Iron Mines, Toxicity, and Indigenous Communities in the Lake Superior Basin
DRAFT: please do not distribute without permission
Nancy Langston, Department of Social Sciences and Great Lakes Research
Center, Michigan Technological University, Houghton MI, USA.
Email: [email protected]
Abstract: Decisions about mine permitting are not purely scientific or technical
decisions; at heart, they are social decisions based, in part, on conflicting interpretations
of history. This essay explores iron mining, toxicity, and indigenous communities in the
Lake Superior Basin of North America. Unlike gold or nickel mines, it is possible for
iron mines to release relatively few toxic wastes. Some, but not all, iron mines release
sulfides into the water, which create acidic drainage issues that mobilize toxics into the
watershed. Some, but not all, iron mines include processing facilities that release mercury
into the atmosphere, where it then mobilizes into the larger environment as
methylmercury and bioaccumulates in fish. Some, but not all, iron mines tailings destroy
local wetlands and aquatic habitat. Whether or not a particular iron mine has these
consequences depends partly on the geologic context, in particular the composition of the
overburden (the rocks that cover the ore deposit). However, it’s not the geology alone
that leads to toxic consequences; social and political decisions about how to interact with
that geology ultimately shape toxic outcomes. In the Lake Superior basin, conflicts over
indigenous land tenure rights and past toxic exposures continue to play central roles in
current mining controversies.
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Introduction
The Lake Superior basin is not part of the Arctic. But, like the Arctic, it’s a
northern landscape that has been framed by colonial powers as an empty, remote place
crying for development. Like the Arctic, the last four years have witnessed an intense
mining boom within the basin, with little attention paid to the watershed-scale
environmental issues involved in extractive industries. Like much of the Arctic, the Lake
Superior basin is an inhabited landscape where indigenous peoples have lived since the
retreat of the ice thousands of years ago.
But across the far north, indigenous peoples and their land tenure rights are often
rendered invisible in debates over extraction versus wilderness protection. This
invisibility has a history, of course. For centuries, urban centers of power have framed the
boreal north as uninhabited and remote, hoping thereby to promote colonization of the
region for its resources. Open pit iron mines proposed for Sámi territory in the ore-rich
landscape near Kiruna, Sweden (where I recently did research), and Anishinabeg
territories in the Lake Superior basin, continued to be justified by similar logic. From
both the Swedish and the Wisconsin governments’ perspectives, mining is inevitable
because the world needs iron ore for steel and communities need mining profits to thrive.
But from Sámi and Anishinabeg perspectives, proposed open-pit iron mines would make
it impossible to continue their cultural and ecological practices.
Because I have recently published a separate essay that explores open pit iron
mining in Sápmi, the rest of this this chapter focuses on Lake Superior and the
Anishinabeg.1 In the workshop, I hope we have time to discuss similarities and contrasts
across the north.
Lake Superior Iron Mining
Iron has been mined in the Lake Superior basin since the late 19th century, and by
World War II, over 80% of American iron ore came from the region. Yet, while iron
mining is certainly part of the region’s recent history, proposals by a company named
Gogebic Taconite (GTAC) for a new iron mine just upstream of the Bad River Band of
Lake Superior Anishinabeg’s reservation have raised intense opposition from indigenous
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communities. The proposed mine lies on one side of a legal boundary, but waters flow
across those boundaries to contaminate water, fish, and people throughout a complex
watershed.2
If permits are approved, the GTAC mine would become the world’s largest openpit mine. While it would lie outside the reservation (Figure 1), it would be located within
ceded territories—where the tribes retained hunting, fishing, gathering, and comanagement rights when they signed the 19th century treaties enabling white settlement.
(Figure 2).
).
Figure 1. Location of the proposed GTAC mine in relation to the Bad River Reservation.
Credit: Wisconsin Academy, 2012.
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Figure 2. Ceded territories of the Lake Superior Ojibwe. Credit: Great Lakes Indian Fish
and Wildlife Commission
The Bad River runs through the potential mine site before entering the 16,000acre Kakagon-Bad River Sloughs--the largest undeveloped wetland complex in the upper
Great Lakes (Figure 3). In 2012, this was designated as a Ramsar Site, recognizing it as a
wetland of international importance. The Convention noted that “as the only remaining
extensive coastal wild rice bed in the Great Lakes region, it is critical to ensuring the
genetic diversity of Lake Superior wild rice.”3
The sloughs make up 40% of the remaining wetlands on Lake Superior’s coast,
and they contain the largest natural wild rice beds in the entire world. For members of the
Bad River Band, these wild rice beds are central to their identity. When the Anishinabeg
migrated westward in the 1660s century fleeing colonial upheavals in the Saint Lawrence
River valley, the ancestors of the Bad River Band chose to make their homes along the
Kakagon Sloughs Superior because the wild rice beds they found there had figured
heavily in their visions. In the sloughs, they found manoomin, ‘the food that grows on
water’, which they continue to see as a “sacred gift from the Creator.”4
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Figure 3. Kakagon-Bad River Sloughs, Bad River Band Reservation, Lake Superior basin.
Credit: Nature Conservancy.
The wild rice became the major portion of their subsistence, and fisheries
supported by the sloughs became equally important for subsistence and for economic
development (Figure 4). For the tribe today, the wild rice and the clean waters that
support wild rice represent more than economic sustenance; they are the source of
spiritual sustenance as well. Wild rice is extremely sensitive to sulfates in the watershed,
which are often (but not always) mobilized by taconite mines. Band members argue that
stopping the mine is of central importance for their survival, not just to ensure thriving
wild rice beds and fisheries, but also to sustain the connection with the past that is at the
core of their cultural identity. As Mike Wiggins, Jr., chairman of the Bad River Band of
Lake Superior Chippewa, testified to legislators: “We are 75% water from aquifers
deeper than 1,000 feet that you’re not holding GTac accountable for. Because we’re
directly downstream and set to endure the impacts of this project, we view this as an
imminent threat. We view this as an act of genocide.”5
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Figure 4. Wild ricing remains an important part of Anishinabeg life. Credit: Tim Tynan.
In contrast, many white residents of nearby communities such as Hurley
Wisconsin (Figure 5) argue that the proposed mine is the only thing that can rescue them
from the economic devastation that followed the closure of local hematite iron mines in
the 1960s. Hurley lies upstream of the proposed mine, so the town would not be directly
affected by the water issues (although changes to Lake Superior water quality would
affect the town indirectly). Denying permits for the proposed mine, Hurley residents
argue, would amount to a form of economic suicide.
As John Sandlos and Arn Keeling have argued for Pine Point Canada, “complex
and contested meanings or place and community” are common at mining sites…While
regarded by ‘outsiders’ as brutal, degraded or even toxic, former mining landscapes may
be touchstones of community identity and memory and provide both material and cultural
resources for economic recovery or even political resistance.”6 This is certainly true for
iron mines in the Lake Superior basin. Different communities within the basin have quite
different interpretations of that mining past, and these views about the past help to shape
their perspectives on current mining proposals.
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Figure 5. Locations of taconite mining and community sites discussed in essay: proposed
GTAC mine (A); Bad River Reservation (B); Hurley WI (C); Reserve Mine (D). Credit:
Google Maps.
Lake Superior Ore Bodies
While many Euroamerican locals see iron mining as part of their past, the
differences between types of iron ore are typically obscured in the retellings of history.
Yet these differences are critical for both environmental and social consequences. Briefly,
iron ore in the Lake Superior basin falls into two types: concentrated ore (generally
hematite) and low-grade ore (taconite). Hematite, at 60 to 70% iron, needed little
processing before shipping, had high labor demands, and was usually mined underground.
Taconite, in contrast, was more abundant in the region but much less concentrated (20 to
25% iron in an ore body). Mining taconite requires enormous open pits, extensive
technological and financial investments, quantities of water, and minimal human labor.7
The Penokee Range, site of the proposed GTAC mine, lie in what’s now northern
Wisconsin. Once the center of a thriving—but brief—hematite mining economy followed
by clearcutting, the forests have now grown back, enough that one environmental group
can write that the Penokees “form the heart of one of the most isolated, pristine and
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scenic portions of the state.” The first phase of the proposed GTAC taconite mine would
create a pit 5 miles long and 1000 feet deep. Eventually, plans call for 22 miles along the
ridge of the Penokees to be carved off. The techniques bear little resemblance to the deep
shaft mining for hematite that was the basis of the region’s mining history. Rather, this
would become the first “mountain top removal” mine in the upper Great Lakes region. As
one anti-mining activist writes: “Gogebic Taconite (GTac) has grandiose plans: To blow
them to smithereens with a series of 5.5 million-pound explosives – each similar to the
impact of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima - in order to extract low-grade iron known as
taconite. Waste rock with the potential to leech billions of gallons of sulfuric acid from
what would be the largest open pit iron mine in the world could be dumped into Caroline
Lake, as well as many other lakes, streams and wetlands in the area.”8 While the rhetoric
here may seem exaggerated, the details are not.
Figure 6. Iron Ranges in the Lake Superior basin. The proposed GTAC mine would be in
the Gogebic Range; the Reserve Mine was in the Mesabi Range. Credit: Wisconsin
Academy 2012.
The proposed mine would target an iron formation in the Gogebic Range (Figure
6) called the Ironwood Formation, which is a significant ore deposit in the national and
indeed global context. Best estimates suggest that the Ironwood Formation contains at
least 3.7 billion tons of taconite ore that could be mined economically, or 20% of known
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iron ore deposits in the United States. This translates into one billion tons of steel, or 66
years of domestic supply.9
This is such a enormous deposit, GTAC argues, that it is inevitable that it will be
mined. The language of inevitability figures heavily into the pro-mining discussions. But,
as US Steel decided three decades ago when it did bulk sampling and then decided not to
mine, its geological context makes it an extremely difficult ore deposit to exploit without
losing money.10 The rock is very hard (meaning you need enormous blasting capabilities),
and the deposit is tilted at a 65 degree angle, overlaid with 200 to 300 meters of
overburden, and banded with quartzite and shale—all details that require extensive
energy and infrastructure for extracting economic ore (Figure 7).
Figure 7. The Ironwood Formation. Credits: Wisconsin Academy11
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Environmental regulations for mines were much looser in the 1980s, and GTAC
has never mined taconite. How then can GTAC plan to mine such a deposit, when US
Steel decided it was impossible three decades ago?12 The simplest ways to mine taconite
cheaply are to reduce labor and environmental costs. And that’s what GTAC began to do
in 2011, when rising steel prices in Asia made formerly uneconomic ore bodies seem
plausible again. New, enormous mining machines had been developed that could extract
up to 200 tons of rock out of the mine in a single load, thus lowering labor costs.13
Reducing environmental costs would be possible if the industry could block the
implementation of new federal standards that limit mercury emissions from the stacks.
And if a company could persuade a state to exempt the industry from water quality
regulations, tailings could be dumped cheaply into streams and wetlands.
Toxicity and Taconite
In the past three years, GTAC has done its best to present taconite as a safe ore to
mine with minimal toxicity concerns. It’s so safe and so pure, GTAC insisted to the
Wisconsin legislature, that the state should quickly pass a new law exempting taconite
mining from Wisconsin’s environmental regulations.14 The argument had two parts: first,
because taconite itself rarely contains iron sulfides or pyrites—which can produce acid
mine drainage—it’s pure. Second, the extraction process uses magnets and clean water,
not hydrosulfuric acid (as Bill Williams, GTAC’s lead engineer, testified at one hearing).
Technically, both these details may be correct, but the conclusion that follows
(therefore taconite mining has no toxicity concerns) ignores the larger geological and
biological context of taconite within a watershed. First, taconite is a low-concentration
iron ore, and to extract that valuable part, the rest of the rock (the tailings) must be
crushed to a fine dust, mixed with water, then dewatered and stacked in piles or dumped
into water. These tailings particles are quite easily eroded by wind and water, and from
there they become mobilized into the watershed. At least 70% of the volume of the
Ironwood Formation would be turned into waste and fine tailings, and the waste for the
initial 4 mile stage of mining alone would create a pile “600 million cubic yards” in size,
stretching one mile square, 600 feet high.”15
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Second, there’s the problem of that 200 to 300 meters of so-called “overburden”:
the rock on top of the taconite itself, and the world on top of that rock. The very term
overburden suggests that a living ecosystem—forests, forbs, birds, habitat, streams, the
many different communities within the soil, the layers of rock that lies under the soil—is
nothing but a burden that blocks the true resource, taconite. The tribe has increasingly
resisted the terminology of mining, arguing that it renders invisible the interconnected
biological, geological, and hydrological communities that sustain their community.16
While the taconite may not contain pyrites and iron sulfide, the rock on top of it
contains quite a bit of both. And there’s no way to get to that taconite without
transforming the landscape into something that can cause acid mine drainage. GTAC
denies the presence of pyritic ores in the formation (and the company has refused to
allow the state, the tribes, or local citizens to view the samples that GTAC obtained from
US Steel). However, as long ago as 1929 the Wisconsin Geological Survey reported that
pyrite is associated with local ore and waste rock, and a USGS report concluded the same
thing in 2009. When ground to a fine dust (as required for taconite extraction), then
exposed to oxygen and water, pyrites create sulfuric acid, that leaches harmful metals
such as lead, arsenic, and mercury that mobilize into groundwater and surface water.
Acid mine drainage represents an interesting mixture of natural and constructed
toxicities. Many rock formations contain heavy metals that would be toxic if they were
mobilized into biological systems. Typically, they’re bound in stable formations, where
they don’t move into the atmosphere or the water supply on times scales that matter for
biological life. (Over millions of years, of course, they do mobilize, so we’re talking
about a matter of scale—spatial and temporal). But when acid conditions are present,
those chemicals and heavy metals do become mobilized into biological systems. Wild
rice is particularly sensitive to even extremely low levels of acidic drainage, creating
enormous concerns for the tribes.17
Mercury is released from the emissions stacks during taconite processing, and it
is now the primary source of mercury in Lake Superior, surpassing deposition from coal
plants. Asbestos-form fibers are also released from taconite processing when gruniform
minerals are present (as they are in the Penokees), and similar asbestos-form fibers have
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been linked with three-fold increases in mesothelioma in the Minnesota iron range close
to taconite mines.
Mining, microbial ecology, and mercury interrelate in complex ways in the
watershed. When mining exposes natural metal sulfides in ore bodies to air and water,
oxidation results, leading to acid drainage. Microbes exist in many rocks, but usually in
low numbers because lack of water and oxygen keeps them from reproducing. However,
during the disturbance from mining, those microbes get exposed to water and oxygen, so
their numbers multiply, and they form colonies which can greatly accelerate the
acidification processes. These sulfates also encourage conversion of elemental mercury
(not particularly toxic) to methylmercury (extremely lethal), which then bio-accumulates
in fish tissue, and from there makes its way into wildlife and people.
Similar taconite mines in Minnesota continue to leach mercury and sulfates into
wild rice beds, decades after closure. Historical studies have shown that wild rice was
once abundant in the upper St. Louis River watershed (above Duluth) before the 1950s,
when taconite mining boomed. Currently, sulfate levels are high in the St. Louis River,
and wild rice stands are few and stunted. The tailings basin once owned by LTV Taconite
still leaches sulfates and other contaminates into the St. Louis River, and from there into
Lake Superior.
Elsewhere on the north shore, a tailings basin owned by Minntac is leaching 3
million gallons per day of sulfates and related pollutants into two watersheds. While
Minnesota has a sulfate limit of 10 mg/l (to protect wild rice), the MN governmental
agencies have been slow to require taconite operations to meet state water quality
standards, and legislators in Minnesota have proposed instead to increase the limit to 250
mg/l, the level that’s safe for adults to drink.
The Dunka mine, a taconite mine near Babbitt MN, was covered with sulfide rock
similar to the overburden present in the Penokees. Its history suggests some of the
difficulties of containing pyritic materials. A company named LTV Steel operated the
Dunka mine from 1964 to 1994, piling up more than 20 million tons of waste rock 80 to
100 feet high, for almost a mile in length. These waste piles began leaching copper,
nickel and other metals into wetlands and streams almost immediately. Decades later, an
average of 300,000 to 500,000 gallons continues to run off them each month, according
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to MPCA documents. Between 2005 and 2010, the runoff had violated state water
standards nearly 300 times, yet rather than force the company to spend the money to stop
the toxic runoff, the MPCA fined the company that now owns the site (Duluth Metals
Limited) $58,000—a cost of doing business that is far cheaper for the company than
cleaning up the tailings. Yet this tainted water flows into the Boundary Waters Canoe
Area, a famous wilderness area that is supposed to be protected from toxic discharges.
What can these histories of mine problems tell communities that are trying to
decide about new mine proposals? Christopher Dundas, chair of Duluth Metals Limited,
argues that historical problems have no bearing on or relevance to the future proposed
mines. "This is a completely different era than what happened in the '60s," said Dundas.
"Our operation will be state of the art and will be totally planned and designed to
absolutely minimize every environmental issue." History is irrelevant, in other words.
But to advocates for the Boundary Waters, history matters. One opponent fears that
problems with the Dunka mine are “an indicator of problems to come” from proposed
mines. A former state employee, Bruce Johnson, who regulated Dunka and other local
mining issues, told reporters that “he fears that state agencies will shortcut environmental
rules because of the intense political pressure to approve mines and put people to work. ‘I
want to have good jobs, too, but I want to do it right,’ Johnson said. ‘These guys are
going to make multi-millions of dollars. We don't want to be left with a bunch of mining
pits full of polluted water that even ducks won't land on.’” 18
Mining efforts in the Gogebic Range
Some environmental groups opposed to the GTAC mine argue that the Lake
Superior basin and the Gogebic Range in particular are essentially pristine and should
never be mined. Residents of former iron-mining communities argue just the opposite:
they say this has long been an iron mining area, so it should continue to be one. Why do
different groups have such different interpretations of the past, and how do these
contested stories affect current policy disputes?
Mining in the Lake Superior basin is not new, but the technologies for extensive
extraction are recent. The first records of ore extraction date from thousands of years ago,
with indigenous mining of copper ores on the Keweenaw Peninsula. Indians had
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exploited the mineral resources of the Keweenaw Peninsula on Lake Superior for at least
seven thousand years, soon after the last glacier retreated. In the 1840s, word of copper
deposits on the Keweenaw Peninsula spread to the east coast and Europe.
Thousands of miners poured into the basin from Cornwall (where mines were
laying off workers), eastern Europe, Italy, Finland, and elsewhere in the Americas. The
federal government negotiated the Treaty of La Pointe in 1842 with the Anishinabeg
nations, which required them to cede northern Wisconsin and the western half of the
Upper Peninsula to the United States. Mining companies immediately moved into the
area, exploiting first copper and then the rich iron ore deposits.
In the Gogebic range, an 1848 report by A. Randall described the presence of
hematite iron ore, and extraction began in 1886. Over in Minnesota, on the Mesabi Range,
iron mining began with discovery of hematite iron ore in 1865, production in 1885, and
rapid expansion through the 1890s (Figure 6). In both places, mining efforts targeted the
high-grade hematite ores that were concentrated and did not require extensive processing
before being shipped through the Great Lakes to steel mills.19
By the early 20th century, fully “85% of domestic ore production” came from soft,
high-grade hematite ore mines on the US side of the Lake Superior basin, in Michigan,
Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Forty underground mines worked Wisconsin’s Ironwood
formation between 1877 and 1967, extracting 325 million tons which were shipped
through the Great Lakes to blast furnaces.20 Mining towns such as Hurley, Ironwood, Iron
River, and Montreal boomed briefly during the hematite era.
To reach the high grade hematite deposits, miners dug deep shaft mines propped
up with timbers from local forests. Waste rocks were dumped near the mines, and some
of these piles remain visible today. Environmentally, these mines did have consequences:
the shafts had to be de-watered to keep them from filling in with ground water, and
pumping the water from shafts into local streams had some effect on watershed ecology,
presumably. Some heavy metals were exposed to air, oxidizing and increasing the
mobility of toxic metals into ecosystems and human bodies. Yet these consequences were
much less extensive than open pit taconite mining. As soon as the boom collapsed, first
alder then maple trees grew back, hiding the shaft holes and cloaking some of the slag
piles, allowing many people to imagine the forests as pristine and untouched.
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The 19th century mining boom had significant effects on tribal communities.
When the Anishinabeg were forced onto reservations to make the rest of the region
available to miners, tribal communities were devastated. Native women were pressed into
prostitution at the mining towns of Hurley and Ironwood (Hurley still has bars with cages
where Indian women were forced to dance for the miners. In 1938, the St. Paul Pioneer
press reported that “ in Hurley, they find 80 of 115 business are taverns….Local bosses
run the city but their names are seldom mentioned, for it is safer not to talk or snoop in
Hurley.”21 Diseases, poverty, and despair undermined many of the Anishinabeg
communities, as happened in many other northern mining towns.
Yet despite coercion such as the 1850 Sandy Lake tragedy (the forced relocation
that resulted in the deaths of about 400 Lake Superior Anishinabeg in 1850), the
Anishinabeg successfully defended their right to remain on their homeland and its waters.
They retained usufruct rights to the ceded territories, making certain that their members
could continue to hunt, fish, and gather in perpetuity. These treaty rights have become
central to the governance of mining conflicts in recent decades.
Depletion and Taconite
As early as the 1890s, mining engineers had argued that while surface deposits of
the concentrated hematite appeared limited, beneath them lay extensive deposits of
taconite. Hematite, in fact, is closely related to taconite, for it represents “the oxidized
and purified surface weathering product of the much more extensive but lower grade
taconite ore beneath.”22 Taconite was much more extensive, but because it lies buried
under deep rock, and because it’s such a low grade ore, most engineers in the 19th century
assumed it would always be difficult to mine cost-effectively. Yet one early engineering
booster in 1894 pointed out the most significant economic advantage to taconite: “As
there is no pumping, no hoisting, no timbering, and as most of the work is done by
machinery, no skilled miners are required and few men of any kind. The cost of mining is
therefore very low.”23 Today, Hurley citizens who argue for new taconite mines frame
their arguments in terms of jobs and prosperity, even from the earliest promotion of
taconite as a regional resource, the point for the companies was how low the labor costs
would be.
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By the end of World War II, fears of depletion of the concentrated hematite ore
had become common in the literature. The war effort had demanded significant quantities
of iron ore, and during the war, the range had supplied 2/3 of the ore for the US military.
After the war, a chorus of journalistic and engineering voices warned that America would
soon run out of vital natural resources. Resource depletion, of course, is a cultural
construct mediated by technology, rather than an absolute measure of a quantity of a
resource. If all you have is a spoon, an ore body will be depleted for you as soon as the
loose surface ore is scooped up. But if you have the 5.5 million-pound explosives that
taconite operations now use, you can access entire ore bodies that were essentially
invisible in earlier accounts of minerals, because they were deemed impossible to mine.
Depletion fears were as much about political fears as about resource dependency.
US iron and steel companies had developed extensive networks of international iron
sources during the war.24 Canada and the St. Lawrence Seaway played key roles in
changing iron ore politics when, as the economist Kakela approvingly noted in 1978,
“rich ores were discovered on Canada's Labrador-Quebec border and exploited by the
Iron Ore Company of Canada, created in 1949 by Hanna Mining Company of Cleveland,
Ohio. With the subsequent opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, Canadian ore
could be shipped more economically to steel mills bordering the Great Lakes.”25
By 1950, engineers were insisting that hematite depletion on the iron range
demanded new funds, new tax policies, and relaxed environmental standards in order to
ensure American national security. For example, in a 1950 issue of Science Newsletter,
the journalist Ann Ewing reminded readers that two world wars had depleted American
hematite ore, and therefore it was essential that taconite be developed, lest the nation
become vulnerable to foreign manipulation.26 Ewing admitted that taconite development
had significant environmental costs—particularly given that 48 tons of water would be
needed for every ton of iron produced. Moreover, “the disposal of tailings presents a
problem. They could be dumped on the ground, but it would take vast areas to
accommodate them.”27 Recognizing that fishermen might objected to tailings in the lake
that sustained the fisheries they relied upon, Ewing suggested that tailings in water might
not seem ideal, but perhaps “the sand thus added to the lake will be helpful for the
spawning of fish.”28
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Depletion concerns in the Lake Superior basin were embedded in specific
political contexts, intended to generate pressure for government funds and new tax
policies that would benefit taconite mines over direct shipping ore mines. But even
though engineers and politicians warned about depletion, local miners on the iron range
were often skeptical of the hematite depletion claims, because they argued that ore
companies were simply hiding their knowledge of new ore bodies in order to avoid
paying taxes on them.29
The most important mining engineer on Minnesota’s Iron Range, Edward Davis,
was a long time booster of taconite. He worked for decades to persuade a skeptical public
that taconite ores could be processed cost effectively, thus replacing hematite supplies.
Davis borrowed technologies developed in the western copper mines to recover lowgrade ores. The historian Jeffrey Manuel notes that Davis “did not invent the technologies
used in taconite milling from scratch. When he began working on low-grade iron ore in
1913, he drew from technical developments in ore concentrating and milling that had
revolutionized the mining and minerals industry since the mid-nineteenth century. In
mining regions around the globe, inventive engineers and metallurgists developed
techniques to efficiently and profitably recover metals from complex, low-grade ores.”30
Davis initially borrowed processes that had been developed to work the low grade copper
deposits of Utah, recognizing that taconite was more like the western low grade copper
ores than eastern U.S. iron ore deposits.31
With taconite, mining for iron ore was to become less a simple matter of
extracting some valuable ore from the ground (dangerous for miners, certainly, but less
traumatic for the environment), and far more a case of manufacturing production. As
Timothy LeCain argues in Mass Destruction, the development of open pit mining
involved several key elements including a rationalized, an enviro-technical system, and
significant environmental destruction. Mining for copper—and eventually for taconite—
became dominated by large corporations using enormous machines to extract low-grade
deposits from open pits. As Sandlos and Keeling note in their essay on Pine Point, the
consequences could be devastating.32
While Davis’s engineering experiments were successful at extracting and
concentrating taconite, investors were unimpressed, because he couldn’t make taconite
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cheap enough to compete with hematite. Davis’s investors abandoned the effort in
1924.33 As Manuel argues, Davis realized that scientific knowledge alone was not enough
for taconite to prevail. He began to lobby the legislature for tax changes that would
encourage taconite processing by reducing the taxes that taconite companies paid,
particularly taxes directed toward local communities.34 Iron deposits in Minnesota had
long been subject to state and local taxes intended to keep capital invested within the
region. Local impact funds, based on occupation taxes charged on every ton of ore mined,
paid for schools, roads, and utilities. The goal was to develop an educated citizenry who
could create new economic opportunities when the mines shut down.
Politicians on the iron range initially opposed changes to the tax code, fearing that
they would deplete the range communities of their fair share of the prosperity brought by
mining profits. Davis then promoted the tax cuts directly to iron-range residents, arguing
that “a tax code conducive to corporate investment, specifically investment in taconite,
would help local miners” by providing jobs.35 In essence, he promised abundant jobs
through taconite, even though the companies themselves—particularly US Steel—
pointed out that taconite mines probably would not sustain a significant labor force.
Nevertheless, the Minnesota legislature was persuaded by Davis to adopt a tax code that
shifted more of the costs of mining to communities and the profits to industry.36 These
new laws did what engineering alone could not do: allow taconite production to boom.37
As soon as the tax laws were revised, investment in taconite mining boomed in
Minnesota.38 Companies moved to create the infrastructure that would enable them to
exploit the vast taconite reserves along the north shore.39 Elsewhere in the Lake Superior
basin, however, the boom in Minnesota taconite production had devastating
consequences. The hematite iron mines in Wisconsin and Michigan soon closed, because
taconite prices—with the new Minnesota tax policies—could undercut hematite prices.
Manuel writes: “Once steelmakers embraced pelletized iron ore as a superior product for
making iron and steel, existing high-grade, natural ore mines faced slumping demand and
lower prices. Consequently, the workers and communities surrounding such mines
suffered significant economic hardship because they could not compete with taconite, and
entire mining districts, especially in Michigan and Wisconsin, collapsed.”40
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Reserve Mining Company
Taconite mines, although promoted by Davis and others as saviors for
Minnesota’s struggling iron range communities, soon proved problematic. The story of
Reserve Mining is a case in point. In 1947, two of the world’s largest iron companies,
Armco and Republic Steel, joined forces to create the Reserve Mining Company. Two
decades later, conflicts over the toxic byproducts of this mine—particularly asbestos
fibers that made their way into Duluth’s drinking water, which came unfiltered from Lake
Superior—would lead to the most inflammatory environmental lawsuit in America’s
history.41
In 1947, Reserve Mining Company applied for permits to mine taconite at Babbitt
MN and process it on the shores of Lake Superior at Silver Bay. The processing plant
was 47 miles far from the mine—an unusually long distance because, in Davis’s words,
“for each ton of pellets produced, they would have to haul three tons of taconite from the
mine to the plant.”42 The company built a small railroad to haul the ore to the processing
plants, arguing that the additional transportation costs made sense because Lake Superior
could supply the abundant water needed for taconite processing and tailings disposal.43
Exactly how much water? And how many tailings? Once the mine reached full
capacity, the company used over 500,000 gallons of water per minute from Lake Superior
water and dumped about 67,000 tons of tailings each day—eventually totaling 400
million tons of tailings. It was a big operation, to put it mildly, responsible for 11% of the
country’s total iron production.44 Before the plant could be permitted, someone had to
figure out what those tailings might do to the fish and water quality of Lake Superior.
University of Minnesota scientists from the Mine Research Station were commissioned to
find out, and they conducted laboratory tests that showed “water with fine tailings
suspected in it tended to behave like a liquid that was denser and heavier than pure water;
when poured into water it flowed to the lowest point.” The researchers argued that in
Lake Superior, water with tailings in it would do the same thing, sinking to the bottom of
what Davis called “deep valleys at the bottom of Lake Superior. There they would be out
of sight forever and posterity would not have to cope with them. We assured Reserve that
the gray, sandy tailings of magnetic taconite would not in any way pollute the lake,
interfere with any domestic water supply or with navigation, and would not adversely
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affect the fishing industry. It was our conclusion that the fine tailings from all the
magnetic taconite on the Mesabi could be put into the deep water of Lake Superior and
would have no harmful effect on its usefulness or beauty.”45
Perhaps it’s not surprising that when a mining institute at the university conducted
tests of tailings and their effects on fish, the research focused not on fish ecology, but
rather on models of the movement of particulates. Yet other people were quick to raise
concerns about what tailings might do to fish ecology and behavior. In 1947, when the
state held a series of hearings to decide whether to grant permits for the Reserve Mine
and processing plant, fishermen from tribal communities along Minnesota’s north shore
expressed concerns that tailings and water withdrawals might devastate fish habitat and
ruin their economic base. Other citizens testified about their fears that silica in the tailings
might lead to silicosis.46
Nevertheless, the state granted permits for the mine and tailings disposal directly
into Lake Superior. Why did the state grant these permits? I’m still waiting for
permission from the Attorney General’s office to access the archives with the permit
hearing records, so I can’t say for certain. But it is clear that when the state granted the
permits in November 1947, they were subject to three key conditions: first, that the
tailing would not discolor the water outside narrowly defined areas; second, that the
tailing would not harm fish life in Lake Superior; third, that Reserve would be liable for
any harm to water quality.47 The state also reserved the right to revoke the permits if
Reserve violated any of its conditions, including an important condition that discharge
was not to include “material amounts of wastes other than taconite.”48
By 1955, the processing plant was running, and by the late 1960s, local
environmental organizations, commercial fishermen, and sport-fishing groups were
complaining that tailings were killing fish and clouding the waters.49 (Figure 8). The state
refused to use its powers to intervene, even though permit conditions appeared to have
been violated. Then a local woman named Arlene Lehto, representing the environmental
organization Save Lake Superior, went to a Dec. 7, 1972 meeting of the International
Joint Commission (IJC) in Duluth. She told the IJC that the tailings contained
cummingtonite-grunerite, an asbestos-form fiber that could cause cancer.50 People
drinking water from Lake Superior might be ingesting it, she noted, and because Duluth’s
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water supply came directly from the lake, residents of the largest city in the basin might
be exposed. Although the IJC commissioners and the press took no special notice of
Lehto’s testimony, the federal EPA lab staff and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency
staff did pay attention.51 Eventually, on behalf of the federal Environmental Protection
Agency, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Reserve in 1973, beginning a
trial and appeals processes that would last for a decade. The Minnesota Pollution Control
Agency joined the suit, convinced by Lehto and its own scientists that Reserve was
endangering public health.
Figure 8. Tailings from the Reserve Mine containing asbestos fibers were dumped into
Lake Superior just north of Duluth, 1973 EPA file photo. Credit: Donald Emmerich.52
In early June 1973, Judge Miles Lord heard testimony from a specialist in
asbestos exposure, Dr. Irving Seikoff. Seikoff confirmed that the city’s drinking water
contained asbestos from the tailings, and a “thorough study should be done on the effects
of lake water on the human body.” Judge Lord initially put this testimony under an order
of secrecy, fearing public hysteria in Duluth. But on June 15, 1973, after “considerable
debate in secret meetings,” the public was informed that asbestos-form fibers, most likely
from Reserve Mining Company’s tailings, had been found in Duluth’s water supply. The
concentration was surprisingly high: 100 billion fibers per liter of water, which was at
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least a “'1000 times higher' than any asbestos level previously found in any water
sample.”53 The plant’s exhaust stacks, citizens were told, were also emitting asbestosform fibers into the air.
Outrage, first local and then national, resulted. The Army rumbled into Duluth to
provide clean water in huge trucks, the mayor announced that drinking the water could
kill thousands, and when the trial officially began in August of 1973, the general public,
“already alarmed by reports of asbestos deaths around the country,” became fixated on
the trial.54
The trial featured a prolonged series of scientists for hire testifying on Reserve’s
behalf and the government’s behalf, arguing over arcane details of mineral forms, sources,
mobility, and target organs. Reserve argued that its tailing couldn’t possibly contain
asbestos, and that asbestos, even if it were present in the water, couldn’t possibly cause
harm when ingested. Initially, Judge Lord appeared skeptical of the prosecution’s
scientific claims of risk, but after months of testimony, Lord rules that there was indeed a
significant potential for health and environmental risks from the tailings. Lord first
ordered the two sides to work out a negotiated settlement that would prevent the closing
of the plant, but Reserve refused. Lord then called directly on the chair of the company, C.
William Verity, to end the dumping of tailings. Verity read a statement to the court
“stating Reserve’s waste wasn’t dangerous, that it would bear no responsibility, and it
would build a land dump provided the government pay for it.” This infuriated Judge Lord,
who in April 1974 ordered the plant to be shut.55
A few key points emerge from this case. First, this was the first time
environmental health concerns had shut down the single dominant economic industry for
an entire region. Second, this was essentially a precautionary move on Judge Lord’s part,
and he admitted as much. He knew that the scientific evidence that those particular
tailings might cause cancer was contested and uncertain, but he also refused to believe
that absolute certainty was necessary before taking action.56
What made Judge Lord decide on the side of precaution? His actions appear to
have stemmed from his growing fury that the company kept appealing to scientific reason,
even while increasing evidence emerged that the company was consistently lying about
scientific evidence and distorting scientific process. For example, Lord was angered
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when he learned “that by 1972 Armco and Republic engineers and executives had
secretly developed plans demonstrating feasibility of on-land disposal [even though they
had testified under oath that they could never even consider disposing of tailing on the
land]”57 As a witness noted at the time, in Judge Lord’s view, “Reserve had now
forfeited any right to such consideration by repeated acts of ‘bad faith’”58 Similarly, in an
EPA file of evidence presented at the trial on ecological disruption caused by the tailings,
Dr. Donald Mount of the EPA provided evidence that Reserve was distorting scientific
process. They designed studies with false controls to contaminate any possible findings,
and they took measurements of tailings in places that they knew could not possibly show
significant difference from controls.59
Judge Lord became particularly infuriated that the company kept playing the
“you’ll destroy jobs!” card to justify continued pollution. He stated: “In essence,
defendants are using the work force as hostages. In order to free the work force at
Reserve, the court must permit the continued exposure of [the citizens of Duluth,
Minnesota, and other North Shore communities] to known human carcinogens. The court
will have no part of this form of economic blackmail.”60
Davis, the engineer who had promoted taconite, was horrified that government
regulators could “wield such tenuous evidence to foster widespread alarm and potentially
cut off the economic lifeblood of an entire region.”61 The appeals court seems to have
agreed, for it quickly reversed Lord’s closure of the plant, stating that nobody had proved
beyond doubt that citizens would die. Russell W. Peterson, chair of the White House
Council on Environmental Quality, attacked this decision, warning that virtually the only
way anyone could prove a case involving health hazards is by "counting dead bodies
through an after-the-fact epidemiology study."62 Although a federal appeals court did
allow Reserve to continue dumping in the lake for six more years, “United States v.
Reserve Mining Company is seen as a landmark decision, one that gave the EPA broader
powers to regulate corporate pollution, a practice unheard of before the lawsuit.”63
Discussions of new taconite mines continue to occur in the shadow of the Reserve
Mining Company’s release of tailings into Lake Superior and the resultant outcry against
asbestos exposure. When GTAC and the governor of Wisconsin claim that taconite is
perfectly safe, they argue that the Reserve Mining history stands as a warning of what
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happens when environmentalists and regulators overreach and shut down an region’s
economy for an unproven threat. For many Anglo environmentalists in the basin, in
contrast, the Reserve Mining history suggests how treacherous taconite mining can be to
water quality. Mine proponents counter by arguing that because new mines will stack
tailings on land rather than dumping them into Lake Superior, one cannot draw a
connection between an historic episode and a technologically-advanced future.
For the Anishinabeg community, however, the Reserve Mining Company history
suggests how easy it is for scientific and legal discourses to miss what for them is the real
point: clean water has values that go beyond what can be measured scientifically. And on
ceded territories, they argue, the tribes have rights to co-management of land and water
resources, which means that their values must play as significant a role in policymaking
as other communities’ values.
Ceded Territories and the Anishinabeg
As mentioned earlier, the federal government made three major land cession
treaties with the Anishinabeg in the Lake Superior basin, which established reservations
which were to be exclusively under the control of the tribes (Figure 9). Equally important,
the tribes were careful to retain the right to hunt, fish, and gather on ceded territories, and
this meant that they “retained rights over management of natural resources, including
water.”64
State governments rarely recognized these ceded territory rights, until a series of
brutal assaults took place in the late 20th century. For decades, Wisconsin arrested
Anishinabeg who fished and hunted on ceded territories without state licenses, which the
tribes insisted were unnecessary for them. In 1974, two members of the Lac Courte
Oreilles band were arrested for spearing fish on ceded territories. The Lac Courte Oreilles
sued the state for treaty right violation, and in 1983, the federal court upheld offreservation treaty rights in a landmark decision called the Voight Decision. The state of
Wisconsin appealed this decision (and eventually lost their appeal). Meanwhile, white
supremacist vigilantes (including members of the Hurley chapter of the Ku Klux Klan)
attacked Anishinabeg spear fishers who were exercising their treaty rights, and a series of
violent protests at fish landings marked the late 1980s.65
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For all the violence, as geographer Zoltan Grossman argues, in the process of
fighting each other, the tribes and the whites created a series of connections that the tribes
were able to build upon a few years later, when Exxon proposed to build a copper and
zinc mine in sulfide-containing ore bodies within the Wolf River watershed (a National
Wild and Scenic River).
Figure 9. Reservation locations and mining conflicts in the Lake Superior Anishinabeg
territories. Credit: Zoltan Grossman.
Like the GTAC mine, the Exxon mine would also have been located just upstream
of an Anishinabeg reservation (the Mole Lake Sokaogon reservation), within ceded
territories.66 The state of Wisconsin had pushed for the mine, believing it would bring
jobs to the north and money to the state’s coffers. The Wisconsin Department of Natural
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resources decided to set standards for water leaving the mine at industrial water quality
levels, allowing for 40 million tons of tailings and acidic mining waste that would have
destroyed wild rice beds on the reservation. To stop the Crandon mine, the Mole Lake
Sokaogon worked with the EPA to win the right set its clean water standards.
Tribal lawyer Glenn Reynolds wrote about the case: “Wisconsin challenged the
tribe’s authority to enact tribal water quality standards on the grounds that the federal
government had already given Wisconsin primary authority over the state’s water
resources and could not rescind that authority and pass it on to tribal governments.
Ironically, Wisconsin argued that the Public Trust Doctrine granted the state the
exclusive right to regulate, and potentially degrade, the water quality of Rice Lake on
behalf of Wisconsin citizens. Naturally, the mining company supported Wisconsin’s
stance. Three downstream towns and a village, however, filed a brief in support of the
Sokaogon standards. After six years of litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to
review a federal appeals court decision that upheld the authority of the Sokaogon to set
water standards necessary to protect reservation waters.”67
Tina Van Zin, the environmental officer for the Sokaogon, said in an interview
why her tribe fought the Exxon mine: “Because of the importance of wild rice to place;
my ancestors migrated here because of the wild rice story. Our ancestors were willing to
die for wild rice and their home, so that made me feel the importance of this fight. Our
men would have been willing to die to stop the mine.”68 Their organizing efforts resulted
in a Wisconsin mining law, passed in 1996, that became known as the “mining
moratorium.” It required a moratorium on new mines until companies provided historical
information proving that they had successfully controlled mining waste for at least ten
years from closed mines.69
The other key issue that motivated mining activism among the Wisconsin tribes
was the Bad River Band’s 1996 blockage of railroad tracks that would have brought
sulfuric acid to a copper mine in White Pine, Michigan. On July 22, 1996, tribal members
blockaded the railroad tracks that crossed their reservation, stopping a train headed for
the White Pine copper mine in Upper Michigan. The train was carrying sulfuric acid, for
the mining company planning to experiment with “solution-mining”, which would
involve injecting 550 million US gallons (2,100,000 m3) of acid into the mine to bring
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out remaining copper ore. Environmentalists and tribal members raised concerns that the
acid would contaminate groundwater and Lake Superior, but the EPA granted permission
without first requiring a hearing or EIS. Anishinabeg activists insisted the project was
illegal because the EPA had failed to consult with affected Indian tribes, as required by
law. In the face of legal battles over treaty rights, the company withdrew its miningpermit application, and the White Pine copper mine and smelter shut down.70
In May 2011, I joined a group of faculty and graduate students visiting with the
Mole Lake Sokaogon to learn about their successful fight against the Exxon mine. A
group of members from the Bad River Band came down for the meeting, telling us that
they needed help with their own mining threat. Mike Wiggins Jr, Chairman of the Bad
River Band, told us that GTAC was, at that moment, writing a new bill that was about to
pushed through the far-right legislature. He reported that in January 2011, just months
after the far-right takeover of Wisconsin’s governorship and legislator, Gogebic Taconite
had showed up for a public meeting to announce their plans for a new taconite mine.
Wiggins said: “They [GTAC staff] said: ‘oh this will be great; jobs job jobs!’ When there
was a hint of environmental concern, they said: ‘Oh, Wisconsin is very stringent; there’s
a heck of a process. We’re committed to following the process. You guys don’t need to
bother reading that stuff, it’s too complicated.’ What they didn’t tell the public was that
they were already hiring a law firm to completely rewrite the mining laws in Wisconsin
to completely bypass the Mining Moratorium. That new law would completely strip the
environmental protections.”71
Much of the discussion at that meeting with the Mole Lake Sokoagon and Bad
River band members revolved around technical details of sulfide oxidation and legal
strategies. But then tribal members began to speak about why they needed to fight.
Wiggins told us: “When I was 20 years old, I was riding on the sloughs in a john boat;
riding on about 4 bags of rice; nice soft bags. I was dragging my hand in the Kakagon.
There were all kinds of birds, and dark water in the slough. I’m dragging my hand in
there, I’m looking at how it colors my hand. I was just so in love with that river. I set nets
for walleye, harvested cranberries in the fall and wild rice. I was so in love with that
water. I was thinking, “I wonder if it will always be there, for my children? I was
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thinking, “If something ever came for this place, man, I’d fight for this place, I’d die for
this place.”
I always recognized that, but I never thought a threat would come to this place
that would get me thinking like this. That’s what its about, trying to wrap your mind
around all this mining manifestation. It gets a person thinking in terms of life and
death...There are things that go beyond science, that transcend rules and regulations and
science.
I came down to share a couple of things. If I had to sum up the prospects of all
this stuff that’s coming: it’s heartbreaking. Everyone that’s connected to the land and
water feels it. Some may feel it from a water perspective; some from a duck and heron
perspective; some from a fish perspective. It’s heartbreaking.
The USGS identifies the proposed mine site as the recharge station for our people.
We sit here and talk about impacts to groundwater; we talk about impacts to surface
water. As long as you don’t break out in red spotty lesions, everything’s ok, they say. But
that’s pure insanity when you think about it.…That water is all we have left. We’re
supposed to think it’s ok to tamper with that. Well, there ain’t enough money in the world
to repair that [groundwater if it’s polluted]. Even if there was the money there’s not the
technology to do that. It’s beyond the technology to repair.”
Since January 2011, when news of the possible mine first spread, the issue has
become extremely polarized. Because the proposed mine lies in ceded territories, the
Anishinabeg tribes in the basin have vowed to bring the fight against the mine out of a
purely local and state discussion, to a federal level, claiming violation of their tribal
sovereignty. Local residents have responded with death threats against tribal members,
and a swirl of local, state, and federal lawsuits, hearings, and threats have marked the past
two years. Debates over the mine became intense enough to swing the most recent
election in Wisconsin. After the legislature had defeated a pro-mining bill by one vote in
March 2012, pro-mining groups donated $16.6 million dollars in campaign contributions
and lobbying fees to candidates who might support a mine. The result was a change in
control of the Wisconsin Senate (by one vote) after the November 2012 elections, giving
the far right the power to rewrite Wisconsin laws.
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In February 2013 a new mining bill, written by GTAC lobbyists and ALEC (the
far right American Legislative Executive Council), was passed in Wisconsin that exempts
taconite mining from the state’s water quality and wetlands standards.72 It formally
establishes that the expansion of the iron mining industry as a policy of the state. This
means that there is a conflict between a provision of the iron mining laws and a provision
in another state environmental law, mining must always trump other laws, essentially
paving the way for GTAC to push its mine through state permitting processes.73
With the new law, the voice of the state became the only voice allowed in
negotiations about permits. Local communities and the public lost the right to challenge
state science and state permits. Contested case hearings—where the state had to face
expert witnesses who could challenge their versions of the evidence—were outlawed.
Citizen suits against a corporate or state employee alleged to be in violation of the
metallic mining laws were also outlawed, even if the mine operator or state staff
knowingly violated the law. In other words, the democratic processes by which outside
voices could be heard to challenge state or corporate versions of scientific claims were
outlawed, so now an echo-chamber exists. Sen. Fred Risser (D-Madison), the longest
serving state legislator in U.S. history, expressed the horror of many when he thundered
in the senate: “This bill is the biggest giveaway of resources since the days of the railroad
barons,” he said.
”74
The state of Wisconsin, much as it would like to, cannot outlaw legal challenges
from the Anishinabeg. The battle over the Mole Lake mine led to a US Supreme Court
decision in 2002 affirming the right of Indian nations to set and enforce their own clean
air and water standards (working with the federal EPA). The state cannot set more
relaxed standards, in other words.75 Even though a series of treaties between the US
federal government and sovereign Indian nations make it clear that formal consultation is
required before environmental permits are issued, the Wisconsin governor and legislature
decided to ignore those requirements when drafting the new law. Senate Majority Leader
Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) said that he had no plans of consulting with the Bad River
tribe during the drafting process. “It's going to difficult to ever get them on board,” he
added.76
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Within the Lake Superior basin, other Anishinabeg bands have joined with the
Bad River Band (a small and very poor band) to fight the mine. For example, when
Wisconsin’s DNR began granting a series of exploration permits to GTAC in March
2013, the Lac Courte Oreilles, a neighboring band of Anishinabeg, established a Harvest
Camp against the boundaries of the mine site, where tribal members could hunt, fish, and
gather on ceded territories and welcome visitors to educate them about treaty rights.77 A
series of often farcical missteps by the local county commissioners ensued this past
summer, as members of local county governments tried to kick out the tribal members,
only to realize that they had no legal right to accost members of sovereign nations on
ceded territories. “As was the case with spearing, [tribal lawyer Glenn] Stoddard said an
important first step in bringing the treaties to bear on the issue of mining is to actively
exercise the rights. ‘Rights are always in danger of being lost if they aren’t exercised,’
Stoddard said. Harvest camp makes visible the practices protected in the treaties:
collecting food, fish, game, medicines. ‘…It is one thing to be in a courtroom talking
about the treaties. It is another to be out in the woods and see people exercising their
rights. Then it makes sense to people.’”78
What will happen with the mine? It’s impossible to say right now. Each week
brings another set of evidence about asbestos fibers in the ore body; mercury in the
tailings; pyrite in the overburden; rare and endangered species in the forest that covers the
mine site. Each week brings another tense hearing with DNR employees who tell us their
hands are tied, so they can no longer enforce clean air, clean water, or species protection
regulations. Steel prices have collapsed since 2011 as the Asian economic boom slows,
making economists dubious about the ability of GTAC to raise the $1.5 billion US
needed for the mine; yet GTAC presses ahead.79 The Koch Brothers appear to be using
the mining battle in a bid to eliminate the federal Environmental Protection Agency;
ALEC appears to be using the new Wisconsin mining law as a model for the rest of the
nation. Rumors have it that Cline really to want to use the GTAC mine as a way to break
the monopoly of the largest three global iron ore companies on iron prices worldwide.
These national and global-scale speculations leave the Bad River band members
frustrated. “What about our particular Caroline Lake,” they ask, “where our water begin
in a small spring that bubbles into a little lake, flows over the tilted shale beds, through
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the gorges of Tyler Forks, over the red clay plain, into the Kakagon Bad River sloughs,
through the waving beds of wild rice, into Lake Superior?”80
Figure 10. Caroline Lake: Bad
River headwaters. Credit:
Penokee Arts.
Conclusion
Contested interpretations of the past continue to shape current conflicts. People
who want the mines back point to a time when miners had good jobs, rarely mentioning
the lung diseases that haunted the Iron Range, the bitter battles to win the few rights they
had during the brief boom, the collapse of economies when the companies pulled out.
Pro-mining individuals in Hurley tell me that they feel that they can trust the mining
companies, so there’s no need for regulation or oversight. They remember a time when
local impact funds created good schools, decent hospitals, well-maintained roads. But
they forget that these benefits weren’t just handed to them by the company. They were
won, bitterly, by political fights led by once-powerful unions. Companies left to
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themselves never gave us anything, as one resident of Minnesota’s iron range reminded
me, concerned that current laws removed the protections that once marked the range.
Events across scales shape the most local processes within the basin. When the
Asian building boom in 2011 forced global steel prices to a new high, what had been just
a pile of useless rock to US Steel became reframed as the nation’s most important source
of iron ore. Mining advocates insist the mine is inevitable in a global economy. “Only a
primitive, backward people would stand in the way of our prosperity,” one white woman
in Hurley told me, complaining bitterly about the Bad River Band. But from the Band’s
perspective, how can you destroy the water, the wild rice, the rivers, the slough, for a few
jobs and a billionaire’s profit? Water isn’t a resource to be commodified; it’s the blood at
the heart of their place and life.
We are reminded that forbidding taconite mines in the Lake Superior basin will
only shift more mining to other places, where environmental and labor protections may
be even weaker than in today’s Wisconsin. And it’s true that the world’s proportion of
iron ore mined in Canada and the United has dropped to only 3.5% of global production
in 2010 (China, in contrast, mined 37.5% in 2010, and was still the world’s largest
importer).81 Yet who gets to decide which places, if any, are unsuitable for a mine? Who
decides how to compare measures of benefit versus harm? Are there going to be places
where communities decide that the local, particular harms far outweigh the benefits on
the scale of region or nation? In a talk at Yale in March 2012, western historian Richard
White spoke of “incommensurate measures”. What’s gained in resource development by
one group cannot simply be measured against what’s lost by another group, he warned.
At one mining hearing, Richard White’s incommensurate measures were in full force
when pregnant woman from the band spoke of their fears when they had to drink water
poisoned by taconite mining.
There is nothing natural or inevitable about resource development. Resources are
contingent and they change over time. Calling something a resource pulls it out of its
intricate social and ecological relationships, isolates it in our gaze. Yet those isolations
are illusions. We still live in intimate relationships with those elements, even if we think
we don’t.
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The language of inevitability masks the fact of government actions to promote
one vision of resources over another. So treaty rights and environmental quality must
bend to march of progress. What’s hidden is the texture of the wild rice beds, the lake
trout that swim through the waters of Lake Superior, the children of women poisoned by
mercury, the asbestos released into the watershed by the processing of certain kinds of
taconite deposits.
Selenium, mercury, arsenic—perfectly natural chemicals—lie bound and buried
in rocks until miners release them while digging for something else that has become
defined as a resource. Then as waters move through mining site, these chemicals move it
into fish bodies, and from there into human bodies. When minerals are dug from the
ground; when trees are cut in the forest; when flood waters are diverted, when rivers are
dammed, when animals are changed from fellow-creatures to livestock resources, we set
into motion subtle processes of toxic transformation that have legacies far into the future.
Notes
Nancy Langston, “Mining the Boreal North,” American Scientist April 2013.
This essay is an early draft! It’s part of a book in progress that examines
watershed changes and toxicity in the Lake Superior Basin.
3
http://www.ramsar.org/cda/en/ramsar-news-archives-2012kakagon/main/ramsar/1-26-45-520%5E25648_4000_0__
4
Reynolds, "A Native American Water Ethic," 146.
5
Rebecca Kemble, “Bad River Chippewa take a stand against Walker and
Mining,” The Progressive, Jan 28, 2013
6
Sandlos and Keeling, "Claiming the New North: Development and Colonialism
at the Pine Point Mine, Northwest Territories, Canada."
7
Planning and permitting processes for these new mines happen individually,
with no formal process for consideration of cumulative effects or historical legacies of
past mines. Moreover, many of these proposed mines affect indigenous groups within the
watershed, yet planning process often excludes the tribes.
8
Kemble, “Bad River Chippewa.”
9
Tom Fitz, "THE IRONWOOD IRON FORMATION OF THE PENOKEE
RANGE", Wisconsin People & Ideas , no. Spring (2012): 33-39.
10
US Steel had negotiated with The Nature Conservancy to sell them the mineral
rights, under condition that the land be maintained for logging but that mining would not
be allowed (thus reducing potential competition for US Steel if steel prices rose enough
1
2
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to make mining the deposit profitable). But in the final stages of negotiation, for reasons
that the TNC negotiator doesn’t understand, US Steel pulled out and sold the mineral
rights instead to RGGS Land and Minerals, Ltd of Houston Texas, and LaPointe Mining
Co. in Minnesota. Interview with Matt Dallman, TNC Director of Conservation,
Wisconsin, May 2011.
11
and : http://1.bp.blogspot.com/gjvjyl1lYYI/UQgqnPG23UI/AAAAAAAABLI/1_UKle0cx8/s1600/Ironwood+Section+2.JPG
12
The CEO of GTAC is Chris Kline, known as King Coal; he’s best known for
aggressively pushing long-line coal mining in Illinois, and his operations there have been
cited 53 times over three years for violating water quality standards. Al Gedicks,
Wisconsin Resources Protection Council in the past 5 years for Clean Water Act
violations. http://www.wrpc.net/articles/the-fight-against-wisconsins-iron-mine/
13
Ibid.
14
Al Gedicks and Dave Blouin, “Science and Facts Show a Need for Tight
Regulation of Taconite Mining,” Wisconsin Resources Protection Council, 2/13/13
http://www.wrpc.net/articles/local-view-science-and-facts-show-a-need-for-tightregulation-of-taconite-mining/ Local view: Science and facts show a need for tight
regulation of taconite mining
15
Ibid.
16
Citizens facebook posting; full reference to follow.
17
Ibid.
18
http://www.environmentminnesota.org/in-the-news/clean-water/cleanwater/runoff-from-old-mines-raises-fears
19
Kohlmeyer, Minnesota History, 164.; The History of Wisconsin vol. 3 and 4
(Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin);
http://www.atthecreation.com/wis.anc/%20cu.mines.html)]
20
Ibid..
21
Federal Investigator Frank Buckley reported in a 1929 Prohibition Survey of
Wisconsin: “Tucked away up in the wild lumber and iron section of Northern Wisconsin,
right on the Michigan State line, [Hurley] has the distinction of being the worst
community in the state. Conditions in Hurley are not unlike those of settlements like
Dawson City, Cripple Creek, ..and other boom communities. Gambling, prostitution,
bootlegging and dope are about the chief occupations of the place. Saloons there function
with barmaids who serve the dual capacity of soda dispenser and prostitute.” Pg. 1105,
Buckley, Frank. "Enforcement of the Prohibition Laws: Official Records of the National
Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement: A Prohibition Survey of the State of
Wisconsin." in Enforcement of the Prohibition Laws, Official Records of the National
Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement. vol 4. (Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1931). St Paul Pioneer Press excerpted in:
http://anatomyofawrongfulconviction.blogspot.com/p/notorious-history-of-ironcounty.html
Women’s health in mining communities is explored in CCSG Associates. 2004.
Overburdened: Understanding the Impacts of Mineral Extraction on Women's Health in
MIning Communities.
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34
22
Fitz 2012.
Jennings, "The Mesabi Iron Range," 73.
24
Bethlehem Steel iron Company, for example, imported ore from Chile, and
when the war ended, the company began developing large, high-grade concessions in
Venezuela. U.S. Steel also began mining a hematite deposit in Venezuela, while Republic
Steel Company developed hematite mines in Liberia.
25
Kakela, "Iron Ore: Energy, Labor, and Capital Changes with Technology,"
132-133.
26
Ewing wrote: “The Venezuela iron ore deposits are rich and extensive,” she
admits, but then notes that “… Shipment of these or other high-grade foreign ores to the
blast furnaces and steel mills in this country during an emergency might leave the oreladen boats open to submarine attack, however. Ewing, "Low-Grade Ore Yields Iron,"
315.
27
Ibid., 315-316.
28
Ibid., 316.
29
Manuel, "Mr. Taconite: Edward W. Davis and the Promotion of Low-Grade
Iron Ore, 1913-1955."
30
Ibid., 320.
31
Taconite was extremely hard, unlike hematite but like western copper, and its
low concentration meant that “it would only be profitable if processed in enormous
volume.” Ibid., 323.
32
Sandlos and Keeling, "Claiming the New North: Development and Colonialism
at the Pine Point Mine, Northwest Territories, Canada."
33
Kohlmeyer, Minnesota History, 164.
34
Manuel, "Mr. Taconite: Edward W. Davis and the Promotion of Low-Grade
Iron Ore, 1913-1955," 332.
35
Ibid., 336.
36
Wisconsin took a different approach in the late 1970s, developing tax policies
that favored smaller mines, trying to lessen the bust periods associated with huge mines.
In 1978 “Wisconsin….assesses a progressive tax on net proceeds (35). As value of
production increases, the tax rate increases from 0 percent below $100,000 per year to 20
percent over $30 million per year. The progressive rate is intended to slow down the
boom phase of mining and spread production over time. This should ameliorate the bust
periods associated with extractive industries. Thus small mines are encouraged and large
production discouraged by Wisconsin's new law. Interestingly, that state's only taconite
mine has in the past operated under very lenient tax laws. “Kakela, "Iron Ore: Energy,
Labor, and Capital Changes with Technology," 1156.
37
Manuel, "Mr. Taconite: Edward W. Davis and the Promotion of Low-Grade
Iron Ore, 1913-1955," 339.
38
“Since election day both United States Steel Corp. and Hanna Mining Co. have
announced that they will soon start building taconite pelletizing plants in Minnesota.
These plants will cost a total of close to $200 million. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. has
also said that it is continuing with preliminary work that may lead to another plant in
Minnesota in three or four years (there are now three plants in operation). "Minnesota
Tax Vote Will Spur More Taconite Production."
23
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35
One trade paper wrote: “The huge but worn-out Mesabi iron range is being
revitalized by continuing construction of facilities for processing its deposits of magnetic
taconite. Early next year U.S. Steel's 4.5 million ton-per-year taconite pellet plant at
Mountain Iron, Minn., will reach full production. … To date, more than $1.3 billion of
capital has been spent on plants to produce iron from taconite ore.
” "Taconite Pellets
Put Mesabi Back to Work."
By 1968, taconite had become a symbol in Minnesota, for progressives and
conservatives alike, of the prosperity that technology could bring. For example, Hubert
Humphrey was one of Minnesota’s classic pro-labor progressive populist politicians who
moved from regional politics to a national stage (serving as President Johnson’s vice
president, and then losing the presidential election in 1968 to Richard Nixon). Chemical
and Engineering News in 1968 reported that “Hubert Humphrey last week compared the
untapped resources of our nation's poor people to taconite being extracted from
Minnesota's worked-over Mesabi iron range. … "There are hundreds of thousands of
people in the form of human taconite waiting to be utilized and developed," he said.
“Vice President Urges Teachers to Open Science to All."
40
Manuel, "Mr. Taconite: Edward W. Davis and the Promotion of Low-Grade
Iron Ore, 1913-1955," 340.
41
Berndt and Brice, "The Origins of Public Concern with Taconite and Human
Health: Reserve Mining and the Asbestos Case," 31.
42
Davis, "Pioneering with Taconite: The Birth of a Minnesota Industry," 127.;
cited in Bartlett, The Reserve Mining Controversy: Science, Technology, and
Environmental Quality, 21..
43
Kendrick, "US V. Reserve Mining: Case Continued," 2467.
44
Berndt and Brice, "The Origins of Public Concern with Taconite and Human
Health: Reserve Mining and the Asbestos Case," 33-34.
45
Davis, "Pioneering with Taconite: The Birth of a Minnesota Industry," 128.;
cited in Bartlett, The Reserve Mining Controversy: Science, Technology, and
Environmental Quality, 21-22.
46
Ibid., 23.
47
Kendrick, "US V. Reserve Mining: Case Continued," 2467.
48
Berndt and Brice, "The Origins of Public Concern with Taconite and Human
Health: Reserve Mining and the Asbestos Case," 33.
49
Carter, "Pollution and Public Health: Taconite Case Poses Major Test," 333;
Shilling, “Hard-fought.”
50
Peter Shilling, “Hard-fought United States vs. Reserve Mining changed
environmentalism,” MINNPOST Feb. 15, 2013. Huffman, "Enemies of the People:
Asbestos and the Reserve Mining Trial," 295}.
51
Berndt and Brice, "The Origins of Public Concern with Taconite and Human
Health: Reserve Mining and the Asbestos Case," 34.
52
RESERVE MINING COMPANY'S TACONITE PLANT IN SILVER BAY.
NORTH CONVEYOR CHUTE DISCHARGES TACONITE TAILINGS INTO LAKE
SUPERIOR. Photo by Donald Emmerich, EPA June 1973, Record Group 412: Records of
the Environmental Protection Agency, 1944 - 2006 (ARC identifier: 708)
DOCUMERICA: The Environmental Protection Agency's Program to Photographically
39
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36
Document Subjects of Environmental Concern, compiled 1972 - 1977 (ARC identifier:
542493
53
Huffman, "Enemies of the People: Asbestos and the Reserve Mining Trial," 296.
54
Ibid.
55
Ibid.
56
Carter, "Pollution and Public Health: Taconite Case Poses Major Test," 32.
57
Huffman, "Enemies of the People: Asbestos and the Reserve Mining Trial," 301.
58
Carter, "Pollution and Public Health: Taconite Case Poses Major Test," 35.
59
Studies Regarding the Effect of the Reserve Mining Company Discharge on
Lake Superior, 14.. “The Reserve Mining Company performed …[an] in-situ study
during 1972, to test algal stimulation by tailings. Unfortunately, they used as their control,
water taken from a point very close to the discharge and the probabilities of
contamination by tailings of this control water negates what might have been a useful
study.”
In another section of the report, Mount wrote: “The work of Herman was perhaps
the first indication that tailings, through some mechanism, stimulate growth or prolong
life of bacteria in Lake water. Reserve Mining Company has frequently said that such an
effect could be due just to a 'platform' effect and not due to chemical stimulation. Their
implication has been that the possible physical nature of this effect makes it unimportant.
This is nonsense…”Ibid., 10. .
Elsewhere, the testimony states: “A significant breakthrough was achieved in
1969 when cummingtonite, a mineral composing about 40% of the tailings, was
recognized as a tracer for the discharge…This method was unjustifiably challenged by
Reserve Mining Company, because they measured stream sediment just downstream
from bridges on highways on which they knew tailings had been used for ice control and
construction, and then contended there was much more cummingtonite in the tributaries.”
Ibid., 4-5..
60
- From the opinion by U.S. District Judge Miles W. Lord, quoted by Carter,
"Pollution and Public Health: Taconite Case Poses Major Test," 32..
61
Huffman, "Enemies of the People: Asbestos and the Reserve Mining Trial," 296.
62
In its ruling the court said that "plaintiffs have failed to prove that a
demonstrable health hazard exists." "Taconite Stirs Burden of Proof Debate." Chem Eng
News Archive 52, no. 48 (1974): doi:10.1021/cen-v052n048.p014a
Senator Gaylord Nelson of WI responded by trying to get precaution as part of the
law: “The refusal of the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold an injunction
prohibiting Reserve Mining Co. from dumping taconite tailings, containing asbestos like
fibers, into Lake Superior has roused considerable reaction in Congress. Representatives
and Senators from the states bordering the lake are making a determined effort to get
legislation shifting the burden of proof in environmental litigation from the plaintiff to
the defendant through this session of Congress. However, a first attempt to pass such
legislation in the House ran into trouble. Offered by Rep. Phillip E. Ruppe (R.-Mich.) as
an amendment to H.R. 13002, the Safe Drinking Water Act, it failed to pass on a voice
vote in the House last week.
Earlier this month the Senate subcommittee on the
environment held hearings on similar legislation offered by Sen. Gaylord A. Nelson (D.Wis.) as an amendment to S. 1104, the Environmental Protection Act of 1974.” "Taconite
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37
Stirs Burden of Proof Debate." Chem Eng News Archive 52, no. 48 (1974):
doi:10.1021/cen-v052n048.p014a
63
Shilling, “Hard-fought United States”.
64
Rebecca Kemble, “Bad River Chippewa take a stand against Walker and
Mining,” The Progressive, Jan 28, 2013.
65
“During spring spearfishing seasons, protestors began gathering at local boat
landings and used the taunts: "timber niggers", "welfare warriors", "spearchuckers".
There were also signs carried which said," Too Bad Custer Ran Out of Bullets" and "Save
A Spawning Walleye, Spear A Pregnant Squaw."” http://wwwpersonal.umich.edu/~tearls/native.htm
66
Zoltan Grosman, “Unlikely alliances: Treaty conflicts and environmental
cooperation between Native American and rural White communities,” PhD dissertation
UW 2002.
67
Reynolds, "A Native American Water Ethic," 154.
68
Conservations in May 2011, during a meeting with Mole Lake Sokaogen
members involved with the Crandon Mine battle. Members of the Bad River Band came
as well, to gather support for their coming battle with the state and GTAC.
69
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_River_Train_Blockade (accessed August 8,
2013).
70
(Midwest Treaty Network; 1996).
71
May 2011, meeting with Mole Lake Sokaogon.
72
At least one million dollars was donated to mining committee members, and
$15.6 million was given by “pro-mining interests to Governor Walker and other state
legislators, outspending groups opposed to the measure 610 to 1.” Kemble, “Bad River
Chippewa.”
73
The new law diminishes water quality regulations, removing protections for
streams and lake beds. Previously, the DNR had to deny a mining permit if “irreparable
damage to the environment” could not be prevented. Activities expected to cause
substantial deposition in stream or lake beds, or the destruction or filling in of a lake bed,
constituted grounds for denial of a permit. This new law has removed these as bases for
denial of the permit. The new law eliminates many of the state’s existing wetlands and
watershed protections, reclassifying them as sacrifice zones. It includes a legislative
finding that “because of the fixed location of ferrous mineral deposits in the state, it is
probable that mining those deposits will result in adverse impacts to areas of special
natural resource interest and to wetlands, including wetlands located within areas of
special natural resource interest and that, therefore, the use of wetlands for bulk sampling
and mining activities, including the disposal or storage of mining wastes or materials, or
the use of other lands for mining activities that would have a significant adverse impact
on wetlands, is presumed to be necessary.” Legislative Reference Bureau, State of
Wisconsin.
74
Rebecca Kemble, “Walker’s Colossal Giveaway,” The Progressive, March 5,
2013. http://progressive.org/walker-colossal-giveaway-to-mining-co-in-wis (accessed
July 22, 2013)
75
Bergquist, Lee. 2002. "Decision puts water quality in tribe's hands; Sokaogon
can set standard near mine." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 6/4/2002, 1A.
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38
76
http://www.progressive.org/walker-pushes-mining-co-bill-despite-tribeobjections
77
Ron Seely, “In Penokees camp, tribes flex muscle to block mine,” Wisconsin
Center for Investigative Journalism, http://www.wisconsinwatch.org/2013/07/28/inpenokees-camp-tribes-flex-treaty-muscles-to-block-mine/
78
Seely, “In Penokees camp.”
79
John Lippert and Mario Parker, “New King Coal,” Bloomberg 10-12-2010.
80
Field trip to Harvest Camp, August 2013.
81
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_iron_ore_production
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