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.

Record prices for copper are helping to fuel controversial new efforts to mine the red metal in Northern Minnesota.

Copper set new records earlier this year and continues trading near record highs of over $4.40 a pound, pushing cash into northeast Minnesota’s developing copper-nickel projects.

PolyMet Mining’s Hoyt Lakes project just got a $30 million Canadian cash-for-stock infusion from Swiss-based mining concern Glencore AG. A separate copper-nickel project near Ely drew a $77 million Canadian buyout.

The high prices also have boosted business for companies like Superior, Wisconsin’s TLK Industries, where a mechanical press slowly compacts a spaghetti-like pile of used copper wire. The strands come out in a rectangular block held together by metal bands. The company will receive about $15,000 for a 4,000-pound shipping container of copper.

TLK Industries owner Andy Karon said metals like aluminum and steel are doing well too. But the amount he can pay for scrap copper has soared.

“Percentage wise, copper is really doing the big thing,” Karon said. “We’re paying four times what we were paying two years ago for the exact same material.”

The surging world-wide demand for copper, which has surged ahead the world’s supply, will keep copper prices high just as the demand for gold sparked prices last year, said Tony Barrett, an economist at Duluth’s College of St. Scholastica.

“The fundamentals are there for higher prices from a year or two ago, and for that to be sustained,” Barrett said. “That’s why these companies are going ahead with their projects in northern Minnesota.”

Used widely in electrical transmission, manufacturing and housing, copper is considered a bellwether of economic activity. Developing economies in China, India and Brazil are driving world demand.

University of Minnesota-Duluth economist Jim Skurla agrees that continued strong prices are likely. But he said some observers are starting to question whether current prices are sustainable.

“Are we looking at another bubble, just like we saw in the housing market?” Skurla asked. “The possibility of a copper bubble is definitely out there.”

Read the rest at MPR by clicking here.

The United States may have gained its independence from England after winning the Revolutionary War, but today Utah finds itself locked in a David and Goliath struggle with a new version of the British Empire — London-based mining colossus Rio Tinto.

Our nation’s 1872 mining law is a legal relic from the pick-and-shovel age, still being used by mining companies, even foreign ones, to lay claim to American public assets at 1872 prices.

With little environmental restraint or public health protection, it still allows miners to virtually steal public land, paying next to nothing to the government, poisoning the land and water and often leaving American taxpayers to clean up the mess.

Rio Tinto/Kennecott has exploited every word of this law while putting on a public facade proclaiming their environmental sensitivity and community loyalties.

Their true loyalties revealed themselves recently when Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon challenged the British Goliath, demanding public health protections before it begins swallowing up the south end of the Oquirrh Mountains. Rio Tinto refused.

The outcome of this fight will permanently shape or destroy the landscape at the heart of Utah more than any other single issue. But for residents of the valley’s west side, this has also become up close and personal.

Most of the canyons on the east side of the Salt Lake Valley are protected, but Rose, Butterfield, and Yellow Fork are the last three canyons on the west side offering any hope of public accessibility because Rio Tinto has closed all others to public access. Now the company has filed mineral claims on those canyons and is threatening to mine all three.

Moreover, Rio Tinto is aggressively pursuing a 1,000-foot expansion of its open-pit Bingham mine to the south, and wants surface rights to add to its mineral rights in Rose Canyon Ranch. Rio Tinto seems determined to go wherever it wants, never mind the aesthetic, environmental and health consequences. The nearby residents feel like a cancer has started spreading throughout their community, and that could be literally and figuratively true.

Rio Tinto plans exploratory drilling in Rose Canyon Ranch at the 2,000-foot to 3,000-foot level. Some 20,000 people in unincorporated Salt Lake County, Herriman, Bluffdale, and Riverton get their water from an aquifer that would be penetrated by the drilling.

If Rio Tinto decides to mine in Rose Canyon, the aquifer could be at serious risk for contamination or depletion by the ensuing underground blasting, tunneling, and water diversion from shaft mining. There already is evidence that existing Kennecott activity is depleting our aquifer.

Furthermore, if the county sells the surface rights, our open-space “jewel” could end up like Butterfield Canyon, plastered with No Trespassing signs, or worse, obliterated by a new mountain of mining waste rock. Even without Rose Canyon, an expansion of the Bingham pit will add millions of tons and hundreds of feet to the south waste-rock piles seen from every corner of the Salt Lake Valley and even by space satellites.

But for every Salt Lake County resident, especially on the west side, this is much more than an issue of destroying natural beauty in our collective backyard. It means more dust pollution contaminated with heavy metals and more diesel emissions, both with extensive health consequences, including higher rates of cancer.

Mayor Corroon has courageously declared that the county will not sell the surface rights to Rio Tinto unless it agrees to a sensible plan for monitoring and mitigating the air and water pollution that will surely accompany any expanded mining activity — hardly an unreasonable position. Several County Council members have echoed their support.

But Rio Tinto refuses to cooperate, which speaks volumes about its commitment to the community versus maximizing profits at London headquarters ($5.3 billion last year).

Old-fashioned British Empire resource colonialism is alive and well in Utah. This modern-day English tyranny is worthy of some tea party righteous indignation. But while most Utah politicians are still hiding in the bushes, Corroon has picked up his musket and fired a “shot heard round the valley” and all the way to London.

The end result of this battle will answer these questions: “Who owns the Oquirrhs?” and “Who owns our air and water, British CEOs or Utah citizens?”

Randy L Crane is a member of a Herriman home owners group opposed to Kennecott’s expansion.

According to Anderson, other efforts to protect the environment will likely include the use of a “continuous miner” machine that would grind the rock below the surface—reducing dust emissions at the surface—and gravity-feed it to a conveyor system, a process he describes as “the most economically or green” method available.  Anderson says countries “more advanced” than the United States are already using this mining method and seems to lament the weaknesses in federal and state environmental laws, including Michigan’s “Part 632” mining law that regulates nonferrous, or non iron ore mining in the state.

“The US is a long ways behind in environmental protection,” says Anderson.  “The fact that the Clean Water Act originally intended to end discharges to surface water obviously has not reached its goal and we basically, like 632 did, we basically created a process to allow these things to occur.”

Anderson, who says he was an active observer while Part 632 was being hashed out by a group of politicians, regulators and industry and environmental representatives says he realized, during that process, that the new law was designed to allow new mining activity.

“There was a certain point in time when all of a sudden the lights came on, at least me, and I said this isn’t a rule about stopping mining, this is about how to go from A to Z to get a mining permit,” said Anderson.  “There was really nothing in 632 that said if you do all this stuff and we don’t like it you don’t get the permit.”

Anderson suggests the mining industry feels more comfortable navigating state, rather than federal laws, at least in Michigan.  When forum attendee Doug Welker asked if the company could avoid pollution problems on the surface by putting waste rock back into the mine shaft, Anderson said doing so would require an “underground injection control” permit from the Environmental Protection Agency, a complicated process.

“At this point in time, in the industrial world, [it’s] seen as an impossible thing to do,” said Anderson.  “If you have an agency that doesn’t have a timeline, can’t assure you that you can get a permit, and you know that with that federal permit comes a whole world of other litigative hooks. . .even if it makes sense economically, even if it makes sense environmentally, even if it enhances worker safety, you won’t do it because, right now in the mining business, it’s a big no-no.”

Read the rest at Headwaters News.

In October, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that the tailings dam could fail in a major earthquake and move across State Road 201 – like a “violent and intense” flash flood - reaching more than twice the distance Kennecott predicted.

“Really, the public-safety concern is the highway,” said Troy Meyer, lead engineer for Colorado-based Tetra Tech, the engineering firm conducting the safety evaluation.

According to Tetra Tech, Kennecott’s tailings impoundment is still far from meeting Utah’s minimum safety standards and the company’s goal of meeting those requirements in 2018 is likely optimistic.

In March 2008, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that Kennecott Utah Copper had concealed, since 1988, the potential for a major earthquake-caused tailings disaster in Magna.  In 1992, the company conducted a “risk assessment” to determine if full containment of the impoundment would be more expensive than legal costs associated with property damage and citizen deaths. 

The Tribune published a 1997 confidential memo, written by Ray D. Gardner, former Chief Legal Officer for Kennecott, that is highly critical of the company’s handling of the potential tailings disaster:  “Prior management’s decisions to disregard and conceal legal advice, forego public notice, attempt to establish a residential buffer surreptitiously, collude with the State Engineer to withhold the KL studies from the public, and restrict the distribution of the Reduction Study, collectively and individually, give the appearance of a conspiracy to cover-up a profound threat to public safety.”

During the cover-up, G. Frank Joklik was Kennecott’s president and CEO (1980 to 1993).  Joklik, now a mining consultant, is currently on the board of directors for Prime Meridian Resources (PMR), a mining firm seeking to develop several metallic mineral deposits in the western Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

To read more about what Joklik and Kennecott did to cover up the tailings dam threat, go to the Lake Superior Mining News‘ coverage of the scandal:  Kennecott Hides Potential for Deadly Tailings Disaster

Resolution Explores for Copper Outside Superior, Arizona; Photo courtesy Flickr

Rio Tinto, a company that has made its name exploiting public and indigenous mineral wealth for decades, is set to make off with an astounding $140 billion in publicly-held mineral rights, in Arizona, for what is expected to be North America’s largest copper mine.

On Wednesday, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved a land swap allowing Resolution Copper Mining (a joint venture between Rio Tinto and BHP-Billiton) access to 2,400 acres of the Tonto National Forest.  The area contains sites sacred to local Native American tribes and was previously protected from mining activities by the Eisenhower administration.

According to the Arizona Republic, in a deal reached between the Obama administration, Senate Democrats and Arizona Senator John McCain, the only thing standing in Resolution’s way is a federal environmental review that must be completed prior to the land deal.

An opponent of the deal, US Representative Raúl Grijalva has concerns with Rio Tinto’s human rights record and urges a full investigation before a land swap is considered.

US Representative Raúl Grijalva opposes Rio Tinto's land swap and condemns the company's human rights record

“(Rio Tinto) has as bad a record as you’ll find anywhere in the world, yet the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee (approved) a deal that would grant it another $140 billion in mineral rights currently held on public land,” Grijalva said in a prepared statement.

“We, as lawmakers, owe the public some due diligence before rushing to pass a bad bill in the name of job creation.  The economy cannot be jump-started at the expense of the labor, civil rights and environmental laws we hold dear in this country.”

“Voting to pass this legislation blatantly ignores Rio Tinto’s troubling human rights record,” Grijalva said, pointing to the Norwegian government’s recent decision to divest itself of approximately $890 million in Rio Tinto stock after deeming the company’s activities overseas “grossly unethical.”

“The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, by moving the legislation forward without greater consideration of Rio Tinto’s worldwide business practices, has done “a grave disservice to our taxpayers and abused Congress’ role as the guardian of public resources,” he said.

Grijalva  serves as Chairman of the National Parks, Forests and Public Lands Subcommittee on the House Committee on Natural Resources where he could block a vote on the bill.

Lake Superior Mining News has reported on Rio Tinto’s theft of public resources in the past.

In Michigan the company plans to mine copper and nickel from its planned Eagle Mine.  The multi-billion dollar project is partially located on public land and would use a rock outcropping sacred to local Native American tribes for its mine portal.

In Utah, Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon has criticized Kennecott Copper (wholly-owned subsidiary of Rio Tinto) for exploring on prized public recreation land.

Similarly, mining companies in Minnesota have  found it easy garner political support for the use of public land in order to mine metallic sulfide deposits.

PolyMet’s NorthMet project will move forward if the company can gain access to roughly 6,700 acres of public land in the Superior National Forest.  US Representative Jim Oberstar and US Senator Amy Klobuchar have introduced legislation that would directly give PolyMet that land.

Duluth Metals and Franconia Minerals also have projects, located just outside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, in Minnesota, that would rely on the use of the Superior National Forest.

Rio Tinto's Bingham Canyon Copper Mine in Utah; Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons

“Underlying demand fundamentals have not necessarily supported the increase in prices,” Bret Clayton told the Mining Investment Congress in London.

Nonetheless Bloomberg.com reports that Rio Tinto Copper CEO Bret Clayton is confident that copper prices will remain relatively strong over a three to five year period “because of supply constraints and a lack of new discoveries”.

In March Bloomberg was reporting that prices were expected to rise due to a deficit later in the year related to China’s stockpiling of copper.