Wisconsin Resources Protection Council

by Al Gedicks

ZMagazine

April 25, 2015

The environmental devastation from past and ongoing gold mining operations in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras has provoked a formidable Salvadoran social movement that has been educating and organizing communities for a total ban against metallic mining in El Salvador. In response, companies like Canada’s Pacific Rim and Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based Commerce Group have filed multi-million dollar lawsuits against the Salvadoran government trying to force the country into submission—and to get out of paying for environmental damage they have already caused.

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.

One year ago Monday, Gov. Scott Walker signed into law Act 1, the ferrous mining bill that was written by Gogebic Taconite (GTac) and aided by over $1 million in political contributions to Republican legislators.

by Al Gedicks

Z Magazine, vol. 26, no. 10 (October 2013)

Armed guards protecting extractive resource operations is not an uncommon sight in Central and South American countries where there is growing community resistance to ecologically destructive mining and oil projects. As early as 2008 the United Nations documented “an emerging trend in Latin America but also in other regions of the world indicates situations of private security companies protecting transnational extractive corporations whose employees are often involved in suppressing legitimate social protest of communities and human rights and environmental organizations where these corporations operate.” (Human Rights Council, Report of the Working Group on the use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the right of people to self-determination).

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.”

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.

by Al Gedicks

Z Magazine, February 2013

Prior to investing in new resource colonies, multinational mining corporations frequently change a country’s mining laws to remove restrictions on foreign ownership, reduce taxes, ease environmental protections and guarantee access to water supplies needed for mining. During the 1990s, under pressure from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, over 90 states in the Global South changed their mining laws to attract foreign mining investment. These neocolonial measures, often called “neoliberal reforms,” are now being used to open up new mining projects in the Lake Superior region of Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota.