The Washington Post has a story on mining for metals in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It is an interesting look at an issue that will become a hot topic in Minnesota.
There are a few different proposals for mining operations along the Iron Range that would extract copper, nickel and/or other metals. I’ve even heard there may be a company soon exploring for metals along the Root River in Southeastern Minnesota. The problem is, extracting these ores exposes sulfides that react with air and water to create sulfuric acid, which can leach into our lakes and rivers, killing plants and animals or doing other bad things. More information is available from Sierra Club’s Mining Without Harm.
Yeah swimming in the great lakes….We all did it, but it probably isn’t such a good idea. Though no place really is, eh?
How do Minnesota’s current mining laws and regulations pertaining to sulfide mining compare to Wisconsin’s law?
http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/es/science/crandon/review/moratorium.htm
Dave – as far as I can tell, our laws fall far short of Wisconsin’s. In fact, I’m having a heck of a time figuring out if we have anything remotely comparable (and as an aside, I must say Wisconsin’s DNR website seems to be much more user friendly than our DNR’s website – at least when it comes to finding out information such as this). About as much as I can tell you is that people who really want to dig deep (no pun intended) on this can check out Chapter 93 of our state statutes. Of course, if you really wanted to dig deep, you’d likely already know that.