ECCOLA: Environmentally Concerned
Citizens of Lakeland Areas
P.O. Box 537
Minoqua, Wisconsin 54548
FAX (715)356-2850
ECCOLA Letter To The Editor
In recent announcements for a series of
statewide public hearings about changes to Wisconsin’s mining groundwater
law, NR-182, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) claims that
there is no question that proposed changes to NR-182 will subject mining
operations to the same groundwater rules as other types of facilities around
the state. This claim is not true.
The crucial issue is the part of the law that
deals with the Compliance Boundary. It sets a distance for the perimeter
of a circular area around a pollution source, whereby an operator of a
facility must first be in compliance with groundwater protection standards
for over 100 pollutants. Inside of the Compliance Boundary, groundwater
will have to be monitored, but as the law currently reads, a mining company
will not be compelled to meet groundwater protection standards if it can
claim a technical or economic hardship. In reality, large compliance
boundaries permit large-scale groundwater contamination.
While groundwater pollution sources for all other
industries and municipalities besides mining are subject to a Compliance
Boundary of zero feet or 150 feet for solid waste disposal sites, mining
is still granted special lenient treatment Under the so-called, "revised"
NR -182 , the compliance boundary for mines and mine waste disposal sites
remains 1200 feet. This distance allows a mining company to contaminate
the aquifer in a 26 acre area around a pollution source. For the proposed
Crandon mine and its 365 acre tailings dump, a 1200 foot compliance boundary
means that Exxon would be legally permitted to contaminate nearly 400 acres
of precious groundwater beneath and adjacent to the tailings dump.
Given the fact that the 1200 foot compliance boundary has not changed,
the DNR’s public assertion that mining will now be subject to the
same groundwater standards as other industries has no rational basis. The
DNR’s biased treatment in favor of mining is especially noteworthy in light
of its insistence that mine waste disposal facilities are no different
than solid waste landfills. For example, in a June 13, 1994 letter
from Secretary George Meyer to former Public Intervenor Laura Sutherland,
Secretary Meyer wrote in response to her request that the DNR hire a tailings
expert, "I believe that the containment systems for sulfide mineral tailings
are no more complex than those used for industrial and hazardous waste
facilities. "
Although mining companies will have to monitor
groundwater at mines and mine waste facilities for pollutants, the "manage
the contamination approach" taken in NR-182 is extremely risky in
dealing with the pollution problems associated with enormous quantities
of mine waste. For example, when the liner beneath Exxon’s proposed
22 million ton, 365 acre tailings dump eventually leaks, fixing the
problems under such a mountain of waste would be both economically and
technically impractical. That is why pollution prevention through the toughest
possible facility design standards is the only practical approach to preventing
groundwater contamination.
The DNR’s false claims reveal that politics instead
of pollution prevention is the driving force behind Wisconsin’s "revised"
mining groundwater law. The call to revise NR-182 came at the behest
of Rep. Lorraine Seratti and other northern Wisconsin Republican
legislators. Subsequently, DNR Secretary George Meyer formed an ad-hoc
Metallic Mining Advisory Council that included Crandon Mining Company and
Kennecott Copper Co. executives to draft revisions and offer advise to
the DNR.
The pro-mining make-up of the ad hoc council shows
a troubling DNR policy of formally sanctioning conflicts of interest. That
is why ECCOLA declined an invitation to serve on the Metallic Mining Advisory
Council. ECCOLA will not justify clear conflicts of interest by serving
as a token environmental presence on biased committees where mining executives
help write the laws that will later regulate their behavior. Although the
DNR may accurately claim that polluters often serve on committees that
write or rewrite natural resource laws, we do not believe that tradition
or any other reason justifies such a clear conflict of interest.
If the current "revised" NR-182 becomes law, its
very likely that in the next election, some of the politicians that requested
changes to NR-182 will be touting their commitment to protecting the environment.
Nothing could be further from the truth. NR-182 legalizes groundwater contamination.
Citizens should be aware that the entire groundwater law revision process
for mining merely serves as a convenient smokescreen for politicians
who do not want to sign the Mining Moratorium Bill. It has wasted the taxpayers
money and it provides another example of Wisconsin’s loophole-ridden mining
laws. Again, it proves why the Mining Moratorium Bill is the only
sensible solution to protection our precious groundwaters from metallic
mining.
