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?
Dear Editor,
Aquila’s paid ad on April 27 in the EagleHerald boldly states that the public need not be concerned about water pollution from the Back Forty project because state and federal regulatory agencies have determined that the conditions in Aquila’s water discharge permit will protect groundwater and surface water.
This conclusion will undoubtedly come as a shock to the Water Resources Division (WRD) of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ). In the WRD’s Finding of Fact and Conclusion of Law (April 30, 2018) they concluded that “the project does not demonstrate that the activities will be protective of water quality in perpetuity. The management and onsite disposal of waste material has not demonstrated that constituents from the material will be contained on the site, in the manner in which they are disposed.”
The WRD further determined, “that these materials will be transported through groundwater and discharge at the land and water interface, resulting in an adverse impact to the resource. With the data available to the WRD, this impact is foreseeable and will result in a long-term degradation of the aquatic resources on and off the project site.”
After reviewing Aquila’s wetland permit application the WRD concluded that a permit should not be issued. Despite the WRD’s extensive objections, the director of MDEQ issued Aquila’s wetland permit in June 2018. Despite repeated requests from the public and environmental groups, the MDEQ has not provided an explanation of why the agency ignored the scientific and legal objections of their own agency staff.
This obviously flawed permit process is now being challenged in a contested case hearing before an administrative law judge. The plaintiffs in the contested case include the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, the Coalition to SAVE the Menominee River Inc. and Tom Boerner, a private landowner.
Al Gedicks
Executive Secretary of the Wisconsin Resources Protection Council, La Crosse, Wis.
Dear Editor,
How much can we take with industrial pollution destroying our water ways and the health of our people? Are they that selfish that all they care about is making themselves rich and not protecting the welfare of the people and the generations that will pay? They don’t care about the generations that will suffer from their negligence.
Are we only focused on ourselves now and not what happens years down the road? We need to step up to the plate and get our heads out of our keisters.
Aquila Resources, a Canadian Exploration company, says that everything is taken care of. Let me ask how can even one permit be issued when they don’t have a plan for a disaster. How would you stop a spill from going into the river? We the people have to say no to their contingency plan of disaster.
Aquila says they will monitor the mine after the closure if it goes through, but for how long? The duration of the earth with a hole 850-feet deep filled with toxins and acid mine drainage will never go away. It will be here for eternity.
How can we let this happen to the second biggest tributary to the Great Lakes? Aquila says it will be safe to the environment and the water when there has never been one open-pit metallic sulfide mine in that world that has not failed.
So why is the Menominee River rated one of 10 of the most endangered rivers in the U.S., according to a National Geographic in 2017.
Go back to Canada and put one up and prove yourself first.
Let’s step up and protect the generations to come and leave it better that we have now. So get your head out of your keister.
Jeffery J. Budish
Peshtigo
by Bryan Kelly
Listen to Al Gedicks’ interview, here: https://realresistanceradio.com/podcast/al-gedicks-uw-lacrosse-emeritus-professor-of-environmental-sociology/
Mining company’s proposed tailings dam could cause massive pollution of Lake Michigan.
by Al Gedicks
April 18, 2019
On January 25, 2019, a 28-story high tailings dam in Brumadinho, in southeastern Brazil failed, releasing almost 3 billion gallons of sludgy mine waste. The spill flooded nearby homes, submerging cars and buses under a river of reddish-brown sludge. The death toll so far has risen to 228 with an estimated 49 people still missing and presumed dead. This is Brazil’s deadliest-ever mining accident.
by Al Gedicks
February 8, 2019
The recent collapse of a mine tailings dam in southeastern Brazil has already resulted in 134 fatalities, leaving an estimated 300 people still missing, according to rescue workers.
The spill flooded nearby homes, submerging cars and buses under a river of reddish-brown sludge. This environmental disaster should raise red flags for Michigan regulators and the communities downstream from Aquila Resources’ proposed open-pit metallic sulfide mine and tailings dam next to the Menominee River on the Wisconsin-Michigan border.
We must be on to something!
Local editorial unleashes smear campaign against environmental activists fighting to save the Willow Flowage
June 25, 2018–State Senator Tom Tiffany just can’t stand to have me question the wisdom of imposing unwanted mining projects that threaten the clean water of Wisconsin. So after my recent testimony against opening up formerly protected lands from mining in Oneida County, he passed along the information on my 1970 antiwar protest conviction to the River News, which ran the story in the June 23, 2018, edition.
If you’re read our article from the Fall 2017 Green American, “The Back Forty Mine: Is It the Next Standing Rock?”, you’re likely familiar with what’s going on in Upper Michigan. Briefly, Aquila Resources, a Toronto-based company, is trying to site a sulfide mine 150 feet from the banks of the Menominee River.
by Tracy Fernandez Rysavy
The border lands between the North Woods of northeastern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan historically haven’t been a hotbed of environmental activism. The region, populated largely by farming and middle- or working-class families, trends staunchly conservative in states that toggle between red and blue from election to election. People kayak and fish in the summer, ski and snowmobile in the winter, and hunt deer and duck when the law permits them to do so. They don’t attend protests.
February 24, 2018
Wisconsin Resources Protection Council
Box 263
Tomahawk, WI 54487
Mr. Sean Roosen, CEO and Chair of Board
Osisko Gold Royalties Ltd.
1100 Avenue des Canadiens-de-Montreal
Suite 300
Montreal, Quebec H3B 2S2
Canada
Dear Mr. Roosen,
We are writing in regard to Osisko’s 15% ownership of Aquila Resources’ Back Forty metallic sulfide deposit in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Aquila has promoted the idea that this project is a done deal. However, recent events should give your shareholders cause for concern. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ) public hearing on Aquila’s wetland permit demonstrated serious technical problems with the permit application as well as continuing widespread public opposition to this controversial project.
Senator and mining proponent uses personal attack as part of defense of bill.
By Al Gedicks – Sep 21st, 2017
How far is Senator Tom Tiffany (R-Hazelhurst) willing to go to do the bidding of the mining industry with his legislation to repeal Wisconsin’s “Prove It First” moratorium on sulfide mining? Senator Tiffany made that clear to everyone who attended the public hearing on September 7 in Ladysmith, Wisconsin on SB 395, the so-called “Mining for America Act” when he broke all the rules for public hearings and common decency by launching a personal attack on me for an arrest record from 47 years ago. He launched his attack in the middle of my testimony in opposition to repealing the mining moratorium law, which was live streamed. Since when do legislators try to intimidate and publicly humiliate citizens who are invited to offer public testimony on proposed legislation?
