News > December 24, 2007

Acid-Mining Michigan

Rio Tinto subsidiary Kennecott plans to develop a nickel sulfide mine beneath the fragile Salmon Trout River in the state’s Upper Peninsula

By Chuck Glossenger

The wild and picturesque Salmon Trout River in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is home to the last breeding coaster brook trout on the south shore of Lake Superior. This native fish is awaiting classification to endangered species status by the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

But the Upper Peninsula has also coexisted with the copper and iron mining industries since the late 1800s. And its newest mining suitor, Kennecott Minerals Corporation, wants to build sulfide—or “acid mines”—that could irrevocably harm the local environment and the surrounding Great Lakes ecosystems.

Kennecott, a Utah-based subsidiary of multinational Rio Tinto, has become a Michigan land baron. Since 1994, the corporation has acquired more than 500,000 acres and leased 26 percent of all mineral rights alone in Marquette County, which is in the northern Upper Peninsula.

The company plans to develop a nickel sulfide mine—known as the Eagle Project—beneath the Salmon Trout River. These mines are referred to as “acid mines” because they produce sulfuric acid (battery acid) and release heavy metals—including arsenic, mercury and lead—into watersheds, destroying all life. There has never been a non-polluting sulfide mine near a watershed, according to the late Roscoe Churchill, a longtime Wisconsin anti-mining activist and author.

On its website, Kennecott claims the Eagle Project would have a “relatively small footprint” that would have “less impact to the environment and community.”

Since 2004, Kennecott has successfully lobbied members of Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s administration and lawmakers from eight Upper Peninsula districts—initially to pass new sulfide mining laws, and currently to approve an 8,000-page mining permit application—according to a recent investigation by the Great Lakes Bulletin, a quarterly publication from the Michigan Land Use Institute.

In 1994, John Engler, Michigan’s Republican governor, was at the helm when Kennecott leased the Escanaba River State Forest, where half of the ore body is located. During his tenure, Engler weakened Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and created a “puppet” agency called the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), which put industry on a self-regulating honor system.

In 2003, just after Engler’s departure, the public got wind that Kennecott had discovered a rich ore body. But at the time, Michigan had no underground mining laws, despite its long history of iron oxide mining. The DEQ initiated a fast-track process to grant Kennecott a mining permit and, in 2004, invited a group of Michigan business interests—including Kennecott Minerals Project Manager Jon Cherry—and local environmental groups to a “Mining Work Group.”

At the first meeting, the DEQ announced that there would be no discussion about a “Wisconsin moratorium”-type mining law—a defeat for mining opponents. In 1997, voters in neighboring Wisconsin, facing parent company Rio Tinto’s attempt to build a sulfide mine, had inserted a stipulation into their new mining laws requiring mining applicants to provide an example of a sulfide mine that, in 10 years, operated and closed without polluting the area’s water. No mining company has entered Wisconsin since.

But the DEQ allowed Kennecott to do its own testing for the permit, despite 3,000 signatures from citizens requesting that the U.S. Geological Survey do it instead. The agency is considered the expert in hydrology testing. The DEQ also hired the HCItasca Consulting Group to review Kennecott data, even though Itasca’s client list includes Rio Tinto.

Opponents to the Eagle Project nickel sulfide mine include former Republican Gov. William Milliken, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), the Huron Mountain Club, the Keweenau Bay Indian Community (a band of Lake Superior Ojibiwa), local and national environmental and faith-based groups.

Over the course of this four-year battle, they have fought not only a corporate “green-wash campaign” by Kennecott, but also a DEQ agency that has been lax on looking at critical scientific data concerning the dangers of sulfide mining.

Mining opponents have provided more than 10,000 signatures to Granholm requesting a denial of Kennecott’s permit, and 117 local doctors have also signed a request for denial. Yet the DEQ has granted Kennecott preliminary approval with a final announcement due sometime this winter. Counter-lawsuits could follow.

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• Reader Comments

  You can’t have it both ways.  While the mining project probably would, in fact, have a detrimental effect on the environment, what is the cost of NOT approving the project?

  1) An already scare resource (nickel) is left in the ground.  While the price of nickel has tripled in the past 5 years, mostly due to its use in rechargeable batteries, it will sit under tons of earth, useless.  The auto industry and others need access to large quantities of cheap nickel in order to fulfill the demands of price-wary and environmentally conscious consumers. 

  2) Michigan miners remain unemployed.  With the highest unemployment rate in the country, Michigan cannot afford to stifle any industry, including probable polluters.  Without these and other less-than-desirable jobs, people are flocking out of Michigan to states that don’t deny themselves their own resources.  “Dirty” industries as well are leaving Michigan in droves to relocate to other less stringent locales.  This “not in my backyard” mentality will turn Michigan into a ghost state.  A savvy environmentalist should instead welcome industries to Michigan, instead of forcing them overseas where they would have zero government oversight and have a far greater environmental impact. 

  Unfortunately, this scenario has played out all over the country, and emotions usually trump logic.  People don’t relize that any progress has a cost.  There will definitely be some losers if this mining project is allowed to proceed, but the negative effects will be greater if it is blocked.

  Posted by LeeJ on Dec 26, 2007 at 8:40 AM

  LeeJ...As I’m from Michigan, maybe you need correction about a few things.

  There really aren’t any Michigan miners, the biggest mining done in Michigan was of course copper in the UP and that was long ago shut down due to cheaper mining in other countries, outsourced sort of. We do have other mining, just not as huge mega-industries. But not too many people really want to be miners these days anywhere in the US. Even back in the old cooper days in MI, it was done by immigrants and the no-other-choicers.

  People are not leaving MI in droves, at best it could be called a trickle. I can tell you the traffic in no way has let up.

  There is another industry in the UP that has gained the upper hand, recreation, and people that live up there have come to like that industry which is why there is opposition. The UP is proud of its’ wilderness, it’s why they live there in the first place, so recreation allows the wilderness to be a positive to be exploited just enough for them to continue to have wilderness close at hand. They also have long memories, mining abandoned them before (leaving behind a polluted legacy), why trust it again.

  We will stifle any industry we don’t want, thank you. Why is a slight population drop a bad thing anyway? Some of the most interesting states have very low populations. It’s crowded enough in Michigan (8th largest state in pop.) and I for one won’t lament a little more elbow room. But to think that a small blip in a long time line of growth is some huge concern is misguided. Michigan has something that few states can brag and probably in the coming years will be very valuable, water.

  When the desert Southwest finally realizes that their population growth is unsustainable due to water, (quality, quantity, affordability) they will have to go somewhere. Businesses will go elsewhere and Michigan will be talking about their water. So, people will be back some day and it will be more crowded than it is today with more malls, auto lots, and WalMarts. As if the last mega-mall opened just in time for the holidays wasn’t enough, even lowered population doesn’t stop them, alas.

  As to dirty industries leaving Michigan, there’s one we can’t get rid of, landfills. We’ve become an importer of trash from other states and Canada. It turns out we can’t deny Canada the right to send their trash to us because of NAFTA rules, we tried. So, we are trying a different tact, regulating the heck out of it. For instance more inspections for things like used medical needles that fell out of a Canadian truck a few years back. What galls us is that out-of-state landfill businesses make all these contracts and dump it our backyard, free enterprise you know.

  There is a lesson about landfills applied to mining, once an industry gets into your state it can be hard to escort them out. And in the case of landfills in Michigan, our backyard is serving as everyones backyard. Mi casa is your caca.

  But hey, you’re all for criticizing “not-in-my-backyarders” and here in Michigan we’ve been doing our share of putting it in our backyards...your turn, the garbage is all yours. I’d be willing to trade nickels for needles, as long as the mining companies clean as they operate and finally a big clean before they leave. But that’s not how it works in the real world, too many mining companies dissolve to avoid cleaning up.

  Posted by Jon B on Dec 28, 2007 at 7:24 AM

  LeeJ

  A big industry in Michigan linked to the environment is hunting. We are one of the top states for hunting and fishing which encourages land owners to keep it wild. Many towns up north are perfectly happy with keeping it simple, the land, the tourism and aren’t concerned with becoming rich cities. They are realists, they don’t believe in pie-in-the-sky promises or short term profit over long term quality of life. That’s the type of conservatism that I can believe in.

  Now, I’m not a hunter, but I’d much rather have a short time period of drunks culling deer herds than day after day worries of mines polluting the environment which possible could kill humans, who may have in fact predicted the pollution.

  As to the availability of nickel. Well, at some price the nickel WILL remain in the ground, that’s macro-economics. So, if it happens to be Michigan nickel that happens to be the last not to be mined, good. We’ve ensured the protection of other industries, such as recreation and as a bonus, if the price of nickel again allows for mining it...Michigan will be totally in the drivers seat with the last of the nickel. We would call the shots, and it would be mined our way or no way.

  Think longer term. We always hear this talk about worrying about our children and children’s children future. “Grandkids!! I’m saving the nickel until you can make plentiful pretty pennies off of it and even better...those pennies from nickels will be clean as a brass whistle, no pollution because we had hand.

  You know, here’s an idea. Since you seem to think Michigan losing population is a bad thing, move here and help us protect our environment and cache that nickel for the future price gouging we could extort. We have plenty of good clean water, by the way.

  Posted by Jon B on Dec 28, 2007 at 8:09 AM

  Jon B-

  Great post, and you make some very strong points.  I, too, am from Michigan, although from Lansing, and I left about 10 years ago to join the military.  I have been back on leave at least every year, and things are not quite so rosy down south. 

  While I agree with you that things will eventually turn around for Michigan, the question is how soon.  Traffic problems aside, the unemployment is the highest in the nation.  You may be thinking “let them move, and we’ll be left with only the determined people who stick it out”.  You may in fact be left with the people who can’t afford to move, and the ones without skills to relocate.  There is no where left for these people to go except on welfare.  And with a legislature that can’t seem to cut spending, that’s exactly what they’ll get.  And how is it paid for?  Tax hikes on business like we just saw recently.  Which in turn makes it less attractive to new businesses.  It’s a vicious cycle that has to be stopped. 

  I agree that nature itself is a resource to be preserved.  But that has to be balanced with the benefits that mining would bring to Michigan.  Like it or not, there are many people who have no desire or interest in going to college.  They need jobs, too.  But I also can understand your concern about companies not cleaning up.  Perhaps some “security deposit” arrangement can be made? 

  I also trust in technology.  What was impossible to clean up 40 years ago can now be done with ease.  Wherever there has been a need, science has found the answer.  I think of landfills as future golf courses or ski slopes.  With modern protective barriers and pumping systems, trash is not half as dirty as it used to be. 

  You failed to address my first point about progress.  There is a reason that nickel is in such high demand.  While the usage in rechargeable batteries is not quite as high as I thought, the metal is used in many high tech fields, as well as in stainless steel. 

  Overall, I think you are right on a lot of points.  I mainly was responding to the tone of the article, which suggests that only direct environmental factors should be considered.  I honestly could care less about the Breeding Coaster Brook Trout.  I currently live near Atlanta, which recently suffered a drought due largely to the government releasing extra water from dams to save Florida mussels.  What may seem like a good idea at the time can have far reaching consequences, and I think many times people shoot themselves in the foot trying to do what’s right without taking everything into account.

  Posted by LeeJ on Dec 28, 2007 at 8:44 AM

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Also by Chuck Glossenger

• Acid-Mining Michigan
  Rio Tinto subsidiary Kennecott plans to develop a nickel sulfide mine beneath the fragile Salmon Trout River in the state's Upper Peninsula