Discourse was courteous at the March 15 Lake Superior Binational Forum on the impacts of nonferrous mining in the Lake Super basin, but the topic was controversial. Unlike a previous forum to which representatives from well over a dozen mining companies had been invited but not able to attend, both proponents and opponents of mining spoke, and the auditorium at Mesabi Range Community & Technical College was full.
The mining industry uses the word “nonferrous mining” to describe the mining of metals other than iron such as copper, nickel, cobalt, palladium, and platinum. Opponents use the term “sulfide mining” because sulfuric acid is created when the material left behind is exposed to both water and air.
Lake Superior Binational Forum U.S. Co-Chair Bruce Lindgren said the phrase “responsible mining” has emerged, and people are trying to define what that could be.
Lots of minerals here
The ore that companies mine out of the Mesabi Iron Range and Duluth Complex is not found everywhere, University of Minnesota- Duluth Department of Geological Sciences Associate Professor Dr. Jim Miller stated. In fact, nowhere else on earth has this much copper and nickel, he said, and “if there was no sulfur, there would be no copper, nickel, [or other] precious metals to be mined.” In fact, he said, 90 percent of the world’s metals come from sulfide minerals. “Metals love to bond with sulfur,” he said.
Metal is separated from sulfur through “smelting,” or roasting, Miller said, but new techniques achieve this without emitting the levels of sulfur dioxide that used to cause acid rain. Operations in places like Sudbury, Ontario, release mostly water vapor into the air, he said. A brochure published by MiningMinnesota, a coalition committed to sustainable and environmentally responsible development of metals mining, states that one of the new mining practices that help ensure that both extraction and processing are environmentally responsible is use of a pressure autoclave that extracts metals without emissions associated with traditional smelters.
Miller contended that the acid rock drainage created when the nonferrous waste rock hits water and air can be monitored, regulated, controlled, and mitigated. Mining precious metals does produce a lot of waste materials, however. Miller said, for example, that only 15 parts per million of platinum is extracted from the rock around it.
The U.S. imports a lot of nickel, cobalt, palladium, and copper, Miller said, and it consumes about two-thirds of the world’s copper, which is the best known conductor of electricity. Wind towers have a lot of copper in them, he said, and so do hybrid automobiles. A 3 megawatt wind tower contains about 4.7 tons of copper. A regular car contains about 50-55 pounds of copper, but a Prius, a hybrid, contains closer to 80 pounds. Palladium is the main component in catalytic converters, which filter exhaust from cars. Nonferrous metals are also used in artificial joints, diabetes test strips, and CAT scan equipment.
The amount of rock containing precious metals in the Northland is “enormous,” said Miller. “We’re dealing with the largest contained body of copper in the world. … The question is not if these minerals will be mined someday – they will. …It’s a question of when, by whom, [and] how.”
Prevention is key
According to Minnesota Department of Natural Resources engineer John Engesser, there are only two basic industries in the world, and they both create environmental issues that need to be dealt with: He said, “If it can’t be grown, it has to be mined.”
Best management practices prevent, minimize, or mitigate sulfuric acid produced from reactive mine waste, Engesser said. In Hibbing, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is conducting tests on numerous types of prevention methods. The one proving to be most effective is to contain the waste material with water and plants, preventing oxidation.
Other management methods include treating acidic water, mixing sulfuric-acid producing mine waste with limestone to produce gypsum, which has a neutral pH, or prevention seepage with liners. Opponents of nonferrous mining do not trust the ability of liners to permanently safeguard the environment.
Economic impact of mining
Jim Skurla, director of the Bureau of Business & Economic Research in the Labovitz School of Business & Economics at UMD, said that mining accounts for 30 percent of northeastern Minnesota’s gross regional product. Tourism accounts for 11 percent, forestry accounts for 10 percent, and other industries, of which health care is a large part, account for the other 49 percent.
“Is mining important?” Skurla said. “The answer is yes.”
Minnesota’s educational system benefits from tax revenues from the mining industry, with close to $37 million a year going to K-12 education and over $12 million a year going to University of Minnesota trust funds, according to 2012 reports from the Minnesota Departments of Revenue and Natural Resources.
Former Minntac employee Bob Tammen does not see mining through rose-colored glasses. Virginia, a city surrounded by mines, has lost population in the last century.
“The mining industry did not protect Virginia from losing population,” he said. Productivity in the mines doubled during his career, with fewer people doing the same amount of work. He stated that the mining industry employs more people in the Twin Cities than it does in the Hibbing/Virginia area.
When an economy is developed around extraction and transport of natural resources, Tammen said, you end up with an unhealthy economy, and this is called “the resource curse.” “The Mesabi Iron Range could be a poster child for the resource curse,” he said.
Environmental impact
Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Natural Resources Division Water Resources Manager Nancy Schuldt pointed out how mining changes an ecosystem by filling in wetlands, redirecting water, and interrupting wildlife corridors. Traditional lands that tribes are entitled to use through the 1854 Treaty are disturbed—sacred and occupational lands where Native people hunted, fished, and harvested maple sugar, wild rice, and medicinal plants.
Schuldt showed two slides taken near a tailings basin showing a “high quality spruce tamarack bog” that had turned into a “poor quality cattail slough.” Current reclamation laws do not constitute restoration, she said, and they do not necessarily get back things that they have lost. She called for clearer compliance requirements and more enforcement.
Shannon Lotthammer of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency reported on a study being conducted to better understand the relationship between wild rice and sulfates in the water. The study has found a correlation between the presence of wild rice and lower sulfate levels, but wild rice is also found in places that have naturally elevated sulfate levels.
Polymet speaks
Polymet’s proposed nonferrous mining operation would reuse a former LTV plant and tailings basin. One of the pits would be filled in after an estimated 11 years and restored to a wetland, and another pit would become a lake. Land would be reclaimed as mining is completed.
A February 14 news release from PolyMet states that groundwater and surface seepage would be captured by an in-ground containment system, and all contact water discharged would be treated through reverse osmosis plants. “Based on a pilot scale RO [reverse osmosis] plant that has successfully treated over 1.5 million gallons of water to date, contact water discharge will meet applicable state and federal water quality standards, including (but not limited to) Minnesota’s wild rice standard for sulfate.”
A document on the PolyMet project produced by the National Wildlife Federation claims that the language of the Clean Water Act allows companies to get around effluent limitations that the Environmental Protection Agency deemed “not only feasible but already being met by most mines.”
According to the National Wildlife Federation, closing “loopholes” in the Clean Water Act “would not prohibit sulfide mining but it would greatly reduce the negative environmental impacts from large mines.”
Latisha Gietzen of PolyMet said PolyMet has been working on an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), a joint federal and state process involving numerous agencies, for 11 years. If approved, the project will require many permits and approvals. It will also include no net loss of wetland acreage. Liners to contain acid rock drainage in one pit will only be temporary, a big change from the draft EIS, she said, and the requirements of the 1854 Treaty will be followed.
“We will ultimately leave the planet in better condition than it is today,” said Gietzen.
The PolyMet project is expected to create 360 “high quality, stable jobs” earning $36 million in wages and benefits, Gietzen said, and over 600 spinoff jobs. When new mines come into an area, however, said a member of the audience, property values and small businesses are impacted.
Although the state requires bankruptcy proof financial assurance, opponents of nonferrous mining believe that the cost of potential cleanup is routinely underestimated.
Some believe that having regulations is one thing, but enforcing them is another. Dave Zentner of the Izaak Walton League spoke, saying that to make his cell phone, his titanium knees, and his Prius sustainable, the government needs to have enough funding to regulate the industries that produce them.
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