Mining News

MARCH 16, 2012 by BARBARA WITH

According to the League of Conservation Voters, the controversial mining bill that passed through the Assembly but was stopped in the Senate is officially dead.

Often called the Everglades of the North, the Kakagon and Bad River Sloughs located at the base of the Penokee HIlls, a pristine wetland complex located in northern Wisconsin, was formally recognized as an international treasure. The area has been saved from a 22-mile open pit iron ore mine.

A “public” hearing had been scheduled for Monday, March 19 in the Judiciary committee to discuss the consideration of the bill during a possible special session. No public input was to be allowed at that meeting, however, the meeting has now been cancelled.

Opponents to a 22-mile open pit iron ore mine in the Penokee Hills fought the lack of democratic process involved in the passage of a bill written by mining company attorneys. Environmental groups, state citizens and the Wisconsin Indian Tribes have testified against the bill consistently throughout the process. Despite overwhelming opposition, the Wisconsin Assembly passed AB426 on January 26 after removing observers from the gallery and locking the doors to the public.

Sen. Bob Jauch (D) and Sen. Dale Schultz (R) authored their own version of a mining bill which did not pass through the Joint Finance Committee. Instead, AB426 was amended, but the amendments did not pass the Senate session, sending the bill back to committee.

FRIDAY, MARCH 16, 2012

Surprise Resignation By WI Sen. Galloway Shuts Down Mining Bill

Post by Reedsburg Indep... on 3/16/2012 10:14am

This article originally appeared in the Reedsburg Independent and was written by editor Jeff Seering. It is republished here with permission.

Dale Schultz has represented the Reedsburg area in the state legislature for close to 30 years, starting in the Assembly and then getting elected to the state Senate in 1991. At no time in his 30 years has he received more statewide attention than in the past 13 months, not even when he was elected Senate Majority Leader by his Republican colleagues in 2005.

Schultz has drawn the spotlight because he is one of the few state legislators on either side of the political aisle in Madison who has been willing to buck his own parties on issues, even though Schultz votes with Republicans on probably 90 percent of issues.

He first drew the spotlight last spring when he was the lone Republican Senator to vote against bill that stripped most collective bargaining rights away from public workers in Wisconsin. Last week he was the lone Republican voting against the iron mining bill strongly supported by Republican Governor Scott Walker, a bill that was defeated 17-16 in a straight party line vote, except for Schultz.

Since last summer's recalls, Republicans in the State Senate have a slim 17-16 majority, which means they need the support of every party member to pass bills without getting some Democratic support.

During last week’s mining bill debate, Schultz was one of three Senators to speak up during the hour long debate. He and Sen. Bob Jauch, a Senator who represents the part of the state where the Gogebic Taconite Company planned to build an iron mine, proposed their own amendment to the mining bill but it was never allowed to come to the Senate floor for a vote.

Schultz says he is still hopeful a mining bill can be passed. He objected to the bill that came through the Assembly and an amended verison by the Joint Finance Committee because they didn’t allow the general public to have any voice in the permit process until after a permit was issued, and he was concerned that it did not adequately protect the environment.

In an interview last week, he said a challenge during the mining bill process was that he heard the Gogebic objected to provisions in the Jauch-Schultz amendment but heard nothing specific until the very end when the contested hearing portion was brought up as an obstacle. After the mining bill was defeated, the Gogebic company president announced his company is no longer interested in mining in Wisconsin.

Schultz said about the mining bill compromise he proposed, “No one got up to refute anything we put in.” He said it was bizarre that no one from Gogebic or the other side of the issue ever contacted him to explain what provisions were unacceptable. He said at no time during the process did anyone say why the environmental changes in the Assembly bill and subsequent Joint Finance amendment that changed existing laws were essential.

While the mining bill changes came up because of Gogebic Taconite’s proposal to build a four and a half mile long open pit mine near Mellen in far northern Wisconsin, the bill would have changed iron mining laws in the entire state.

During the Senate debate, Schultz pointed out the bill being debated had a provision in it that said State Natural Areas would no longer be protected in areas where mining takes place. There are no State Natural Areas in the Penokee Range where the Gogebic mine was proposed, the Senator said. But there are plenty of them in the Baraboo Bluffs, where iron mining has taken place in the past. He questioned why that provision, which could affect his district, was included in the iron mining bill.

He told his Senate colleagues that provisions of the mining bill proposed “elevate iron mining over other potential uses as the highest and best use of land... It is full of subjective, squishy language on the issues of public health, safety and welfare.”

Talking about specific things in the rejected bill that concerned him, Schultz said the iron mining bill would have allowed the mining company to place fill in streams, rivers, ponds and lakes. That would conflict with the Public Waters Doctrine in the state’s constitution, which states open waters in the state belong to the public.

Schultz also questioned the legislative findings included with the bill that stated runoffs from tailings from the iron mine would not pollute water. It has been reported that there is pyrite in the ground above the Penokee iron deposit. That kind of material, when brought to the surface, can lead to acidic runoff. “The findings in the bill are not based on good science,” Schultz told his Senate colleagues in last week’s debate. Water from the mine would drain into the Bad River Watershed, which empties in Chequamegon Bay in Lake Superior. Schultz told the Senate that without proper testing of the overburden at the mine site, there is no way knowing what it is and what effects there will be if it is moved and disturbed. During the debate, Schultz noted that three experts from UW-Platteville spoke at a mining hearing held in that community. “Those three faculty members said, ‘Listen to the scientific experts.’ We haven’t done that.”

Schultz said that at a public forum he helped sponsor in Mellen, all of the speakers said they were concerned about the environmental effects the mine could have.

Schultz said his preference is to address and update the iron mining issues in open process in which mining experts and environmentalists are invited to come together in one room to express their concerns and work together on solutions. “We owe it to the people to let the light shine in,” he said. He supports a streamlined process for approving mining permits.

Acknowledging the political pressure he has been under regarding the mining issue, Schultz notes he has received support from the people he represents in the 17th Senate District, saying calls in favor of his position have been running six or seven to one ahead of those opposing it.

A number of movements to promote corporate social responsibility – as evidenced by efforts to certify sustainably managed forests, end the trade in conflict diamonds, and institute fair labor practices in the apparel industry – demonstrate the public’s desire for companies to operate in an environmentally and socially responsible manner.  Mining results in environmental and social change no matter where the mine is located.  However, by implementing the best possible standards, many negative impacts can be avoided.

To date, existing frameworks have not been adequate to address the negative environmental and social impacts associated with mining.

The Framework for Responsible Mining – a research report co-authored by Dave Chambers, CSP2, Marta Miranda, WWF, and Catherine Coumans, MineWatch Canada – is the result of a call by NGOs, retailers, investors, insurers, and technical experts working in the minerals sector to create a basis for developing responsible sourcing and investing policies. The Framework evolved out of dialogue in 2003 between NGOs, such as the Center for Science in Public Participation, Earthworks, World Wildlife Fund, and companies that use mineral products, such as Tiffany & Co.  Those at the table recognized that sourcing from or investing in environmentally and socially responsible mines could help companies avoid the risks to brand associated with the negative impacts from environmentally and socially destructive mining-related investments.

The Framework outlines environmental, human rights, and social issues associated with mining and mined products, and explore state-of-the-art social and environmental improvements, providing recommendations for retailers and others seeking to source or invest responsibly, as well as those charged with regulating and encouraging responsible mining practices.

The Framework is organized according to four main themes:

1) Identifying areas where mining may not be appropriate land use (i.e., resulting in a “no go” decision);

2) Ensuring environmentally responsible mine development;

3) Ensuring socially responsible mine development; and

4) Ensuring that appropriate governance structures are in place and implemented at national and corporate scales.

Major findings of the Framework include:

• Mining should not occur in protected areas designated for conservation purposes, such as national parks, wildlife refuges, or marine protection zones.

• The public should be notified of and able to participate in all aspects of mining, from exploration planning to mine closure.  Environmental analysis should be accurate, complete, and include worst-case scenarios and analyses of off-site impacts.

• A qualified professional should certify that water treatment, or groundwater pumping, will not be required in perpetuity to meet surface or groundwater quality standards beyond the boundary of the mine.  Monitoring and discharge reports, including contamination of surface and ground water, should be made publicly available in a timely manner.

• Tailings impoundments and waste rock dumps should be designed, constructed, and monitored to minimize threats of release to the public, workers, and the environment.

• Environmentally responsible mining should not include riverine or shallow-water submarine waste disposal.

• Companies should monitor and publicly report hazardous emissions to workers, air, and water.

• Reclamation plans and post-mine planning should be developed before operations begin, and should include reasonable cost estimates and financial assurances, all of which should be reviewed and regularly updated.

• Companies should obtain the free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous peoples before exploration begins and prior to each subsequent phase of mining and post-mining operations.

• Companies should enter into binding contracts with communities, specifying the terms for each mine activity and phase, and the consequences if either party fails to abide by the agreement.

• Mines should recognize the rights of workers to organize labor unions and should compensate employees based on job performance; compensation should not be influenced by gender, race, religion, or creed.

• Resettlement should be avoided and should not occur without the free, prior, and informed consent of affected individuals set out in a binding Consent Agreement.  Where resettlement does occur, planning and execution should include community participation, fair compensation, and mechanisms for equitable dispute resolution.

• Financial institutions should report the environmental and social risks associated with their lending in the mining sector and companies should report money paid to political parties and governments.

• Companies should avoid investing in areas where the risk of violent conflict is high (e.g., in areas of civil war or armed conflict).

CENTER for SCIENCE in PUBLIC PARTICIPATION (CSP2) is now working with Earthworks, Oxfam, World Wildlife Fund, and other NGOs in preliminary negotiations with jewelers, private and government banks, and mining industry representatives to discuss how the Framework for Responsible Mining, and other sources for guidelines for responsible mining, might be used to develop standards that would lead to a certification process for individual mines worldwide.

The Framework is available online at:

Troubled Waters: How Mine Waste Dumping is Poisoning Our Ocean, Rivers, and Lakes is a new investigative report fromEarthworks and MiningWatch Canada that documents how mining companies are using the world's waterways as dumping grounds for their toxic mine wastes.

These mine wastes, or tailings, can contain up to three dozen dangerous chemicals, including arsenic, lead, mercury, and cyanide.

Each year, mining companies dump over 180 million tonnes of these hazardous mine wastes into rivers, oceans, and lakes - that's more than 1.5 times the amount of waste that US cities send to landfills each year.

The Troubled Waters report examines the impacts of ten corporations' waste dumping practices in water bodies in 11 regions around the world, including those in Papua New Guinea, Turkey, Canada, Indonesia, United States, and Norway.

The report calls on mining companies to stop using our oceans, rivers, and lakes as dumping grounds for their toxic wastes. The report recommends additional steps that must be taken by mining companies to protect people and ecosystems from irresponsible aquatic waste disposal, including dry stacking and backfill, where safe, and adopting measures to produce less waste.

If you live in the United States, you can do something right now to help fix the problem...

It's real simple.

The nonstop Capitol political beatings, and scar tissue from them, over the past year made it impossible to rewrite mining and environmental laws to let Gogebic Taconite LLC seek permits for a huge open-pit mine in Ashland and Iron counties.

There's enough blame to go around for the defeat - for now, at least - of what Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans who control the Legislature said was the quickest way to create hundreds of jobs. Blame is the fertilizer of Capitol careers.

Walker could call a special session on a resurrected mining bill, but only if there is a real deal that can pass the Legislature. Otherwise, the governor would take a second embarrassing hit on creating jobs, his top priority.

A 17-16 Senate vote Tuesday shelved what Republicans leaders insisted was a fair compromise. Why did Republican Sen. Dale Schultz join the 16 Senate Democrats in killing the Joint Finance Committee's mining bill?

To pass a complex bill like that, there has to be trust on all sides.

But the events of the past year - Walker and Republican lawmakers divided the state by quickly moving to end the 50-year-old system of collective bargaining by most public employees, which touched off recall elections for nine state senators - has legislative leaders of both parties rarely talking to each other, let alone trusting.

Senate leaders have even stopped meeting in person to set the agenda for the next Senate workday. Instead, they circulate mail ballots.

This summer, Democrats are trying to recall Walker. So why would he bargain in good faith with those trying to throw him out of office?

But Walker also never did what Kathleen Falk, one Democrat who will oppose him in a recall election, said she would have done: Bring together everyone involved and announce, "We're not going to leave the room until we get it done."

Instead of negotiating, Walker played sideline cheerleader. He barnstormed the state, visiting construction companies that hoped to bid on Gogebic contracts and told everyone to "call your legislator" and demand passage of a mining bill.

Democrats also have targeted four of the 17 Republican senators with summer recall elections. Those four Republicans have little desire for a kumbaya moment with their sworn enemies. Recalls, after all, cost two Republican senators their jobs last year.

Democrats also said they were never consulted on the first versions of the mining bill: A first draft, selectively released last year, never even got formally introduced after Democrats and local officials insisted it was written in secret by Gogebic executives. Then came Assembly Bill 426, which Republicans passed in that house on Jan. 26.

Last weekend, Republican Rep. Robin Vos led negotiations that spawned a third bill, approved on Monday by the Finance Committee. It was that version that Schultz and Senate Democrats killed Tuesday.

Schultz and Democratic Sen. Bob Jauch insisted that the first three versions of the mining bill would have done so much environmental damage - including allowing waterways to be filled - that they were unconstitutional.

A Schultz/Jauch mining bill was unacceptable to Assembly Republicans.

They also said Wisconsin's brightest scientists, including those at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville who work near the huge M - for mining - splayed on hill outside Platteville, were never consulted.

There was irony in the Schultz/Jauch partnership: Both first came to the Legislature in 1983. Both once led their parties in the Senate. Both once hoped to serve in Congress. Both represent some of the lowest-income areas of Wisconsin but regions with rich iron deposits.

Gogebic's mine would have been in Jauch's district. Underground mines took iron out of the Baraboo Bluffs area, which Schultz represents, between 1904 and about 1925. Iron is still under those scenic bluffs.

It was Schultz's second vote against a top Walker priority. On March 9, 2011, Schultz was the only Republican to vote against the governor's plan to all but abolish collective bargaining for most public employees.

Schultz also took a backhand swipe at Walker, the leader of his party, when he praised Falk by name Monday for her environmental advocacy when she worked as a public intervenor in the Justice Department.

There's a new version of that old proverb: The enemy of my enemy is my fellow legislator.

Steven Walters is a senior producer for WisconsinEye. This column reflects his personal perspective. [email protected]

Fred Clark

RON SEELY | Wisconsin State Journal | [email protected] | 608-252-6131 | @RSeely | (5) Comments | Posted: Sunday, March 11, 2012 9:30 am

JOHN HART — State Journal archives

Gogebic Taconite president Bill Williams explores an outcropping of magnetite in September near the site in the Penokee Range where the company proposed an iron mine.

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Compared with the millions of years that iron has rested beneath the Penokee Hills, the monthslong political fray over mine permitting in Wisconsin is but a blip on a geologic timescale. Yet according to state mining experts and others, the controversy may have lasting effects.

Tom Evans, a geologist with the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey who has written extensively about mining and mine regulation in Wisconsin, said it may be some time before another mining company considers a proposal to remove the billions of tons of iron that lie beneath the Penokees in Iron and Ashland counties.

That’s partly because of the bitterness that lingers from the political battle, but also because of some important knowledge the debate brought to light both about the hard-to-reach iron ore and the rich and fragile natural resources sheltered within the Penokee Range.

“I don’t think we’re going to see anybody looking there any time soon,” Evans said of potential interest by other mining companies. “There are a lot of bad feelings out there now. That may take some time to cool down. It was a hard process.”

The band of iron that stirred so much emotion in recent months stretches from Wisconsin, west of Mellen, to the northeast up into Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Evans said the range in Iron and Ashland counties could contain as much as 3.7 billion tons of iron ore, which some have estimated represents as much as 20 percent of the known iron deposits in the United States.

Gogebic Taconite — which proposed the mine contingent on the state Legislature steamlining the permit process — is by no means the first company to try to mine the range. Between 1886 and 1965, 71 million tons of iron was removed from numerous shaft mines, including one a mile deep, between Mellen and Hurley. U.S. Steel owned mineral rights for years in the hills and did some analysis of the ore body.

In more recent years, a Texas company — RGGS Land and Minerals — has controlled most of the property. Gogebic, which abandoned its project last week, retains an option on 22,000 acres to lease both land and surface rights from RGGS.

None of this investment activity, however, has led to even a spade of dirt being turned in recent years.

An expensive place to mine

The Penokee Range is a difficult and expensive place for a mining company to set up shop. One major problem facing any company that wants to mine the Gogebic deposit, Evans said, is the rock holding the iron was tilted upright by geologic forces at a 60-degree angle. Getting at the deepest sections of ore would require going deep into the Earth. That’s why Gogebic Taconite proposed a 1,000-foot-deep mine, Evans said.

Marcia Bjornerud, a professor of geology at Lawrence University in Appleton, said going that deep would have required Gogebic to remove an enormous amount of rock from above the iron deposit. Based on geologic maps of the deposit, Bjornerud estimated about 83 million cubic meters of rock would have had to be removed to reach the iron. She said the estimate is conservative because it assumes steep walls in the pit — when they would in reality have to be terraced — and it is for a one-mile-long mine, where Gogebic proposed a mine that could be four miles long.

In addition, Bjornerud and Evans said, most geologists agree — despite denials from both Gogebic and its supporters — that the rock sitting on top of the actual iron deposit contains sulfides. Sulfides, when exposed to air and water, create toxic acid drainage, Bjornerud said.

All of this, Bjornerud and Evans agreed, adds up to a huge amount of money that would have to be invested not only in removal and storage of the waste rock but also in treatment systems to prevent pollution.

The expense of safely mining that particular site — with its wetlands and trout streams and the headwaters of the Bad River — may account in large part for why Gogebic Taconite pushed so hard for legislation that included exemptions from several environmental laws, Evans said.

“The site poses some very difficult environmental challenges,” Evans said. “That affects your bottom line. And that really came to the fore.”

Obstacles won’t go away

Any mine company that tries to follow in Gogebic’s wake will face the same challenges. “The site is not going to change,” Evans said.

Bill Williams, president of Gogebic Taconite, told the Wisconsin State Journal in interviews for a series about the mine in the fall that exemptions from laws protecting high-quality wetlands were among the most important of the changes to state mine laws being sought by Gogebic, along with setting a deadline for the state to act on a permit application.

And last week, just before the Senate took up the GOP-authored mine permitting bill, Williams said the permitting changes the company hoped to see approved had everything to do with the high cost of building a mine on the Gogebic iron range. He said the environmental studies alone — which the company postponed pending legislative action on the permit changes — were going to cost the company $20 million.

On top of the costs related specifically to the Penokee site, Williams said Wisconsin’s strict permitting requirements and open-ended timeline for acting on a permit application were discouraging not only to Gogebic but all mining companies considering doing business in the state.

“Right now, it would be impossible for you to get an investor to come into the state without an end date for the permitting,” Williams said.

Republican legislators who worked with Gogebic to try to get the permit system changed insisted throughout the debate that the bill was more about setting those deadlines for the state Department of Natural Resources than about easing environmental restrictions.

A mix of politics, environment

After all the drama, it remains likely, according to both sides in the debate, that changes eventually will be made to the state’s mine permitting law so a mining company can have more certainty about when the DNR will act on a permit application. State Sen. Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, the lone Republican to oppose the GOP-authored permitting bill, said as much in remarks on the Senate floor.

“I would love to vote for a responsible mining bill,” Schultz said.

Still, in the end, it might have been less about the differences over the timeline or even the shape of public legal challenges than it was about differences over the environmental changes sought by Gogebic that spelled doom for the legislation, according to some.

Not everyone agrees.

Last week, DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp put out a press release insisting proposed changes in permitting included adequate environmental protections and the vote on the permitting bill had less to do with the environment than politics.

“Unfortunately, in the end, the motivation to not allow a potential success for Gov. Walker appears to be what really killed the bill,” Stepp, a Walker appointee, said.

State Sen. Robert Jauch, D-Poplar, said the bill ultimately failed because legislators were not able to find a proper balance between creating jobs and protecting the environment of the Penokee Hills.

In the fall, Mellen Mayor Joe Barabe said that, though he strongly supported a mine in the Penokees, he also wanted to make sure the area’s rich natural resources would be protected.

He said last week he was happy a permitting bill that relaxed environmental protections didn’t make it through the state Legislature.

Virtually everyone engaged in the current mining debate agrees that Wisconsin should allow "responsible mining." The controversy has been about what is "responsible mining."

The version of the mining legislation voted down Tuesday in the state Senate, Assembly Bill 426, was not a responsible mining bill and would have led to serious and unnecessary damage to Wisconsin's valuable natural resources.

A responsible mining bill does not allow the filling in of lakes held in trust for Wisconsin citizens. Current mining law prohibits filling in public lakes. AB 426 would have allowed this, thereby violating the Wisconsin Constitution's Public Trust Doctrine protecting navigable waters.

AB 426 would have allowed the destruction of State Natural Areas, which are the most unique and valuable lands remaining in Wisconsin and include the Cedarburg Bog, Peninsula Park White Cedar Forest, the Upper Brule River, Trout Lake Conifer Swamp and the Dalles of the St. Croix River. Current mining regulations protect these areas. AB 426 also would quadruple the area where the groundwater adjacent to the mining site could be polluted greatly in excess of state standards. That is a major change from current mining laws.

AB 426 would seriously harm the ability of local citizens, governments and tribes to have effective input into mining decisions. The bill would allow a mining company to avoid showing at a contested case hearing that their mine meets state environmental standards and instead puts the burden and great expense on neighboring property owners to show that the mine does not meet the standards. This is a major change in state mining law and would create a real David and Goliath situation.

Lastly, the bill is significantly weaker than Minnesota's mining law, in which taconite mining is a major and successful industry.

Some argue the amended AB 426 voted down in the Senate was already a compromise measure including additional environmental protection measures. In fact, Wisconsin Wildlife Federation worked with the bill's authors on these changes. However, these changes merely make a very environmentally harmful bill into just a seriously harmful bill.

The real goal should be a bill that provides the company the needed permitting deadline certainty to justify great capital expenditure but still provides the resource protection expected by Wisconsin citizens.

It is best stated by the 23-year mayor of Mellen, Joe Barabe, a mining supporter: "My grandfather and great-grandfather mined in our region, but I'm glad they never read this bill." He implored lawmakers, "You must get this right the first time, because for us there is no second time. Things will go wrong, wells will dry up, the drinking water from the hills may disappear. Under this bill, the mining company gets all of the advantages, and we don't get any."

Many, both in and out of the Legislature, are willing to continue to work together to "get it right." The Wildlife Federation has committed to continuing its efforts to accomplish this goal.