Open Pit Sulfide on the Menominee River? • Al Gedicks • Dept. of Sociology • University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Aquila Resources wants to develop an open pit (2000 ft. wide, 2500 ft. long and 750 ft. deep) massive gold-zinc sulfide mine 150 feet from the Menominee River, encroaching on the floodplain. Underground mining plans have not been disclosed to EGLE, but would double the life of the mine project and increase waste and discharges and increase environmental risks. The Menominee River is the largest river system in the Upper Peninsula with a 4,000 square mile area that drains into Lake Michigan. The federal government and multiple partners have invested at least $200 million to clean up the lower part of the river.

• Both Michigan and Wisconsin DNR have worked over the past decades to again make this river a viable habitat for sturgeon, now threatened by sulfide mining. • The Menominee Nation’s sacred sites and other cultural resources are contained within the footprint of the mine. • “Our place of origin at the mouth of the Menominee River may be destroyed by any adverse impacts on the land, environment and water from mining disasters.” Metallic sulfide mines in the United States will pollute up to 27 billion gallons of fresh water per year. The main reason is acid mine drainage which occurs when mineral deposits containing sulfides are exposed to air and water during extraction. In August 2015 an abandoned gold mine in Colorado accidentally spilled more than three million gallons of toxic wastes, threatening communities in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and the Navajo Nation that drew water from the river. The EPA estimates that 40% of the headwater areas of Western watersheds are contaminated by acid mine drainage from abandoned and unreclaimed mines. Nationwide Identification of Hardrock Mining Sites, 2004 As the richest ores closer to the surface are depleted, the remaining deposits tend to be lower grade, deeper in the ground and produce a greater volume of wastes in relation to metal product.

• Extracting a single ounce of gold produces 79 tons of mine waste left on the land. • 70 million tons of milled tailings and acid-producing waste rock would result from the Back 40 Mine operations. • Mine tailings are the waste material resulting from the crushing and chemical processing of mineral ores. Tailings often contain lead, mercury, cyanide and arsenic that can be toxic when released to the environment. The vast majority (98%) of the excavated rock ends up as sulfide-bearing waste rock that is stored at tailings dams at the mine site. Tailings dams are constructed out of crushed waste rock and soil – not steel and concrete. The Back 40 tailings dam is 123 acres, the equivalent of 100 football fields. Back Forty Tailings Dam Location Poorly regulated tailings frequently discharge wastes into the environment, as in the January 2000 spill of 100 tons of cyanide contaminated water at a gold processing plant in on the Romanian-Hungarian border.

• More than 1400 tons of fish died as a result of this accident that also destroyed the livelihood for some hundred fishermen along the Tisza River in Hungary. • In some Romanian and Hungarian towns the drinking water supply had to be shut down for some days. • voters banned the use of cyanide in mining in 1998; the banned it in 2000. • Menominee County Board has opposed the use of cyanide in Menominee County, Michigan. On January 25, 2019, a tailings dam in Brazil released about 3 billion gallons of sludgy mine waste into the downstream community of Brumadinho, killing at least 270 people in Brazil’s deadliest-ever mining accident. Large parts of the Paraopeba River have become unusable for fishing or as a water supply. While Brazil’s mining agency has already banned the failed tailings dam design from further use, Michigan regulators are poised to approve this design and risk a catastrophic dam failure that could threaten drinking water for millions in Wisconsin and Michigan and around Lake Michigan. Tourism and outdoor industries generate income for businesses on both sides of the Menominee River. A clean, healthy river is vital to the region’s economy. In 2018, tourism for Marinette County, WI generated $159 million dollars.

• The Water Resources Division of Michigan’s Dept. of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) concluded that the release of heavy metals into groundwater and discharge to the land and water interface “has a high probability of adversely impacting fish and wildlife…Constituents in solution… may be transported downstream. With the limited information available for review, the extent of the probable effects to fish and wildlife is unknown.” In January 2018 the Menominee Nation filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the federal Environmental Protection Agency did not have the authority to delegate the permitting process affecting an interstate watershed to Michigan.

• “As [former] chairman of the Tribal legislature, I see this as a battle for the future of a healthy environment in the region. It is also a battle about showing proper respect for the Menominee Tribe’s traditional landscape that contains ancient garden beds, burial mounds and sacred sites.” The Menominee Nation water protectors have joined with local citizens ,environmental and sport fishing groups in both Michigan and Wisconsin in persuading towns, counties and tribes to pass resolutions opposing the Back 40 project. Menominee County, Michigan, site of the proposed mine voted 5-4 to oppose the project. Widespread concerns about downstream mining pollution spurred resolutions against the project in seven additional counties, four towns, dozens of tribal governments, along with environmental, sport fishing and religious groups. In June 2018 the Michigan DEQ approved Aquila’s wetland permit, overriding the objections of the agency’s own scientists who recommended that the permit be denied. Both the Menominee Tribe and the Coalition to SAVE the Menominee River have challenged this decision in administrative contested case hearings.

• “After due consideration of the permit application and on-site investigation…the Water Resources Division finds that the project does not demonstrate that an unacceptable disruption to the aquatic resources of the State will not occur.”

• In other words, the permit did not adequately prove that the surrounding environment would not be harmed by mining operations. Michigan regulators have dismissed widespread opposition to the Back Forty project. However, the international mining industry admits that community support, or a social license to operate a mine, is as important as a regulatory license.

• A social license is intangible and unwritten and cannot be granted by a regulatory agency. • A social license is essentially a set of demands and expectations, held by stakeholders – like citizens, environmental groups and Native Nations – for how a business should operate. • Failure to obtain the support of local communities creates a financial and political risk for mining investment. In January 2020, the Menominee Nation declared the Menominee River has inherent and legal rights, including the right to naturally exist, flourish, regenerate and evolve and the right to abundant, pure, clean unpolluted water.

• Rights of Nature is the recognition that our ecosystems have rights just as human beings have rights. • Rather than treating nature as property under the law, rights of nature acknowledge that nature in all its life forms has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital life cycles. • For indigenous cultures, this is simply what is so and consistent with their traditions of living in harmony with nature. In April 2020 the conservation group, American Rivers, listed the Menominee River as one of America’s 10 most endangered rivers due to the threat from open pit sulfide mining. Aquila provides almost no information on the impacts of a spill, how long the impacts would last and whether the impacts could be reversed.