Wisconsin Resources Protection Council

August 20, 2019

Eagle Herald

Dear Editor,

The Coalition to SAVE the Menominee River Inc. filed suit in Michigan State Court contesting the signing of the Wetlands Permit which contains 28 pages of single-spaced conditions to be met by Aquila before the permit is valid. The court case is not over, so no decision has been made by Judge Pulter. Yet, Aquila has chosen to lie in their advertising on TV-6, Marquette; TV-5, Green Bay; and TV-11, Green Bay, telling the public they have all the permits and will be mining in 2020. This information is not true.

January 23, 2019

Dear WRPC Member and Friends of the Menominee River,

Aquila’s “Final Permit” isn’t Final at all

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) issued the “final permit” needed for Aquila’s Back Forty open pit mine in June 2018. Aquila spokesperson Dan Blondeau said the decision was “a major milestone” for the project that would allow the project to move forward.

However, instead of moving forward, the DEQ has determined that because the project footprint has expanded by 200 acres, including the enlargement of the tailings and waste rock structures, Aquila is required to submit a Mining Permit Amendment Application (MPAA) and an associated Environmental Impact Assessment Amendment (EIAA). The timing of this announcement and the difficulty of accessing the 904 pages of the application have created serious obstacles for citizens, tribal members and environmental groups wishing to participate in the review and public comment on Aquila’s latest mine plan.

December 21, 2016

Dear WRPC Member and Friends of the Menominee River,

The much-anticipated final mining permit decision on Aquila’s Back Forty mine proposal that was supposed to be announced by December 1, 2016 came and went. Instead, the Michigan Dept. of Environmental Quality (DEQ) asked Aquila for a delay until December 29 “to coordinate the final decisions” on the mine, air and water permits. The DEQ had already announced that it was going to approve the mine permit over the Labor Day weekend. Why the sudden delay?

Lee Bergquist, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

September 19, 2016

As an open pit mine planned along the Menominee River in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula nears final regulatory approval, opponents are raising worries about potential environmental harm and the threat of the project on cultural artifacts of Wisconsin’s Menominee tribe.

July 22, 2016 / TomBoswellBlog

THIS IS THE LAST IN A SERIES OF EIGHT POSTS WHICH TOGETHER COMPRISE AN IN-DEPTH ARTICLE CONCERNING A PROPOSED IRON ORE MINE IN THE PENOKEE HILLS OF NORTHERN WISCONSIN AND THE WIDESPREAD RESISTANCE TO THE PROJECT.

One irony about the new mining regulations the Wisconsin State Legislature passed and Governor Walker signed is that, rather than expediting and simplifying the permitting process for a mining company, as intended, they actually slow down the process and may have ultimately eliminated a meaningful regulatory role for the State.

by Al Gedicks (originally published by Z Magazine)

Two years after Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed a controversial Iron Mining Law designed to speed up permitting for a giant open pit iron mine in the Penokee Hills above Lake Superior, Gogebic Taconite (GTac), president Bill Williams pulled the plug on the mine because the project was not feasible. He cited the unexpected extensive wetlands at the mine site and the uncertainty about whether the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would veto the company’s mine plan, as the EPA had recommended in the case of the Pebble gold and copper mine in Alaska. The EPA said that mine would do irreversible damage to one of the world’s last intact salmon ecosystems of Bristol Bay, Alaska. However, a federal judge has temporarily halted any EPA action pending further legal argument (see “Militarized Mining in Wisconsin,” Z Magazine, October 2013).

Six Wisconsin Ojibwe tribes, led by the Bad River band, asked the EPA to conduct a similar independent review of the environmental effects of GTac’s proposed mine on federally-protected treaty rights and resources before the plan is reviewed by state regulators and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But the EPA expressly stated that it would not be taking action on the GTac project as it had done in the case of the Pebble mine (“EPA disputes Gogebic fears about mine,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 3/7/2015).

Don’t believe Bill Williams or Sen. Tom Tiffany. It wasn’t the EPA but the company’s lack of homework that killed this project.

Sen. Tom Tiffany asserts that mining can be done in an environmentally-safe manner and blames the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for Gogebic Taconite, or GTac, pulling the plug on its proposed iron mine upstream from Lake Superior. This interpretation is misleading on several counts.

Tiffany asserts that “iron mining is a more benign process than sulfide mining” ignoring the fact that every operating taconite (low-grade iron ore) mine and mill in Minnesota and Michigan are recent chronic polluters, according to a 2012 study by the Sierra Club.

March 11, 2015

Dear WRPC Member,

Gogebic Taconite’s (GTac’s) proposed mountaintop removal iron mine in the Penokee Hills is dead. On February 28, GTac president Bill Williams announced it was closing its office in Hurley because the project was not feasible, citing the extensive wetlands at the mine site and the uncertainty about whether the mine would be permitted.

On Aug. 4, more than a billion gallons of mining waste spilled into rivers and creeks from a tailings pond at Imperial Metals’ Mount Polley gold and copper mine at the headwaters of the Fraser River watershed in the interior of British Columbia. Indigenous First Nations peoples mostly populate this area. According to the Canadian Broadcasting Co., the volume of the spill would fill 2,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. It is the largest mining disaster in Canadian history.

August 13, 2014

Dear WRPC Member,

Six Ojibwe Indian bands, led by Bad River, have asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to evaluate the environmental effects of Gogebic Taconite’s proposed iron ore mine in northern Wisconsin before the plan is reviewed by state regulators and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Under Section 404 (c) of the Clean Water Act the EPA can initiate a public process to protect treaty rights, aquatic resources, fisheries, wildlife, subsistence and public uses in the Bad River Watershed and western Lake Superior from metallic mining.