What’s Mine is Mine

A few side notes to the previous post.

Weren’t Godfrey & Kahn the firm the Republicans used to redistrict the state legislature  in secret? Well, it just shows how effective they can be when the interests of their clients are at stake.

And didn’t the Bad River band run into a little trouble themselves? over wastewater treatment? Now the paper says Cline’s hands – I should say lands – are not the cleanest either. But prior bad acts are not the issue here; they may not even be admissible in court.

Of course the band would have to prove the likelihood of violations or other harm before construction of the mine could be blocked. But nobody really knows what’s in the body of ore except Gogebic. Are there sulfides or not? It’s a closely guarded secret about which the legislature appears to have been irresponsibly incurious. My hunch is, if there were none, Gogebic would be only too happy to prove it so. No worries! But no proof either.

Here’s something for the general public to do and see.

I grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, in Dickinson County, site of the long-shuttered Groveland Mine. They made taconite pellets there as well. I guess they remediated the site too – more or less – according to the requirements of the times.

But it sure doesn’t look like it on Google. A plume of tailings is invading what seems to be a retention pond that drains into the Pine Creek. The water flows from there into the Sturgeon and Menominee Rivers (Google has them mislabeled the Iron River; I filed a report of error) and finally Green Bay. Nothing seems to be growing on the lands where the tailings were dumped – it’s now at least 30 years since the mining stopped – unless the vegetation is grey.

Google Groveland Mine, Felch, Michigan. You’ll see an oval body of water (the mine pit) surrounded by fields of tailings, access roads, etc. A bit south of the biggest such fields are irregularly shaped retention ponds, the easternmost of which clearly shows the plume. Pine Creek runs away south and east from there, while the West Branch of the Sturgeon runs alongside Highway 69 north of the mine site. They seem to have kept the tailings out of that stream, but I can’t say for sure what the smaller roundish shapes just north of the mine pit represent.

Local note: North of Highway 69 not far from the mine is North Dickinson High School, new when I was a kid and built no doubt with property taxes on the mine and the homes the fathers and grandfathers of the current students could afford when the mine was in operation. But where will the current students go to work? That’s just the way mines are. Fortunately, trees are still growing…except not on the site of the mine.

It’s pretty ugly from outer space. People who are unsympathetic to the Chippewa ought to look at it before they settle their judgments.

That’s another thing. Suppose the band does block the mine, or that litigation drags on. Who are the shiftless unemployed individuals who inhabit the taverns and hunting shacks of the North Woods going to blame? Not their shiftless selves. Racial violence has erupted from less potent causes.

But that’s mere speculation. It doesn’t constitute a reason supporting either side of the argument. Yet the band has proven to be well organized to carry out what used to be called demonstrations, and before that agitation, but now has the character and name of public relations. And maybe that will be the field of combat until the permitting process is done.

We’ll see which side is compelled to litigate at that point. Meanwhile it’s amusing to consider that a bill designed to accelerate permitting is so deeply flawed on the point of Native American rights that it will only delay it. It’s just as well; the lawyers were already rich.