Imagine someone looking for a certain kind of a job here in your community. The background check reveals that he’s had that kind of job before and he has always used his position to manipulate, con, and plunder. His record reveals a long legacy of broken lives, busted promises, and ruin. Truth is we have someone like this looking for that job right here, right now, and instead of being turned down and sent on his way this job applicant is being taken very seriously by some influential people here in Minnesota.
It gets worse than that. A lot worse. We’re not talking about just one sleazy little grifter that one deputy can turn on his heels and put out of town. This is a huge international multi-billion dollar business that often uses politicians like pawns, and trashes diverse peoples and cultures while playing fast and loose with the law. Big copper has a checkered history. A short list of examples:
. Marcopper Mining Disaster— Death, multiple severe poisonings, political corruption, catastrophic spills, long-term damage to waterways and fisheries, long-term damage to health of affected people.
. Berkeley Pit Copper Mine— A Superfund site with widespread contamination, poisoned soil, fouled waterways complete with a rising mile-wide lake which threatens Butte, Montana’s groundwater and which tends to kill thousands of birds.
. Mount Polley Copper Mine—Not the first mine to experience a catastrophic dam breach, but the scale of destruction in the breach of 2014 represents a milestone in the history of copper mining. Tons of contaminated slurry remain in the affected waterways which were a source of drinking water and also a salmon fishery. The taxpayers of British Columbia are on the hook for a reported $40 million in cleanup expenses.
. Utah’s Bingham Canyon Mine—Extensive damage to surface water resources, manifold public health risks, damaged fish and wildlife habitat, 72 square miles of damaged groundwater, a huge mess.
Just a few examples out of many which only begin to show the irresponsible and poisonous history of mega copper mining. Although damages wrought upon American lands by big copper can be vast and permanent, these perpetrators are famous for dodging responsibility. Now these same people would like to place these massive acid-leaching mines here, on your land, squarely within the lake Superior and Boundary Waters watersheds right where they would be able to do the most damage.
This same toxic industry is trying to tell you that this time it will all be different. “Science will remedy the problems of the past.” Right. This is kind of like the guy with the flashy clothes and the Cadillac who meets someone’s runaway daughter at the bus station and tells her that she’s special, and not like all of the other girls that work for him. Before you trust him find out just a little more about what he’s known for, and where he’s been.
Greg Gailen
Grand Marais
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