Eagle Rock, located on public land recently leased to Rio Tinto/Kennecott for its proposed sulfide mine, is a culturally significant site considered sacred by the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community. (Keweenaw Now file photo © Sue Ellen Kingsley)**MARQUETTE -- The Ingham County Circuit Court has given the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) the go-ahead to issue a surface use lease to Rio Tinto/Kennecott for its proposed Eagle Project mine on the Yellow Dog Plains near Marquette. The proposed lease allows the private, foreign-owned company to fence off 120-acres of public land for over 40 years. The proposed lease area contains the entirety of Eagle Rock, considered a culturally-significant and sacred location to the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community.
While not surprised at the go-ahead, Yellow Dog Summer, a local citizens' group organized to protect the Great Lakes from metallic sulfide mining pollution, opposes this political decision.*
"Whether you’re for the mine project or for protecting the water and public lands, you would have to have been living under a rock for the past five years if you expected the State of Michigan to deny Rio Tinto a permit for its mining plans," said Marquette County resident and Yellow Dog Summer member, Teresa Bertossi.
At the annual meeting of the Friends of the Land of Keweenaw (FOLK) in October 2008 in Baraga, Teresa Bertossi, Yellow Dog Summer member and public outreach coordinator for Save the Wild UP (SWUP), gives an overview of the potential threat to the Lake Superior watershed posed by Kennecott-Rio Tinto's proposed sulfide mine near Marquette. (Keweenaw Now file photo © 2008 Michele Bourdieu)"We’ve guessed, for years, that the state would bend over backwards for anything the company wants to do. A go-ahead for the state to give Rio Tinto the public’s land is widely expected. For the majority of citizens not involved in the legal charade, this should be seen as only a minor setback for efforts to protect the water, hunting and recreational land and public health," Bertossi added.
According to Bertossi, the DNR decision indicates the State of Michigan's confidence in a company that had to sell key assets to China and recently defer the Eagle Project (despite continuing their efforts to obtain permits) because of public opposition, legal delays and metal prices.
"One of Rio Tinto’s largest shareholders, Norway, divested nearly a billion dollars in shares, calling the company 'grossly unethical,'" Bertossi noted. "That Michigan seems to think that this morally bankrupt and debt-laden company can somehow be a good partner and a responsible neighbor comes across as a little naïve and very irresponsible."
Bertossi pointed out that last year DNR director Rebecca Humphries said the surface use lease decision was one she "did not take lightly" and cautioned that "time and history will judge us."
Added Bertossi, "I cannot agree more that, if Rio Tinto can overcome public opposition and major design flaws to open its mine, this is a decision that will haunt citizens of the Great Lakes basin with a legacy of toxic heavy metals, damage to Lake Superior and a steady degradation of the quality of our public lands."
Yellow Dog Summer has been tracking funding and enforcement problems at the state’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). In January, the Governor announced that the DEQ would have to relinquish wetland authority to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), due to a lack of adequate enforcement. Area citizens concerned with a lack of wetland oversight at the proposed Eagle Project mine had previously expressed concerns to the EPA regarding the DEQ’s unwillingness to comply with wetland and Clean Water Act laws.
Recently, the DEQ’s spokesman, Robert McCann said that the agency is ill-equipped to enforce laws protecting water quality in the state: "You can put all the laws on the books you want to, but if you don’t have the resources to properly enforce them, you cannot meet your obligations."
In September 2008, DEQ Director Steven Chester said, "We simply don't have the kind of funding we need to adequately implement the laws we're required to implement."
Bertossi commented, "A state that doesn’t have the will or the ability to implement the very laws it is mandated to enforce should reconsider permitting a toxic metallic sulfide mining complex within the Great Lakes. If the State won’t protect the water and the land for the people, the people will ultimately protect it for themselves."
Editor's Notes:
* Yellow Dog Summer is intended to rally citizens from the Great Lakes Region and, specifically, communities along Lake Superior to stop Kennecott’s Eagle Project on the Yellow Dog Plains. The group will also do what it can to assist citizen movements opposing metallic sulfide mining in other parts of the UP, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Read about their Protect-the-Earth Summit held last summer, August 2008.
** Read more about Eagle Rock.
Guest writer Gabriel Caplett is a Marquette-County-based freelance writer. This article is a press release from Yellow Dog Summer.
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