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.

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.

Yesterday, some local elected officials met with the Marquette County Road Commission to discuss whether or not to move forward on Rio Tinto’s County Road 595/Woodland Road ore hauling project.  The meeting was closed to the public.

“We met with elected officials from townships, the county board, and the cities and we discussed what information that we each had about what was going on and there was some discussion on what direction we should take,” said county road engineer Jim Iwanicki.  “I was asked to try to prepare a letter to send to Kennecott [wholly-owned subsidiary of Rio Tinto] and I am working on that letter as we speak.”

“The general consensus of the group was that the existing road system was not in the best public safety interest of the community as a whole and they wanted to continue to look at what options there were to continue on the 595 project.”

Read the rest at Headwaters by clicking here.

Following reporting by Headwaters that Rio Tinto’s original ore hauling transportation route for its Eagle Mine called for the company to access existing rail networks and avoiding trucking transportation through city streets, the company now has a response.

The original plan [accessed by clicking here] called for the company to truck ore down county roads AAA, 510, and roughly 20 miles down 550, taking them to the LS&I railroad, north of Marquette.  This original route would have allowed the company to avoid trucking through the Upper Peninsula’s busiest and most populated travel corridor:  through city streets in Marquette, Negaunee, and Ishpeming, and a number of townships.

Read the rest at Headwaters by clicking here.

Last week Rio Tinto announced plans to drop its pursuit of the 22-mile 595/Woodland Road to haul ore from its Eagle Mine to the Humboldt Mill, in Marquette County.  The company’s project director, Andrew Ware, claimed Rio Tinto will now “move forward with the originally designated route” and drive through the city streets of Marquette.

Problem is, Rio Tinto doesn’t really have an approved route to do so.

The approved, and originally designated route, allows Rio Tinto to haul ore on public roads to a rail line just northwest of the city of Marquette.  From there the company can use an existing rail system to haul ore to Sudbury, Ontario, or amend its plan and build a short spur to transport it to the nearby Humboldt Mill.

Or it can access the existing Cliffs-owned LS&I rail line from points far west of Marquette, or extend the line—as it has been in the past to haul ore and timber—to the mine site on the Yellow Dog Plains.  A project like this would benefit both Rio Tinto and Cliffs’ logging plans and create a ton of jobs, reducing diesel emissions and construction material use far more than building and driving on a 22-mile road through rough country ever would.

The point is there are a number of options better than the two Rio Tinto is providing that create far less risk for the public and to our rich outdoors heritage.

Read the rest at Headwaters News by clicking here.

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.

From an article by the AP‘s John Flesher:

A company preparing to build a nickel and copper mine in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula wants to change its wastewater treatment system in a way that could negate the requirement for a federal permit, officials said Tuesday.

Kennecott Eagle Minerals Co. has asked the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment to modify a 2007 state permit authorizing underground discharge of treated wastewater from the mine planned for rural Marquette County.

Originally, the company proposed injecting the treated water back into the groundwater through a network of soil-covered infiltration pipes. The new plan calls for keeping the pipes on the surface and covering them with Styrofoam insulation and a liner. The treated water would still be pumped into the groundwater.

To read the rest of this article, click HERE.

A Canadian National Railroad locomotive and an LS&I Railroad made contact with a propane tank car at the LS&I Eagle Mills yard early Friday morning.

Due to the concern of a potential leak of propane gas, employees at the Eagle Mills yard, along with residents in homes in a radius of a half mile, were temporarily evacuated as a precaution.

The evacuation lasted less then two hours and residents were allowed to return to their homes after it was determined there was no propane leak.

A leak of an undetermined amount of diesel fuel from the locomotive is begin investigated and Cliffs Natural Resources personnel have contained the diesel fuel leak area.

A propane emergency response management team from downstate is on its way to the Upper Peninsula to transfer the propane from the tanker car.

Additionally, Cliffs Natural Resources has notified the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment regarding the incident.

There were no injuries and the incident remains under investigation.