Wisconsin Resources Protection Council

To: Committee on Michigan’s Mining Future

From: Al Gedicks, Wisconsin Resources Protection Council

Re: Climate Change and Mine Waste Disposal

Climate Change Poses a Risk to Mining Infrastructure

The committee recognizes that “climate change increases the risk of hazardous events” that can damage mining infrastructure. Apart from the mine itself, the largest mining infrastructure on the surface are the contact water basin and the tailings impoundment. Tailings storage facilities are some of the largest human made structures on earth ( Mine Tailings Storage Is No Accident. United Nations Environmental Programme, 2017).

by Al Gedicks
Wisconsin Resources Protection Council

Aquila’s Communications Manager Dan Blondeau has claimed that the tailings management facility at the Back Forty is not a traditional upstream raised tailings dam design and that it is “significantly different” from the failed Brumadinho tailings dam in Brazil. Blondeau says that “Our facility was designed to mitigate the known risks of common upstream raised tailings facilities.”

by Al Gedicks
Wisconsin Resources Protection Council
agedicks@eagle.uwlax.edu

Aquila’s “Upstream” dam construction method poses unacceptable risks to downstream communities and the Menominee River

The proposed Back Forty tailings waste storage uses the upstream dam construction method.

by Al Gedicks
Wisconsin Resources Protection Council
agedicks@eagle.uwlax.edu

Tailings Dams Are the Biggest Environmental Disaster Threat of Modern Mining

My main concern with the amended permit application is with the expansion of the Tailings Management Facility which largely accounts for the mine’s footprint expanding by some 200 acres.