Wisconsin Resources Protection Council

October 23, 2009

Dear WRPC Member,

The long-awaited decision in the contested case hearing on Kennecott’s Eagle Project on the Yellow Dog Plains in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula came in August. Administrative Law Judge Richard Patterson sided with Kennecott and Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) on all issues except the use of Eagle Rock as the portal (entryway) for the mine. In response to the objections of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC), the Huron Mountain Club, the National Wildlife Federation and the Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve, the judge recommended that the portal be moved elsewhere and that the Rock, which is a sacred site for KBIC, not be fenced in and therefore accessible by Native and
non-Native alike. Patterson stated that Kennecott and the MDEQ “did not properly address the impact on the sacred rock outcrop known as Eagle Rock as a place of worship.”

February 27, 2009

Dear WRPC Member,

On February 12, 2009, Rio Tinto announced that Kennecott’s Eagle nickel-copper project on the Upper Peninsula’s Yellow Dog Plains has been “deferred until market conditions recover.” But Jon Cherry, Eagle Project manager, tried to reassure mine supporters that this decision will not affect the company’s immediate plans. “We are continuing to work on our permits, litigation, and engineering design so that when the opportunity presents itself we will be poised to evaluate economic conditions and our next steps. The roughly 25 employees that are part of the Eagle project are integral to the ongoing activities in the U.P. These positions remain unchanged at this time.”

June 12, 2009

Dear WRPC Member,

Critics of Kennecott‟s financially-troubled Eagle nickel-copper project on the Upper Peninsula‟s Yellow Dog Plains were present at Rio Tinto‟s annual meeting in London in April to remind the company of the substantial local opposition to the project. Jon Magnuson, a Lutheran pastor from Marquette, Michigan, presented a document signed by one hundred religious leaders in Marquette, Baraga and Keweenaw counties. “Around the world, there‟s a new unprecedented consciousness rising up about human rights, ethics, and the environment. Rio Tinto and its Kennecott mining operations in Michigan, in its cavalier dismissal of the claims of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, represents a dying world of one dimensional reality, bad science, old colonialism, and unfettered capitalism: a culture of death. We‟ve travelled here with a message from 10,000 citizens and 100 community leaders from 10 faith traditions to say, „No thank you. There‟s a better way.”