Wisconsin Resources Protection Council

Why the sudden change to approve copper-zinc mine? Will it pollute Lake Michigan?

by Bruce Murphy

August 20, 2019

UrbanMilwaukee.com

This is a story about an open pit copper, zinc and gold mine on the border of Wisconsin and Michigan that could pollute the waters of both states, including Lake Michigan and also endanger sacred burial grounds of the Menominee Indians of Wisconsin. Scientific staff of both the State of Michigan and federal EPA had significant concerns about the proposed mine with the homey name of the Back Forty Project, and were unsatisfied with responses by Aquila Resources, a Canadian start-up company with no experience operating such a mine.

by Keith Matheny

Detroit Free Press

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

Detroit Free Press

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.

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?