Wisconsin Resources Protection Council

May 2, 2013

Dear WRPC Member,

Gogebic Taconite and their supporters in the legislature succeeded in passing the Bad River Watershed Destruction Act but they are losing the battle for public acceptance of mountaintop removal mining in the Penokee Hills. The financial interests behind the legislation, including the Cline Group and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, contributed $15.6 million to the Republican-controlled legislature and GOP Governor Scott Walker between 2010 and June 2012, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. They also found that mining deregulation interests outspent opponents of mining deregulation by 610 to 1.

Tribal leaders, environmentalists and local officials have united to fight a massive mine which could be toxic to a water-rich area known as “Wisconsin’s Everglades.”

The highly unpopular iron mine giveaway bill is not only a major rollback of environmentally protective mining laws, it is also a well-funded mining industry assault on the grass-roots environmental, sport fishing and tribal movement that mobilized tens of thousands of Wisconsin citizens to oppose Exxon’s destructive Crandon mine at the headwaters of the Wolf River and enact Wisconsin’s landmark “Prove It First” Mining Moratorium Law in 1998.

by Eric Hansen

Take a moment to think about northern Wisconsin’s Penokee Hills. Picture the vast swath of forested ridges, the shady glens where pristine water flows from headwaters springs. . . .

Now, imagine the Penokee’s ridgeline, and the sparkling water of its trout streams, turned into an industrial sacrifice zone – on a scale that is almost beyond belief.

Read the rest of Eric Hansen’s article at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

By Al Gedicks and Dave Blouin

Duluth News Tribune

How is it possible that the Wisconsin legislature is ready to pass legislation to create fast-tracked, less-protective ferrous (iron) mining laws for what promises be the largest open-pit iron mine in the world with no scientific evidence to justify treating iron mining differently than other metallic mining?

If Gogebic Taconite proceeds with a proposal, its first phase of mining alone would be larger than the acknowledged largest iron mine in the world, the Hull Rust Mahoning Mine in Hibbing. The taconite ore body in northern Wisconsin is known to run 22 miles, meaning the expansion of mining after phase one could result in an even larger mine with more potential to destroy rivers, streams, wetlands and groundwater.

The main proponents of an iron mining bill in Wisconsin — including Gogebic Taconite, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and the Wisconsin Mining Association — have misled legislators with claims that the iron ore in Ashland and Iron counties is more environmentally safe compared to metallic sulfide mining and thus requires separate regulations.

Al Gedicks and Dave Blouin

Isthmus, January 22, 2013

Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC) should be paying Isthmus contributor Larry Kaufmann for his able job of parroting their misleading talking points on the new mining bill introduced last week by GOP mining cheerleaders. The “new” version of AB 426, the Strip Mine Giveaway Bill (AB 1/SB 1), is essentially the same bill from last session.

Madison–The Sierra Club, Wisconsin Resources Protection Council and over 75 other organizations, including Trout Unlimited, the Wisconsin Association of Lakes, the Izaak Walton League of Wisconsin, the River Alliance of Wisconsin, the Penokee Hills Education Project, the Mining Impact Coalition of Wisconsin, Clean Wisconsin, the Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters and many more statewide, regional and national groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council released an open letter urging Wisconsin legislators to reject changes to Wisconsin’s mining safeguards.

In an address to the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce’s“State of Wisconsin Business” gathering last Wednesday, Scott Walker said his top priority for the next legislative session that begins in January is to pass acontroversial iron mining billdrafted by WMC and lawyers for the Gogebic Taconite mining company that passed the assembly but failed in the senate earlier this year when Republican Senator Dale Schultz voted against it.

January 11, 2012

Dear WRPC Member,

Despite efforts to discourage people from northern Wisconsin from attending a public hearing on the Iron Mining bill (AB 426) by holding the hearing in Milwaukee, many northern residents got in their cars or caught a bus at 5am to make the long trip to testify at the hearing. Opponents of this wholesale gutting of Wisconsin’s mining regulatory framework outnumbered supporters 2 to 1!