“Halo” Off Lake Superior's Keweenaw Peninsula and How Mass Mill Tailings Dispersed Onto Tribal Lands
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Michigan Technological University Digital Commons @ Michigan Tech Michigan Tech Publications 1-1-2020 Copper-rich “Halo” off Lake Superior's Keweenaw Peninsula and how Mass Mill tailings dispersed onto tribal lands W. Charles Kerfoot Michigan Technological University, [email protected] Noel Urban Michigan Technological University, [email protected] Jaebong Jeong Michigan Technological University Carol MacLennan Michigan Technological University, [email protected] Sophia Ford Michigan Technological University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/michigantech-p Part of the Biology Commons, Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons, and the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons Recommended Citation Kerfoot, W., Urban, N., Jeong, J., MacLennan, C., & Ford, S. (2020). Copper-rich “Halo” off Lake Superior's Keweenaw Peninsula and how Mass Mill tailings dispersed onto tribal lands. Journal of Great Lakes Research, 46(5), 1423-1443. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jglr.2020.07.004 Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/michigantech-p/2742 Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/michigantech-p Part of the Biology Commons, Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons, and the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons Journal of Great Lakes Research 46 (2020) 1423–1443 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Great Lakes Research journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijglr Copper-rich ‘‘Halo” off Lake Superior’s Keweenaw Peninsula and how Mass Mill tailings dispersed onto tribal lands ⇑ W. Charles Kerfoot a, , Noel Urban b, Jaebong Jeong a,b, Carol MacLennan c, Sophia Ford c a Great Lakes Research Center and Department of Biological Sciences, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI 49931, USA b Great Lakes Research Center and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI 49931, USA c Department of Social Sciences, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI 49931, USA article info abstract Article history: Over a century ago, shoreline copper mills sluiced more than 64 million metric tonnes of tailings into Received 13 February 2020 Lake Superior, creating a ‘‘halo” around the Keweenaw Peninsula with a buried copper peak. Here we Accepted 8 July 2020 examine how tailings from one of the smaller mills (Mass Mill, 1902–1919) spread as a dual pulse across Available online 28 July 2020 southern Keweenaw Bay and onto tribal L’Anse Indian Reservation lands. The fine (‘‘slime clay”) fraction Communicated by Ronald A. Hites dispersed early and widely, whereas the coarse fraction (stamp sands) moved more slowly southward as a black sand beach deposit, leaving scattered residual patches. Beach stamp sands followed the path of sand eroding from Jacobsville Sandstone bluffs, mixing with natural sands and eventually adding onto Keywords: Sand Point, at the mouth of L’Anse Bay. Dated sediment cores and a multi-elemental analysis of the bur- Lake Superior Mining ied Cu-rich peak in L’Anse Bay confirm a tailings origin. Copper concentrations are declining in the bay, Copper ‘‘Halo” yet copper fluxes remain elevated. The spatial and temporal studies underscore that enhanced sediment Copper fluxes and copper fluxes around the Keweenaw Peninsula largely reflect historic mining releases. Mercury is Keweenaw Bay correlated with copper, yet mercury concentrations and fluxes remain relatively low in Keweenaw Bay Tailings movement compared to nearby Superfund sites (Torch and Portage Lakes), perhaps reflecting the absence of smelters Land clearance on Keweenaw Bay. Tribal efforts to remediate contamination are progressing, but are hindered by recent Tribal boundaries high water levels plus severe storms. The long-term repercussions of Mass Mill discharges caution Mercury ratios against mine companies discharging even small amounts of tailings into coastal environments. Ó 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of International Association for Great Lakes Research. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Introduction Likewise, contaminant transport associated with sediments has been studied at relatively short time scales (hours to days) when The spatial distribution of sediment grain sizes reflects particle river plumes sweep material through coastal zones (Lathrop dispersal over decades to millennia (e.g., Loope et al., 2004; et al., 1990; Nekouee, 2010) or storms resuspend fine sediments Pendleton et al., 2010; Mattheus et al., 2017, 2016). Single storm (Bogdan et al., 2002). Yet time scales of decades are often more events of hours to days can move large masses of sediment, caus- appropriate for characterizing when fine-grained sediments with ing high turbidity events that last days to weeks (Eadie et al., 2002, high contaminant burdens are focused to deep, depositional areas 2008; Churchill et al., 2004; Valipour et al., 2017). These storm (Kaminsky et al., 1983; Carter and Hites, 1992; Marvin et al., 2004; events can disrupt the continuity of sediment stratigraphy and Lu et al., 2015). Again, deposition may occur rapidly (days) when both confound or clarify sediment chronologies (Evans et al., basins receive large erosional or riverine sediment inputs (e.g., 1981; Eadie et al., 2008). Yet over decades, storms in combination Simcik et al., 2003) or may be prolonged, if discharges move as with currents and waves can progressively winnow coastal coherent masses along coastal margins. In this study, we trace sediments through repeated deposition and resuspension events. the distribution of a metal-enriched particle pulse to clarify sedi- Ultimately, fine sediments are transported to the most quiescent ment transport pathways in a large bay (Keweenaw Bay) of Lake depositional basins of lakes, over time scales of years to centuries Superior. The dispersal process has stretched for over a century, (Kemp et al., 1978; Edgington and Robbins, 1990; Robbins and following an initial 18-year discharge (1902–1919) of mine tailings Eadie, 1991). from a single source (Mass Mill), one that no longer exists (‘‘ghost town”). We utilize the legacy mill input to emphasize the different pathways and time scales associated with fine-grain (clay-sized) ⇑ Corresponding author. versus coarse-grain (sand to gravel) particle dispersal. E-mail address: [email protected] (W.C. Kerfoot). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jglr.2020.07.004 0380-1330/Ó 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of International Association for Great Lakes Research. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). 1424 W.C. Kerfoot et al. / Journal of Great Lakes Research 46 (2020) 1423–1443 During the Native Copper Mining Era (1844–1968) on the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan, several large stamp mills sluiced (i.e. directed slurries down channels) over 64 million metric tonnes (MMT, also equivalent to Terragrams, Tg) of copper-rich tailings directly into coastal waters of Lake Superior (Kerfoot et al., 1999, 2009). Copper ores (amygdaloid basalt or conglomerate from the Portage Lake Volcanic Series) were pulverized by large steam- driven stamps and the copper extracted largely by specific gravity techniques using jigs. Jigging involved flowing a stream of liquid- suspended material over a screen and subjecting the screen to a vertical hydraulic pulsation. More dense particles would separate from less dense particles (tailings). The tailings, known locally as ‘‘stamp sands”, were discharged into streams, lakes, waterways, and shorelines. The original releases from shoreline stamp mills and river plumes contributed to a ‘‘halo” of metal-enriched sedi- ments around the Keweenaw Peninsula, one that extends out 10 to 90 km into Lake Superior (Fig. 1a; Kerfoot et al., 1994, 1999, 2002, 2004; Kolak et al., 1999; Gewurtz et al., 2008). Moreover, in sediment deposition zones off the coastal shelf, the nearly simultaneous discharges from the eight large coastal mills con- tributed to a buried copper peak in sediments (Fig. 1b). The mining contributions were relatively large compared to background load- ing of copper into Lake Superior. For example, around the Kewee- naw, anthropogenic inventories with mining-derived copper are three- to ten-fold greater than inventories found generally in the top 20 cm of Lake Superior sediments (Kerfoot et al., 2002, 2004). The stamping process produced fine (clay-fine silt) and coarse Fig. 1 (continued) particle fractions (range of 0.3–3.4 mm; Benedict, 1955; Babcock and Spiroff, 1970). The fine fractions (so-called ‘‘slime clays” of tail- ings discharges, 7–14% of mass) rapidly dispersed much greater copper-rich varves, marking the time of original releases (Kerfoot distances than the coarse fractions (‘‘stamp sand”) that were et al., 1994). An early quantitative end-member mixing analysis retained along shorelines as black sand beaches. Under calm of Keweenaw Waterway mill discharges used Neutron Activation water conditions in inland lakes (e.g. under winter ice cover), the Analysis of stamp sands to ‘‘fingerprint” stamp sand elemental dispersed clay-sized fraction left a series of pink or purple composition, then radioisotope (210Pb and 137Cs) techniques plus Fig. 1. Metal-rich ‘‘Halo” around the Keweenaw Peninsula, Michigan: a) Lake Superior spatial patterns for anthropogenic copper inventories. Contour lines based on focusing- corrected inventories from 32 1983 NOAA cores (solid circles; Kerfoot et al.,