ECCOLA on Interbasin Transfer

ECCOLA's letter to Sen. Kohl on Interbasin Transfer

April 14, 1997

The Honorable Senator Herbert Kohl
Hart Senate Office Building
Suite 330
Washington D.C., 20501

Dear Senator Kohl:

The members of the Environmentally Concerned Citizens of the Lakeland Area (ECCOLA--260 member organization based out of Minocqua) are writing you to express some of our concerns about the Crandon Mining Company’s (CMC) proposed interbasin water transfer.

As you may know, Exxon Corporation along with Rio Algom, Ltd., have formed a subsidiary called the Crandon Mining Company. Over a thirty year period, CMC plans to mine 55 million tons of copper-zinc ore in Northeast Wisconsin. Over the life of the project, CMC plans to transfer between 1 and 2 million gallons of water per day from the Wolf River watershed (Great Lakes) to the Wisconsin River watershed (Mississippi) with a 38 mile sewerpipe. This water would consist of treated wastewater from tailings disposal sites and ore concentration facilities, as well as water from mine dewatering pumps.

We believe that CMC’s interbasin transfer falls under the authority of Section 1109 of the Water Resources Development Act (WRDC) of 1986. As you know, under the WRDC, any diversion of Great Lakes water outside the Great Lakes watershed requires unanimous consent of all eight Great Lakes States’ Governors.

The members of ECCOLA urge you to contact the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and urge it to apply the diversion prohibition of Section 1109 of the Water Resources Development ACT to CMC’s proposed wastewater discharge from Crandon to the Wisconsin River.

A ruling favorable to CMC would set a damaging precedent. If CMC is not forced to comply with the WRDA, then in the future, any entity desiring Great Lakes water can just drill a well in the watershed and divert it to anywhere where a market exists for the water.

The members of ECCOLA share the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent assessment that the WRDA should be applied to CMC’s proposed diversion. In an August 2, 1996 preliminary review of CMC’s mining proposal sent to Colonel Wonsik of the U.S. Army Corp. Of Engineers, EPA stated. "EPA is presently in support of the opinion that the Water Resources Development Act of 1986, Prohibition of Great Lakes Diversion, applies to the proposed mine groundwater discharge, via 38 mile pipeline, to the Wisconsin River and is more stringent that [sic] the Wisconsin Statutes, which mirror the Great Lakes Charter." In addition, EPA noted that the WRDA does not make an artificial distinction between surface or groundwater with regard to the diversion prohibition.

To evade the authority of the WRDA, CMC also invokes a groundless semantic argument by claiming that diversion is not a "use of Great Lakes waters outside the basin." CMC claims that dewatering the mine and polluting the wastewater is performed within the Great Lakes basin and that, discharging the polluted wastewater outside of the basin should not be considered a "use." We believe that this argument is fallacious for several reasons.

CMC is using water from the Great Lakes Basin to transport pollutants from its tailings management area and ore processing facility to the Wisconsin River. Without their proposed 38 mile pipeline, CMC would have to clean its wastewater to higher standards in order to discharge it into the Wolf River watershed, thereby incurring higher treatment costs.
The important issue is that the WRDA specifically refers to diversion of waters and not whether such waters have a clearly identifiable "use."
It is difficult to imagine how pumping water against the force of gravity to divert it outside of its watershed could not be a considered a "use." Is CMC merely pumping an estimated 1 to 2 million gallons of wastewater per day to the Wisconsin River for aesthetic reasons?

For these reasons and others, the members of ECCOLA urge you to apply the Diversion Prohibition of the WRDA to CMC’s proposed wastewater diversion from the Wolf River watershed to the Wisconsin River watershed. As you may know, other attempts to divert Great Lakes water since 1986 have been opposed by Great Lakes States’ Governors on the grounds that they wanted to avoid setting damaging precedents. If CMC’s diversion is permitted, it could set several damaging precedents that would have repercussions on water resource policy throughout the Great Lakes watershed.

Senator Carl Levin of Michigan has already contacted the Honorable Martin Lancaster of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and urged him to apply Section 1109 of the Water Resources Development Act to CMC’s proposed discharge. From both an ecological and economic perspective, we believe that it is imperative that Senators from the Great Lakes States stand together to protect regional water rights.

Thank you for your attention to this request. Please let us know as soon as possible how you plan to proceed.

Sincerely,

(Signed)

John Schwarzmann
President, ECCOLA