August 16, 2019
The Menominee River forms the boundary between Wisconsin and Michigan in the Upper Peninsula, and flows into Lake Michigan, feeding an abundant source of clean drinking water for the more than 35 million people. The river has held extremely important spiritual and cultural significance for the Menominee people for millennia.
by Keith Matheny
August 13, 2019
Over and over, Michigan environmental regulators sounded alarms as they reviewed a proposed large, open-pit ore mine in the Upper Peninsula near the Menominee River, prized for walleye fishing and a major tributary to Lake Michigan. The mine would send acidic mining wastes into the river and surrounding waterways, which would then spill into the Great Lake, staff said. More acres of wetlands would be harmed than the mining company was projecting, evaluators found.
Then the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and then-Michigan Department of Environmental Quality approved the mine anyway.
by Keith Matheny
August 13, 2019
The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality agreed last year to participate in a web meeting with an applicant for a controversial, open-pit mine in the Upper Peninsula, specifically to avoid creating a public record out of information the applicant wanted to show the agency.
Mining helped to build the economy of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, but it also has courted controversy for its environmental and cultural impact.
Miners pose with lunch pails in hand on a pile of “poor rock” (waste rock) outside of the Tamarack mineshaft, Photo by Keweenaw National Historical Park Archives, Jack Foster Collection via wikimedia.org (Public Domain)
Canadian company Aquila Resources’ Back Forty Mine has resurfaced long-standing disputes on how to reconcile the immediate economic needs of a community with the potential, long-term impacts mines and their waste leave on the land.
A significant point of concern among some residents and the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin is how Aquila plans to handle the inevitable waste material that will be produced during the mine’s operation.
Separating zinc and gold deposits from sulfide rock requires complex chemical interactions that ultimately end up as tailings: a combination of waste rock, water and toxic chemicals such as cyanide and arsenic.
Aerial view of Menominee River near mine site, Photo by Kiliii Yuyan via Ian Wendrow
by Ian Wendrow
July 22, 2019
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula has long been the grounds for many battles between mining interests and residents, including several Native American nations.
One of the current ongoing conflicts is between the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin and Canadian mining firm Aquila Resources whose slated project threatens their ancestral lands.
Menominee oral traditions and beliefs hold that their people first came to be when a Great Light-colored Bear emerged from the underground at the point where the Village River (Menominee River) meets the Bay In Spite of Itself (Green Bay).
July 10, 2019
Eagle Herald
Dear Editor,
While sitting at my desk this Fourth of July, I wonder how and why we, in the United States of America, in particular both the individual states of Wisconsin and Michigan, have slid back so far as to even give thought to Canada, a former counter-part of the British United Kingdom, invade our borders and threaten our freedoms, including fear of having our water and air resources destroyed — not with bombs or bullets, but with more devastating materials such as lead, sulfuric acid, cyanide and other extremely hazardous toxic chemicals.
Few and far between are the opportunities to leverage 10 minutes of our time into a major win for the common good. This is one of those crucial moments. A key public comment period on the design of Aquila Resource’s Back 40 Mine’s tailings containment dam closes on July 5.
Alert citizens are warning us that an ill-advised proposal for a massive metallic sulfide gold mine located on the banks of the Menominee River, an important tributary of Lake Michigan, would bring intolerable and long lasting risks.
EagleHerald/Rick Gebhard
Speakers were set up with the back to the audience as citizens voice their concerns speaking to the panel during the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (formerly the DEQ) hearing Tuesday at Stephenson High School.
STEPHENSON — The public hearing held Tuesday by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, formerly known as the Department of Environmental Quality, brought out hundreds of people to the large gymnasium at Stephenson High School — all of whom had a message for the agency deciding on the future of permits for the Back Forty Mine.
first published by the Detroit News, on June 17, 2019
Will the Menominee River watershed, the largest in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and a significant tributary of Lake Michigan, remain a land of sky blue waters?
Or will an ill-advised metallic sulfide mine proposal, located a mere stone’s throw inland from the river and the Michigan-Wisconsin border, lead to contaminated waters and threaten drinking water supplies?
