Post-screening discussion of Keepers of the Water, a 1996 documentary produced by the Wisconsin Resources Protection Council featuring the activists who eventually helped defeat the Crandon mine proposal
A Michigan Circuit Court judge last month asked that a 2019 decision to approve a mining permit for Aquila Resources should be revisited, according to nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice. In the order, the judge directed that additional evidence was needed in the original permit application, including documented concerns from Michigan environmental regulators regarding flawed groundwater modeling.
Another permit has been called into question for Aquila Resources’ plans to build the Back Forty mine near the Menominee River on the Michigan-Wisconsin border. A Michigan judge recently ruled the company’s mining permit [1] should be sent back for further review of the mine’s potential impacts on groundwater.
Recent court decision is a setback for the planned Black Forty mine, but it is not the end of the project.
The Menominee River, named after the Menominee Indians of Wisconsin, is the largest river system in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It forms the border between northeast Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and is currently the focus of a struggle over a proposed metallic sulfide mine known as the Back Forty Project.
March 17, 2021
Dear WRPC Member and Friends of the Menominee River,
In a major victory for water protectors, a Michigan Administrative Law Judge has denied a disputed Wetlands Permit for Aquila Resources’ proposed Back Forty metallic sulfide mine in an exhaustive 76-page decision issued on January 4, 2021. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (now the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy or EGLE) provoked immediate controversy when it approved Aquila’s Wetlands Permit in 2018, over the objections of the agency’s own scientific staff who recommended to deny the permit.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – JOINT PRESS STATEMENT
Friday, January 8, 2021
CONTACTS
Al Gedicks, Wisconsin Resource Protection Council, (608) 784-4399
Dale Burie, Coalition to Save the Menominee, (615) 512-3506
Guy Reiter, Menikanaehkem (715) 853-2776
Ron Henriksen, Front 40 Environmental Group, frontforty2016@aol.com
Kathleen Heideman, Mining Action Group, info@savethewildup.org
Dave Harmon, Upper Peninsula Environmental Coalition, upec@upenvironment.org
Carl Lindquist, Superior Watershed Partnership, (906) 228-6095
Sulfide Mine Permit Denied: “A Win for Wetlands”
MARQUETTE, MI – Regional environmental groups are celebrating the news that a disputed Wetlands Permit for Aquila Resources’ Back Forty sulfide mine has been denied by a Michigan Administrative Law Judge, concluding a two year review of the contested case. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (now the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy) sparked controversy when it approved Aquila’s Wetlands Permit in 2018, over the objections of regulatory staff who were prepared to deny the permit.
The Peshtigo Times
December 29, 2020
Dear Editor:
The 2,472 pages of Aquila’s recently submitted Dam Safety permit application is exclusively focused on the engineering aspects of the proposed tailings dam near the Menominee River. There is no discussion of the corporate organizational and human causes of catastrophic failures like the January 2019 Brazilian tailings dam failure that killed 270 people.