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.
Aug
17
2012
August 16, 2012
Dear WRPC Member,
On July 24, 2012 a federal court ruled that the Flambeau Mining Company, a subsidiary of Kennecott/Rio Tinto, violated the Clean Water Act on multiple occasions by allowing pollution from its Flambeau Mine site, near Ladysmith, to enter the Flambeau River and a nearby tributary.
The lawsuit against Flambeau Mining Company (FMC) was filed last year by the Wisconsin Resources Protection Council, the Center for Biological Diversity and Laura Gauger. Monitoring data from the mining company and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources showed that copper levels in the discharges from a detention basin exceeded Wisconsin’s acute toxicity criterion set to protect fish and other aquatic species, sometimes by several times.
Jul
24
2012
by Al Gedicks
Gov. Scott Walker has made mining reform legislation his top post-recall agenda item. “We should be able to lead the world in safe and environmentally sound mining,” he said recently.
If this is the goal, he is proceeding in the wrong direction.
Walker has asked Tim Sullivan, president of the Wisconsin Mining Association, to bring together mining experts from around the world to compare Wisconsin’s mining regulatory framework with our neighbors in Michigan and Minnesota. Sullivan has hired Behre Dolbear, a global mining consulting firm that describes itself on its website as a “businessman’s consultant.”
The not so-hidden agenda of this effort is to accommodate Gogebic Taconite’s demand that Wisconsin speed up the permitting process and eliminate environmental rules that would have made it difficult for GTac to obtain a mine permit for the Penokee Hills open pit iron mine in Iron and Ashland counties.
May
08
2012
May 4, 2012
Dear WRPC Member,
Gogebic Taconite (GTac) may have temporarily abandoned its proposed open pit iron mine in the Penokee Hills but company spokesman Bob Seitz says they still want Wisconsin’s mining law changed. Efforts are already under way to develop a new “consensus” on mine legislation that failed to pass the Senate in the last session.
Jan
11
2012
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!
Jun
07
2011
Originally published by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
by Al Gedicks
May 19, 2011
Should the state’s regulatory authority over the metallic mine permitting process be dramatically reduced to accommodate the wishes of a mining company to receive a permit in record time? This is not a hypothetical question.
Gogebic Taconite (GTAC) has met with several legislators about its proposed open pit iron ore (taconite) mine along the border of Ashland and Iron counties to push legislation that would drastically speed up the mine permitting process.
