The Four Lakes Group is sponsoring an upcoming Mining Protection Benefit Concert with award-winning folk artist Tom Neilson on February 18 at the Bartell Theater. Get details and purchase tickets online to help support our work, and read below to see WHY we need to do this.
Sierra Club Position on the Gogebic Mine
By Four Lakes Group Sierra Club Chair, Dave Blouin
The Sierra Club recently voted to oppose Florida-owned mining company Gogebic Taconite’s (GTAC’s) proposed development of the largest-ever mine in Wisconsin in the Penokee Hills. After careful review, we concluded that the massive open pit, tailings waste dumps, and overburden covering over 6 square miles will permanently degrade the exceptional Bad River Watershed, which includes the Bad River – Kakagon Sloughs, the largest freshwater estuary on Lake Superior.
We noted that Governor Walker and some state legislators are rushing to gut mining safeguard laws to benefit GTAC, a company with no experience mining taconite. Cline, GTAC’s owner, has been cited 25 times for violating water quality standards at coal plants it operates. We reviewed the track record of taconite mining and found a polluting industry that has damaged streams, wetlands, forests and air with mercury, arsenic, selenium, and other pollutants. The decision to oppose the proposed mine was not difficult.
Governor Walker and his cronies in the legislature have introduced AB 426 – a far-reaching bill written by the mining company itself and designed to nearly deregulate taconite mining to pave the way for the GTAC proposal. This bill builds permit deadlines that are impossible for regulators to meet by limiting the science needed to carefully assess impacts from mining. It assumes granting permits for taconite mining is a right rather than a privilege and allows for destruction of critical wetlands, lakes and streams, and expanded pollution of groundwater.
To justify weakening our environmental standards, GTAC and its supporters claim taconite mining in Minnesota and Michigan is a clean industry, and that Wisconsin’s mining laws should be changed to reflect neighboring states’.
These claims don’t hold up under scrutiny. Virtually all iron ore production in the U.S. comes from nine taconite mines in Minnesota and Michigan. A survey of permit records from the just the last eight years (2004-2011) shows that all of these operations have air and/or water permit violations resulting in nearly $800,000 in civil fines plus cleanup orders costing another $9.1 million.
Moreover, seven Minnesota mines account for the bulk of fines and violations. These mines operate under Minnesota’s ferrous mining law established in 1993, now being touted as an example for Wisconsin. Is Minnesota’s track record of failure one we should emulate?
This race to the bottom is made worse by the fact that our DNR has suffered under years of budget cuts and chronic under-staffing. Dedicated and talented employees are retiring in droves, having been forced out by the Walker administration’s attacks on public workers.
The good news is that with less than one week’s notice after the bill was introduced, hundreds of citizens plus local and statewide conservation groups descended on a hearing in Milwaukee – hundreds of miles away from the proposed mine – to oppose the bill. Assembly Republicans attempted to create the illusion of support for the bill by holding in southeast Wisconsin but it backfired completely. Just as we saw with the Crandon mine proposal, Wisconsin citizens are forming a movement against irresponsible mining and other unsustainable development that threatens our natural resources, the rights of tribal nations, and democratic process.
Wisconsin clearly needs jobs, but some politicians have turned their backs on a 21st century economy by rejecting clean technologies and thousands of long-term, sustainable jobs, from recycling to renewable energy to transit. Instead they’re chasing a return to an antique economic model that rewards mining companies with profits and leaves local communities with permanent damages. Taconite mining won’t improve our economy in the long run, and it threatens to undermine it forever.
More details on our concerns and opposition to both the mining bill (AB 426) and the mine proposal itself are on the John Muir Chapter website at: http://wisconsin.sierraclub.org/Penokeemine.asp. Contact me at burroak15@charter.net with any questions or concerns or to volunteer to help work on this critical issue.