A feckless council

The remarkable about-face by the Ely City Council last week was embarrassing, and not just because of the head-in-the-sand mentality it represents. The city council has done this before, most prominently with an anti-Iraq war resolution that the council passed back in 2003, an act that prompted an explosion of opposition that drew national attention and ultimately prompted the council to reverse itself.
In retrospect, it’s clear that the council had gotten it right the first time. The Iraq War, as early opponents had predicted, turned into a quagmire that cost the U.S. trillions of dollars and damaged our international standing. But at the time, the whole episode just made the council look feckless.
This latest permutation adds a dose of hypocrisy to the rancid brew. It all started with the kind of request that city councils receive all the time, a letter of support for a state grant application from a local organization, in this case the White Iron Chain of Lakes Association, or WICOLA. The group is hoping to advance a promising technology, developed by Babbitt-based Clearwater Biologics, that can address mining-related sulfate pollution in surface waters for far less than the cost of reverse osmosis, which is currently considered by some as the only way to effectively address the problem.
So, who wouldn’t support more affordable methods to improve water quality? It seemed a no-brainer, which is apparently why the council gave the proposal its initial endorsement back in February.
But the politics of mining are never far removed from the workings of local government in our region, and this was no exception. Looking for solutions to mining pollution, after all, requires acknowledging that the pollution exists, which is contrary to the current public relations push coming from the industry.
Adding insult was a fact sheet, produced by the Northern Lakes Scientific Advisory Panel, which described how sulfate discharges from the Peter Mitchell pit were impacting lakes downstream, including within the Boundary Waters. That’s in addition to a map showing the pathway of pollution from mines north of Virginia, which are raising sulfate levels as far away as Voyageurs National Park.
Some on the council seemed to suggest such maps were politically motivated, which is a far less relevant issue than the matter of their accuracy. We’ve seen the data that such maps and other graphics included with the grant request are based upon, and they coincide with the test results.
We know from numerous scientific studies that sulfate pollution can increase the mobilization of mercury into the aquatic food chain. We also know that sulfate discharges can result in a decline in wild rice. These aren’t politically motivated facts so much as inconvenient ones, at least for those who would prefer we keep our heads firmly buried in the sand on the issue of mining-related pollution.
Yet, advocating for technologies that could help to affordably reduce the pollution problem isn’t anti-mining, it’s pro-water quality, which is a position most mining supporters routinely claim to support. If there’s one area where the two sides could come together, you might think this would be it.
Things are never that simple, of course. Behind the scenes, the mining industry appears more than content to keep affordable sulfate-reducing technologies off in the future. The Clean Water Act, after all, provides exemptions from various rules in cases where the only available technology is deemed uneconomical. Treating the sulfate problem currently plaguing the taconite industry could costs billions of dollars to address through reverse osmosis, a process that has its own environmental issues. As long as the industry can claim reverse osmosis is the only available technology, they can pretty much hold off regulators. Sure, U.S. Steel has dabbled with the Natural Resources Research Institute to advance a similar approach, but call us skeptical. They’ve been “studying” solutions for years, it seems mostly for the purpose of delay.
That’s cynical, but not hypocritical, like some on the Ely council. In arguing to rescind the council’s earlier decision to support WICOLA’s grant request to the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources, some councilors suggested it was inappropriate to have given support for the request in the first place since the White Iron chain is located just over the line in Lake County rather than St. Louis.
It was a slender reed to be sure, but it vanished entirely when the council opted to not just rescind its letter of support but take the almost unprecedented step of drafting a letter of opposition to the request. Apparently, meddling in Lake County matters is just fine as long as it’s serving the interests of the mining industry.
Given the council’s history on the subject, their action may not be surprising. The way it was handled, however, was certainly disappointing.