Recommendations for "Responsible Mining in the Lake Superior Basin"

Less than a decade ago, there was an organization called the Lake Superior Binational Forum (Lake Superior Binational Forum Funding Has Been Eliminated by US EPA). In 2013 it drafted a statement on Responsible Mining in the Lake Superior Basin which contains

... recommendations for future mining operations, briefly summarized as follows:

1. Develop a common set of criteria for use by governments, NGOs and industry to guide the permitting process. Currently public agencies use different criteria in each state.

2. Avoid mining in places with high environmental or social/cultural value.

3. Improve public participation by stakeholders in the environmental assessment process through the collection of adequate baseline data; consideration of potential worst-case scenarios; and independent third-party review processes.

4. Water quality objectives that are consistent with the LAMP should be developed.

5. Overburden and tailings should be discharged into water bodies or wetlands; acid-generating materials should be segregated; and hazardous materials plans should be made public.

6. Companies should make atmospheric emission reports. Environmental assessments should consider greenhouse gas emissions from mining operations.

7. Companies should set aside financial resources for the exploration phase to cover clean-ups, reclamation and long-term monitoring. The public should have the right to comment on the adequacy of these resources and reclamation activities.

8. The public should have the right to access monitoring and periodic technical reports during the life of the mining operation; and to do independent third-party review of the process.

9. Companies should have a reclamation plan with resources set aside for each operation. Mined areas should be re-contoured and stabilized.

10. Citizen participation and oversight are important elements listed under “social impacts and decision making,” including the engagement of Tribal Nations, First Nations and Metis.

11. Research is needed on the cumulative and indirect effects of mining; climate change and mining impacts; and human health research, including impacts on people, fish and wild rice.

overlooking the St. Louis River entering Duluth Harbor and Lake Superior

Photo by J. Harrington

The Lake Superior LAMP 2015-2019 notes this about mining's impacts [p. 48 & 49]:

The Lake Superior basin has a long history of mining operations and related impacts. While mining operations can offer economic benefits, they also present threats to the environment. For example, two Great Lakes Areas of Concern, Deer Lake and Torch Lake, were so designated in the Lake Superior basin due to impacts from past mining operations. Fourteen mines currently operate in the Lake Superior basin, with many explorations and expansions underway. Current and/or past mines in the basin have extracted gold, silver, copper, platinum, palladium, nickel, zinc, diamond, lead, iron-ore and taconite, as well as quarried brownstone. Mining impacts cannot be easily reversed –some can cause far reaching and lasting environmental damage. Mining activity has the potential to impairwater quality(e.g., mining is currently the largest source of mercury emissions from within the Lake Superior basin) and degrade habitat (e.g., through increased sediments). Mining sediments in the nearshore, embayments,and river mouths may cover or degrade fish spawning habitats, Wild Rice and other natural resources. After a mine closes, it can remain a source of contamination from chemicals and waste rock piles; tailing ponds must be monitored and maintained for centuries to avoid environmental impacts. 

Recent developments regarding the water discharge permit issued by the Minnesota Pollution Control  Agency make it, at best, questions whether Minnesota is honoring recommendations 3, 8 and 10. The lack of Water Quality Based Effluent Limits in the issued permit would seem to make it impossible to determine consistency with any water quality objective found in or derived from the LAMP.

In order to assess whether mining is responsible and sustainable, both process and substantive criteria should be agreed upon and compliance with those criteria should be regularly assessed in a transparent process. In Minnesota, we don't seem to be there yet.

We're going to share the usual poem we put here one stanza at a time. It's a long poem but, we believe, fits really well with the theme we're developing.

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings

By Joy Harjo

3. GIVE CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK:

We speak together with this trade language of English. This trade language enables us to speak across many language boundaries. These languages have given us the poets:

Ortiz, Silko, Momaday, Alexie, Diaz, Bird, Woody, Kane, Bitsui, Long Soldier, White, Erdrich, Tapahonso, Howe, Louis, Brings Plenty, okpik, Hill, Wood, Maracle, Cisneros, Trask, Hogan, Dunn, Welch, Gould...

The 1957 Chevy is unbeatable in style. My broken-down one-eyed Ford will have to do. It holds everyone: Grandma and grandpa, aunties and uncles, the children and the babies, and all my boyfriends. That's what she said, anyway, as she drove off for the Forty-Nine with all of us in that shimmying wreck.

This would be no place to be without blues, jazz—Thank you/mvtoto the Africans, the Europeans sitting in, especially Adolphe Sax with his saxophones... Don't forget that at the center is the Mvskoke ceremonial circles. We know how to swing. We keep the heartbeat of the earth in our stomp dance feet.

You might try dancing theory with a bustle, or a jingle dress, or with turtles strapped around your legs. You might try wearing colonization like a heavy gold chain around a pimp's neck.

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