern Appalachia.

If GTAC has its way, local citizens and the Bad River Chippewa tribe, who will be most directly affected by the proposed mine, will have little opportunity to participate in a thorough review of the social, economic and environmental impacts of the project. What information might be disclosed during a mine permit review process that would be so threatening to GTAC?

Bad River Chippewa Chairman Mike Wiggins Jr. is concerned that this mine could discharge polluted water to the Bad River watershed and the tribe’s wild rice beds in the Kakagon Sloughs, a 16,000-acre complex of wetlands, woodlands and sand dune ecosystems that is one of the largest freshwater estuaries in the world.

Wild rice is a sacred plant for the Chippewa and is very sensitive to water contamination as well as fluctuations in water levels. Dewatering operations at the proposed mine could lower the water table around the mine. It was the effort to protect the Sokaogon Chippewa’s wild rice beds that propelled the Crandon mine conflict.

The proposed mine involves extracting taconite by removing about 650 feet of overburden and creating a narrow pit around 4 miles long, up to 900 feet deep and a quarter-mile wide. The overburden would be dumped in massive tailings piles along the northwest side of the Penokee-Gogebic Range and at the headwaters of the Bad River Watershed. These large tailings piles have the potential to generate acid rock drainage if sulfide minerals are present in the waste rock.

These issues need to be evaluated in a fair and open environmental review through which the public and the Lake Superior Chippewa bands have the opportunity to have full disclosure of the potential impacts of the project. Legislation that would reduce the review process to 300 days would severely limit full disclosure of these impacts and be in direct violation of both state environmental law and treaties with the Lake Superior Chippewa bands.

Zipperer has expressed his desire to have the legislation passed before the end of the current session on June 30. Why is this legislation being fast-tracked? If passed, this legislation will effectively exclude Wisconsin citizens and tribes from having a voice in one of the most far reaching environmental decisions facing northern Wisconsin communities.

Al Gedicks teaches sociology at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and is author of “Resource Rebels: Native Challenges to Mining and Oil Corporations.”

According to Mines and Communities:

Rio Tinto distributed a “fact” sheet about metallic sulfide mining (also called by the less-descriptive term “hardrock mining”) last year.  According to Rio Tinto’s fact sheet [available by clicking HERE]:

“The term “sulfide mining” is slang, not a scientific or industry term.  It is a term used by mining opponents to elicit concern and to confuse people … there is no basis for describing a copper, nickel or any other mineral mine as a “sulfide mine.”

We at LSMN decided to offer readers a short, interactive quiz, to test your knowledge of this issue.  Guess who said the following by matching the numbered quotes with the corresponding letters.  Letters can be used more than once.  Scroll all the way down for correct answers at the bottom (no cheating!).

The Quotes:

1.  ”A sulfide mine is a mine where the orebody and metals of interest were formed in the presence of sulfur creating sulfide type minerals … sulfide mines are important.”

2.  ”We participated in a Mine Work Group that was successful in developing rules for metallic sulfide mining in Michigan.”

3.  [Blank] announced today a proposed decision to approve a series of permits to the Kennecott Eagle Minerals Company to conduct sulfide mining operations at the proposed Eagle Project Mine.”

4.  ”The Flambeau Mine was a Kennecott sulfide mining operation that ran for about 4 years in the 1990s.”

5.  ”If the mineral products and waste materials associated with nonferrous metallic sulfide mining operations are not properly managed and controlled, they can cause significant damage to the environment, impact human health, and degrade the quality of life of the impacted community.”

6.  ”Sulfide mining is prone to pollution and very difficult to clean … the [EPA] estimates that at least 40 percent of the headwater streams in western watersheds are contaminated where similar mining is occurring.”

Who Said It?

A.  Rio Tinto/Kennecott

B.  Your uncle

C.  Keweenaw Bay Indian Community

D.  Citizens for Responsible Mining (a Rio Tinto support group)

E.  Save the Wild UP

F.  Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ)

G.  National Wildlife Federation

H.  Huron Mountain Club

I.   U.S. Congressman Bart Stupak

J.  Michigan Legislature

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Answer Key:

1.  A  (Rio Tinto conflicts its own statement (top of this posting) in another one of its fact sheets on the Michigan Eagle Mine – click here)

2.  A  (Kennecott’s 2005 “sustainable development” report – click here)

3.  F  (a Michigan DEQ news release – click here)

4.  D  (Citizens’ for Responsible Mining’s website – click here)

5.  J  (near the beginning of Michigan’s much-touted law regulating metallic sulfide mining – click here; for the full law click here)

6.  I  (an opinion article Stupak wrote last year – click here)

Note:  Although Rio Tinto and some of their supporters have made a big fuss that the term “metallic sulfide mining” (or the shortened version used by the company, “sulfide mining”) is only used by their opponents to “elicit concern” and “confuse” people, it is a common, and descriptive, industry term used to describe a type of mining that commonly creates a unique type of environmental devastation Norway calls “one of the most serious mining-related environmental problems across the world.”

The above examples where industry, its supporters, politicians, regulators, and lawmakers have used this term is not meant to be a comprehensive list, as the terms are widely used.

The opposition was quite diverse, coming from sportsmen, a former employee of Kennecott, a federal government bureaucrat, teachers, doctors, hippies, retirees, and more.

Here’s a story from TV6 on the meeting:

Rio Tinto, Kennecott’s parent company, has the attention of the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council.)  The NRDC is protesting the Pebble mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay.

The NRDC describes Rio Tinto as a London-based mining conglomerate that has left a trail of toxic contamination from Indonesia to Utah.  In 1996, a dam failed at the Porco mine in Bolivia where Rio Tinto had a significant interest.  A Belgian scientist working in the region reports the rivers are totally dead.

The Grasberg Mine in Indonesia is a Rio Tinto joint venture reported by the New York Times in 2005, to have buried nearly 90 squared miles of wetlands with mine waste.  Almost all fish have disappeared.

Rio Tinto is facing a class-action lawsuit in which locals citizens in Papua New Guinea charge the company with “knowingly emitting and depositing volatile and highly toxic mine waste onto the land and into the water.”

The Bingham Canyon mine near Salt Lake City operated by Rio Tinto’s wholly owned subsidiary, Kennecott Utah Copper has created a 72-square-mile plume of contamination that has rendered a large area of local groundwater too polluted for human consumption.  The EPA recommended listing the mine as a federal Superfund Site in 1994.

Write Rio Tinto in London as soon as possible to protest the Pebble mine and to protest the Eagle mine here in Marquette County.  When a county commissioner makes reference to the Kennecott Woodland road issue as getting excited about a few frogs and mosquitoes, the writing is on the wall, Marquette County citizens need to take matters in their own hands.

According to Kennecott, there are only two routes for the ‘haul road’, the one they want or the one that everyone does not want.  They are creating a false choice in order to get approval of the road they want.  When Kennecott has completed the mining of Eagle Rock how will the ‘haul road’ continue to be utilized?  Why not build a road that will add to the infrastructure of the county.

If the mine is to be completed it must be safe for the people who will work there; it must have minimal negative impact on our environment and any changes to our infrastructure must be an asset to the County.  Based on Rio Tinto (Kennecott’s) track record, I don’t believe they are willing or capable of the task.  I, personally, don’t give a “bleep” about the bottom line for the shareholders in London, England.

Healthy religious communities, especially here in the Upper Peninsula, hold at the center of convictions a respect for individual conscience. That’s one of the reasons for the “quietism” of many faith leaders when taking public positions on ethics and public policy.

But when religion tilts too far in this “private” direction, churches and tabernacles become silent, irrelevant to important issues facing us as citizens. Dynamic symbols and spiritual teachings on justice and compassion are robbed of their power for change and reduced to sentimental musings.

At the annual meeting of Rio Tinto in London a few weeks ago, it was announced the blasting of Eagle Rock for Kennecott’s proposed sulfide mine in Marquette County is scheduled to begin in coming weeks. During days ahead, trucks full of explosives and dynamite will be traveling up County Road 550 to begin work.

For those identifying with Christian traditions, these are days of recalling a divine drama of crucifixion and resurrection. It’s also a time when we remember Judas betraying a carpenter and king, his teacher and Savior, with a kiss.

Matthew Fox, Christian theologian, reminds us of the new environmental consciousness transforming the way we all live. He suggests if Christians confess the mystery of the incarnation, they should entertain the explosive possibility that the earth is Christ’s body, that when we support environmental degradation we participate in Jesus’ betrayal and crucifixion.

Those who have walked alongside leaders of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, the National Wildlife Federation, Concerns Citizens of Big Bay, 200 medical professionals and 100 faith leaders will continue to protest this mine with its looming threat to the health of the people who live in the forests and fish the streams adjacent to the mine site. For a promise of a few short-term jobs, many of us believe Kennecott is buying Marquette County with 30 pieces of silver.

Nothing is over. Contact Wave or Save the Wild U.P. to register your convictions. Whether this mine is stopped or not, people of conscience and goodwill continue to speak, calling our community to vigorously defend our watershed with deeper, more creative visions of a healthy environment and community life.

Rio Tinto plans to drill about 9 miles north of Kenton, in Houghton County, Michigan, on the Ontonagon Ranger District.

Click HERE to see a map of the exploration area.

Environmental activists protested the mining industry on Wednesday while hundreds of people gathered for the annual mining conference at the DECC in Dululth.

The ‘No Sulfide Mining Group’ emerged in February in response to a proposed copper-nickel mine in Minnesota. If it’s approved, it would be the first of its kind in Minnesota.

While the group focuses on preventing the proposed PolyMet mine, they’re also against the proposed four-mile-long open iron ore pit on the Penokee-Gogebic Iron Range in Iron and Ashland Counties. ‘No Sulfide Mining Group’ member Carl Sack of Duluth opposes the Gogebic Taconite, LLC expansion.

“A massive new open pit mine with serious potentially severe impacts on the recharge zone of the Penokee aquifer and the Bad River watershed. I have major concerns about the environmental safety of that mine. The industrial zone of the Northwood’s which relies on tourism, farming, clean water, and wild rice,” Sack said.

‘No Sulfide Mining’ spokesman Bob Tammen of Soudan worked on the Iron Range in the late 60s. He says he saw millions of gallons of hazardous waste leak from abandoned iron ore ponds. He says the environmental aftermath of the Gogebic Taconite mine would hurt the economy in the long run.

“We have difficult economic times. We need jobs. A lot of times this is posed as a conflict between jobs and the environment. The mining industry does not create jobs the way it once did. Productivity doubled in my working lifetime. It only takes half as many employees to produce the same amount of ore,” Tammen said.

Although the group opposes the Penokee iron mine, its members commend the willingness of Gogebic Taconite to listen to the community which Sack says is much more open compared to Minnesota mining companies.

“So far in Minnesota that process has remained extremely undemocratic. In Wisconsin they have a different approach which allows for public input via a real public hearing. You get to get up on a microphone in front of your peers, in front of the general public in a room with officials and the public gets to comment on a project,” Sack said.

Sack and Tammen hope to raise awareness about the affects of mining so that more sustainable practices can drive the resource economy.