Read the rest at Headwaters News.

Press Release April 15, 2012

Two Upper Peninsula women are traveling to London, England to attend the Rio Tinto Annual General Meeting taking place April 19, 2012. Carla Champagne of the grassroots citizens group Concerned Citizens of Big Bay and Cynthia Pryor of the Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve, plan on attending the Rio Tinto AGM meeting for two reasons:

“Air Quality is of prime importance to the people and community of Big Bay.” states Carla Champagne. “We are directly downwind and no one – including Kennecott and the DEQ – knows what is currently in the air coming from this mine, or even more importantly, what will be coming from the one once they are in full operation. There are no air monitors either at the mine or anywhere near Big Bay. We will be asking the Rio Tinto Board of Directors and their shareholders for a comprehensive air quality program to be installed in the region that will be regulated by the DEQ, monitored by DEQ approved third party scientists and all costs paid for by Kennecott.”

Cynthia Pryor considers this meeting an opportunity to express outrage at Kennecott’s new Air Quality application to remove the air filter controls from the Main Vent Air Raise which will exhaust all the underground mine workings. “This 65 foot high stack sits within 150 feet of the Salmon Trout River. We worked hard to get the air filter included as part of Kennecott’s original Air Quality permit as they intended the mine exhaust to be vented directly to the air. Now, they are back pedaling and want this air filter to be removed. We are vehemently opposed to such a notion and we wish to make this clear to the Rio Tinto Board.”

Rio Tinto filed their new Air Quality permit March 20, 2012 and the DEQ Air Quality Division is currently evaluating it. Public hearings for this application have been requested for Big Bay and Lansing. The application is on the DEQ website at http://www.deq.state.mi.us/aps/AppsOfInterest.shtml.

Here are some talking points to use at the February 21 DEQ hearing on the road and to write your own comment letter. See the bottom of this posting for information on the DEQ hearing, how to submit written comments until March 2, as well as for links to the application itself.

The project purpose (produced at bottom of this posting) is misleading and should reflect 595 would be a mine haul road for Kennecott’s Eagle Mine, for the following reasons:

• The proposed 595 route starts at Kennecott’s Humboldt milling facility and ends at Kennecott’s Eagle Mine.
• The road has been designed by Kennecott and based largely on the company’s original Woodland Road mine hauling road.
• The road would be paid for and constructed by Kennecott.
• Kennecott would, by far, be the primary user of 595.

The 595 application does not fully consider alternative routes.

• The application does not consider road-to-rail options, such as Kennecott’s original route to truck ore to a railhead north of Marquette, and doesn’t give full consideration of other feasible and prudent road options.
• The application’s narrow project purpose is designed to exclude a number of feasible and prudent options.

The 595 application does not show that its construction would make additional mining and logging operations more likely.

• Kennecott and other mining companies continue to explore in the area.
• Kennecott announced, in December 2007, it had six additional projects in the area.
• Construction of 595 make these mining projects, and projects by other mining and logging interests more likely to happen.

The 595 application does not evaluate the road project as part of the broader Eagle Mine project, as required by federal law.

• The mine haul road – along with the processing, mining, and power plans – is a critical part of Kennecott’s Eagle Mine plan.

Letting Marquette County pursue permits for Kennecott’s mine hauling road sets a dangerous precedent.

• Kennecott should have to apply for its own road permit, as it should with every aspect of is Eagle Mine project.
• Marquette County, which represents the public, should not do the dirty work by applying for Kennecott’s mine hauling road.

595 would be an economic burden on Marquette County taxpayers.

• Marquette County taxpayers are already footing the bill for some of the 595 permitting costs.
• According to the application Marquette County taxpayers will pay to maintain Kennecott’s mine haul road.
• Marquette County would likely be a liable party in the event of a lawsuit over pollution or mining-related accidents on the road.
• According to the Marquette County Road Commission, 61% of county roads need repair and the county has $200 million in unmet needs and only an $11 million annual budget.
• 595 would also increase non-commercial traffic in a formerly remote area, increasing the risk of human-caused wildfires and the need for a regular law enforcement presence in the area, all of which would mean more costs to local units of government and taxpayers.

595 is not necessary to protect public safety.

• Big Bay already houses capable EMS services and the area can be accessed by roads west of the Dead River dam system, on the new 510 bridge, as well as by land and sea. A new road is not necessary for emergency needs.
• 595 would likely lead to an increase in human-caused wildfires and petty crime, such as camp break-ins and other crime.
• Some routes, including Kennecott’s original road-to-rail route would use already approved commercial trucking routes, avoid major population centers, and not increase significantly the amount of commercial traffic.
• Some road options would also avoid population centers.

The claim that 595 would improve recreation in northwest Marquette County is not supported anywhere in the application.

There are a number of not-entirely-convenient ways to comment on Kennecott’s mine haul road:

1. The DEQ’s public hearing on Kennecott’s mine haul road will take place on Tuesday, February 21, 6pm to 9pm, at the Country Village Conference Center (1101 North Road, Ishpeming, Michigan). Click HERE for the public meeting notice.
2. You can send written comments to the DEQ until March 2 (if it has to be late, send it anyway) to this address: MDEQ 420 5th St. Gwinn, MI 49841
3. To send electronic comments until March 2, 2012 click HERE, type in the file number 11-52-0075 on the left panel and select “Search.”
4. You can also call the DEQ at (906) 346-8300 for more information.
5. You can also consider sharing your comments with the EPA’s Watersheds and Wetlands Branch, by writing them at: US EPA, Region 5 Watersheds and Wetlands Branch 77 West Jackson Boulevard Chicago, IL 60604
6. And also the Army Corps of Engineers at: US Army Corps 477 Michigan Ave. Detroit, MI 48226

The application information can be found by clicking HERE. The “Application Section 4 – Project Purpose, Use and Alternatives” links are some of the more useful information for commenting on this application.

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

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

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.