Wisconsin Resources Protection Council

June 11, 2015

Dear WRPC Member,

First, I want to thank you for your past support of the Wisconsin Resources Protection Council’s work to ensure that mining operations do not result in unacceptable damage to our state’s environment and economy.

As you may know, something happened last year that could put a chilling effect on the ability of citizens to stand up for their water.

The Wisconsin Resources Protection Council was a plaintiff in a Clean Water Act lawsuit against Rio Tinto, one of the largest multinational mining corporations in the world.

by Al Gedicks (originally published by Z Magazine)

Two years after Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed a controversial Iron Mining Law designed to speed up permitting for a giant open pit iron mine in the Penokee Hills above Lake Superior, Gogebic Taconite (GTac), president Bill Williams pulled the plug on the mine because the project was not feasible. He cited the unexpected extensive wetlands at the mine site and the uncertainty about whether the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would veto the company’s mine plan, as the EPA had recommended in the case of the Pebble gold and copper mine in Alaska. The EPA said that mine would do irreversible damage to one of the world’s last intact salmon ecosystems of Bristol Bay, Alaska. However, a federal judge has temporarily halted any EPA action pending further legal argument (see “Militarized Mining in Wisconsin,” Z Magazine, October 2013).

Six Wisconsin Ojibwe tribes, led by the Bad River band, asked the EPA to conduct a similar independent review of the environmental effects of GTac’s proposed mine on federally-protected treaty rights and resources before the plan is reviewed by state regulators and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But the EPA expressly stated that it would not be taking action on the GTac project as it had done in the case of the Pebble mine (“EPA disputes Gogebic fears about mine,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 3/7/2015).