Back Forty Mine ‘threatens our freedoms’ and water
July 10, 2019
Eagle Herald
Dear Editor,
While sitting at my desk this Fourth of July, I wonder how and why we, in the United States of America, in particular both the individual states of Wisconsin and Michigan, have slid back so far as to even give thought to Canada, a former counter-part of the British United Kingdom, invade our borders and threaten our freedoms, including fear of having our water and air resources destroyed — not with bombs or bullets, but with more devastating materials such as lead, sulfuric acid, cyanide and other extremely hazardous toxic chemicals.
Michigan permit people are ignoring the most obvious threat to the entire area, including the land, people, further habitation of miles of prime recreational area, the hundreds of square miles of the areas watershed: Shakey Lakes and Shakey Lakes Park, the Shakey River tributary, the entire Menominee River, the Menominee River Basin, the Bay of Green Bay and Lake Michigan itself where the entire Midwest population gets their drinking water. Aquila’s irresponsible engineering practices including the tailings dam they selected, showed to the EagleHerald readers in a full-page ad a few weeks ago which has already proven to be a complete failure and determined by the country of Brazil to be a disaster for people within thousands of square miles of the inhabited property. Common sense, in my opinion, should condemn any further consideration of a mining permit allowing massive sulfide volcanic ore mining and minerals processing at this or any Michigan site by anyone.
In my opinion, this is about as logical as the entire MDEQ Department, now renamed and reorganized as the Michigan Department of Environmental Great Lakes and Energy shortened to “EGLE” seeking to book passage on the Titanic.
Lansing people, are we too proud to learn from the mistakes of others? Or are we too stupid or are paid too much by irresponsible special interests to follow the will and best interests of the people? This comment is not made exclusively for John Nygren (R-Marinette), but the entire current political system of party line only politics and if permitted to continue without current very obvious necessary corrections can do nothing but lead to dividing the country simultaneously into several different disastrous directions.
William Boerner
Marinette