by Carol Amour
June 10, 2021
The open pit mine that the company intends to dig out of land a mere 150 feet from the Menominee River in Michigan would be deeper than the height of the tallest building in Wisconsin, at 750 feet. The proposed mine will extract gold and sulfide from the banks of the river.
June 10, 2021
Dear WRPC Member and Friends of the Menominee River,
Ever since Aquila’s Wetlands Permit was overturned in a contested case last January, the company has been in a downward spiral that has drained its finances and called into question the future of the Back Forty mining project. Aquila’s recent announcement that they are planning to sell their interests in the Reef deposit in Marathon County and the Bend deposit in Taylor County (https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/wisconsin/2021/06/01/aquila-sell-wisconsin-mineral-interests-focus-back-forty-mine/5289825001/) is only a symptom of a much larger set of problems.
by Al Gedicks
May 30, 2021
Al Gedicks
May 31 is National Dam Safety Awareness Day. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources notes that this day was established to commemorate the 2,200 people who died in the 1889 South Fork Dam failure near Johnston, Pennsylvania. In the new era of extreme weather events, water retention dams are at high risk of failure.
Over two days in August 2018, four western Wisconsin counties were hammered by heavy rains that caused two dam failures and damaged five more dams. Vernon County got 10 inches of rain, destroying buildings, roads and bridges.
28 May 21
The Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin sent a mine developer back to the drawing board after a legal battle over sacred sites and water contamination.
t’s no accident that the river that divides the places known today as Wisconsin and Michigan bears the same name as the Menominee Tribe. The Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin lived along the Menominee River for thousands of years, and evidence of their ancestral past — including sacred sites, such as dance rings and burial mounds — still line its banks.
