The Political Project of MCRC v. EPA, Revisited

By Louis V. Galdieri*
Posted June 18, 2016, on Louis V. Galdieri's blog
Reprinted in part with permission

Judge Robert Holmes Bell dismissed the Marquette County Road Commission’s case against the EPA back in May, and last week the Road Commission’s attorneys at Clark Hill PLC filed a motion to alter and amend that judgment. They complain that the Court’s dismissal for failure to state a claim is not only mistaken on points of law but, more dramatically, it allows the "EPA and the Corps to wage a war of attrition on local governments seeking to protect the health and welfare of their people."

I was struck by this inflammatory piece of political rhetoric about federal overreach for a couple of reasons. First, because it’s just the sort of hyperbolical language Michigan State Senator Tom Casperson and StandUP, the 501c4 dark-money organization funding the Road Commission lawsuit, have used to frame the case for County Road 595 and advance what, in a series of posts (1, 2, 3, 4) last summer, I called the political project of MCRC v. EPA. Second, because the motion here tacitly admits that mining activity on the Yellow Dog Plains has put "the health and welfare" of people in Marquette County at risk. Rio Tinto and then Lundin Mining proceeded with their plans to mine copper and nickel at Eagle Mine and truck it to Humboldt Mill without a clear haul route. They not only went ahead; they were permitted by the state to do so. The risk was transferred to the public....
Click here to read the rest of this article on Louis V. Galdieri's blog.

* Guest author Louis V. Galdieri is a writer, filmmaker and co-director of the acclaimed 1913 Massacre, a documentary film about the Italian Hall tragedy in Calumet. (Inset photo of Louis V. Galdieri courtesy Save the Wild U.P.)

 Editor's Note: See also Keweenaw Now's June 17, 2016, article from Save the Wild U.P.: "Environmentalists applaud dismissal of Road Commission's CR595 lawsuit."