August 2020 Newsletter
August 20, 2020
Dear WRPC Member and Friends of the Menominee River,
Aquila Resources continues to provide misleading and inaccurate information about the status of the Back Forty project in its most recent financial report. The company’s June 2020 report states, “The Company has received the four primary permits required to commence construction and operations at Back Forty.”
Aquila has no Back Forty Dam Permit
However, the company has not yet submitted a revised Dam Safety Permit application since Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) rejected Aquila’s original application as incomplete and requested additional information. According to EGLE, “Aquila is not authorized to begin construction of the mine and will not be able to proceed until all permits, including the Dam Safety Permit have been approved by EGLE.”
The Back Forty tailings dam, designed to store toxic mine waste, may be the most controversial permit in light of the unprecedented flooding after two dams collapsed in Midland, Michigan, following record rainfall in May. Governor Whitmer noted that the flood severity was on the order of a 500-year storm event.
The Edenville and Sanford dams that failed were water-retention dams made of concrete and steel. In contrast, the upstream dam design proposed for the Back Forty tailings dam is made of crushed waste rock and overburden soil. If the more stable water-retention dams were unable to withstand a 500-year storm event, how could Aquila’s far less stable Back Forty tailings dam possibly withstand such a challenge?
The likelihood of intense storms is rising rapidly in the Midwest, posing a direct threat to tailings dams. According to David R. Easterling, director of the U.S. National Climate Assessment: “Most current infrastructure, such as dams and bridges, was designed based on rainfall values from the mid-to-late-20th century and was not built to withstand the more frequent extreme rains identified by the new research.”
The Menominee River is an Endangered River
In April 2020, American Rivers, a national conservation group, named the Menominee River one of the 10 most endangered rivers in America, citing the threat from the Back Forty’s proposed sulfide mine on the banks of the river. This is the second time in four years that the river has made the endangered list. American Rivers urges everyone to tell EGLE to deny the permit for the Back Forty project. Go to: https://endangeredrivers.americanrivers.org/menominee-river
The Coalition to SAVE the Menominee River requests EGLE to prohibit the upstream dam design at the Back Forty project
In a June 1, 2020 letter to Luke Trumble, EGLE’s dam safety expert, the Coalition made the following request: “In light of the recent dam failures and the well-documented threat of failure for the Back Forty tailings dam in an area of heavy rainfall, we are asking EGLE to exercise your authority to prohibit the upstream dam construction design for the proposed Back Forty tailings dam. If EGLE fails to prohibit a dam design that has already been banned in Brazil, Chile, Peru and Ecuador as an inherently risky technology, the communities downstream from the Back Forty tailings dam can only interpret this decision as placing Aquila’s corporate profits over public health, safety and clean drinking water.”
You can download the entire letter here:
Letter to Michigan DEQ regarding the Back Forty mine project and dam safety
EGLE has not yet responded to the Coalition’s letter. Meanwhile, Aquila is predicting the approval of a Dam Safety Permit in 2021. However, any review of Aquila’s proposed tailings dam must confront the issue of whether current industry standards adequately protect communities and ecosystems from the kind of catastrophic failures seen in Brumadinho, Brazil in 2019 and at Mount Polley in British Columbia, Canada in 2014.
“Safety First”: New Report Outlines Guidelines to End Mine Waste Disasters
An international group of 142 scientists, community groups and environmental organizations has just published a set of 16 guidelines for the safer storage of mine waste in tailing dams. Among the top recommendations is that tailings facilities must be built and managed only with community consent, respecting the human rights and the rights of Indigenous Peoples, and adopting the best available technologies and practices. Neither Aquila nor EGLE have obtained the consent of either the Menominee Tribe or local citizens for the proposed Back Forty tailings dam. You can download the full report here: https://earthworks.org/media-releases/safety-first-new-report-outlines-guidelines-to-end-mine-waste-disasters/
Why has EGLE not required full disclosure and analysis of Aquila’s underground mining plans in its review of the Back Forty Mining Permit Amendment Application (MPAA)?
Aquila’s mine permit makes no mention of underground mining. Yet the company’s Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) of August 2020 states that underground development will start in Year 5 and will continue to Year 11. Without this information, it is impossible to evaluate the impact of additional mine waste being dumped into a tailings dam that was not designed to handle mine waste from an underground mine. The Part 632 Mine Permit application requires the evaluation of cumulative impacts from proposed mining activities, including present and reasonably forseeable future activities.
The Minnesota Court of Appeals has recently rejected a permit for PolyMet Mining Company’s proposed sulfide mine because the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency failed to address evidence that the company was planning a mine nearly four times larger than the operation covered in the permit. Michigan regulators should be held accountable if they fail to take Aquila’s mine expansion plans into account when they evaluate the Dam Safety Permit application.
Stay tuned, Al Gedicks, Executive Secretary
