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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Minnesota should require mining companies to prove it first

Nancy Jo Tubbs
Posted 8/9/12

Magical thinking is common and often harmless. We religiously wear our lucky fishing hat out on the walleye chop and we knock on wood to make our words come true. Hotels “disappear” the 13th …

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Minnesota should require mining companies to prove it first

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Magical thinking is common and often harmless. We religiously wear our lucky fishing hat out on the walleye chop and we knock on wood to make our words come true. Hotels “disappear” the 13th floor from their high-rises because superstitious people don’t want to stay there.

Clutching the rabbit’s foot in our pocket can calm us down, make us more confident and thereby help us pass a math test—if we’ve done our homework and studied for the exam. But overconfidence, based on magical thinking instead of studying, leaves us just guessing at the answers and relying on dumb luck.

I’ve been wondering lately, if folks who are stealing the “Clean Water Supports Us” signs from Ely area yards believe that doing so will “disappear” the threat of copper mining and acid drainage into our rivers and lakes. It’s magical thinking of a particularly dangerous kind, and a little study of the subject, instead, could save us from failing a test that will likely have disastrous consequences.

In Minnesota the high risk of sulfuric acid drainage from Duluth Metal’s proposed underground mine near Birch Lake southwest of Ely threatens the nearby Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. PolyMet’s proposed mining operations between Babbitt and Hoyt Lakes risk acid drainage into the Partridge and St. Louis Rivers and into Lake Superior.

Wisconsin is the poster-child for study and caution with its “Prove it First” law, which requires companies to pass a test before the state permits them to mine new sulfide ore bodies. They need to show an example of a place where a hard-rock sulfide mine in the U.S. or Canada has been able to prevent pollution during and after mining. The law has made permitting such a mine there “an impossibility” according to North American Mining.

The 1998 law came about after a passionate sport-fisherman, Indian and environmental alliance worked to defeat a proposed metallic sulfide mine that was backed by the U.S and foreign mining interests of Exxon, Rio Algom of Canada and the Australian company, BHP Billiton.

This year more than a million acres of federal land around the Grand Canyon were protected from mining pollution when a 20-year moratorium on new hard rock mines went into effect there. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told the National Geographic Society that more than four million visitors to the scenic area every year bring in $3.5 billion in revenue, and that 25 million people in four states rely on the Colorado River watershed for irrigation and drinking water. Tourism jobs and the value of outdoor recreation are worth more than mining revenue and economic development in the area, Salazar said.

Other states and scenic and tourism areas are protecting their land from the dire consequences of hard-rock mining, so why should Minnesota consider taking on such a risk?

In Minnesota, PolyMet’s draft Environmental Impact Statement said, “Water leaching from the waste rock piles is expected to be contaminated for up to 2,000 years,“ and added that the West Mine Pit will overflow at Mine Year 65 (45 years after the expected closure of the mine), contaminating the adjacent Partridge River with sulfates and heavy metals.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ranked the PolyMet sulfide-mining proposal as “Environmentally Unsatisfactory (and) Inadequate” and said, “The project will result in unacceptable long-term water quality impacts … increasing mercury loadings into the Lake Superior watershed.”

Clean-up of such toxic overflow, if it is even possible, has proven expensive for the public. The EPA puts a $20 billion price tag on restoration for mine sites already abandoned by mining companies in the U.S. In Montana, New Mexico and Nevada, runoff from sulfide mining has left watersheds contaminated with millions of dollars worth of clean up, with the bill presented to taxpayers. The Zortman Landusky Mine in Montana, alone, will tax the state $33 million in reclamation costs.

It is magical thinking to ignore the fact that sulfide mining has what experts call “a near-perfect” track record of creating pollution and that the resulting damage to watersheds is extremely difficult and expensive to fix. In Wisconsin, mining companies are still unable to name a sulfide mine that has not polluted.

Magical thinking is no substitute for proper caution and preparation. Wearing our lucky walleye hat is a harmless exercise in optimism. Swiping a “Clean water supports us sign” is an indicator of magical thinking with much more serious consequences. Shouldn’t we, like Wisconsin, make the mining companies find somewhere else to “prove it first?”