Wisconsin Resources Protection Council

Don’t believe Bill Williams or Sen. Tom Tiffany. It wasn’t the EPA but the company’s lack of homework that killed this project.

Sen. Tom Tiffany asserts that mining can be done in an environmentally-safe manner and blames the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for Gogebic Taconite, or GTac, pulling the plug on its proposed iron mine upstream from Lake Superior. This interpretation is misleading on several counts.

Tiffany asserts that “iron mining is a more benign process than sulfide mining” ignoring the fact that every operating taconite (low-grade iron ore) mine and mill in Minnesota and Michigan are recent chronic polluters, according to a 2012 study by the Sierra Club.

March 11, 2015

Dear WRPC Member,

Gogebic Taconite’s (GTac’s) proposed mountaintop removal iron mine in the Penokee Hills is dead. On February 28, GTac president Bill Williams announced it was closing its office in Hurley because the project was not feasible, citing the extensive wetlands at the mine site and the uncertainty about whether the mine would be permitted.