Sulfide Mining and the Great Lakes

An international mining company has proposed a sulfide mine in public forests in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan that would seriously harm wildlife and natural areas in the Great Lakes basin.

Watch our award-winning documentary film, "Mining Madness, Water Wars: Great Lakes in the Balance" to learn about this threat to wildlife and people in the Lake Superior basin.

The location of the proposed mine is less than 9 miles from Lake Superior and directly below two world-class trout streams that lead directly to Superior.

The history of sulfide mining is rife with contamination, so much so that Wisconsin enacted a law that forbid any new sulfide mines unless a company could prove it had operated a mine for 10 years without contamination and was still not polluting 10 years after closure. So far, no mining companies have been able to meet that test. Harmful acid mine drainage is an inescapable byproduct of sulfide mining.

The proposed mine is the first test of new Michigan laws governing sulfide mining. Beyond the threat of sulfide mine drainage, there are other good reasons for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to deny the permits necessary for the mine.

  • First, the company wants to fence off 160 acres of publicly-owned state lands for a period of at least 40 years. A large portion of that land will be scraped down to the dirt. These publicly-owned acres, where people hunt, ski, fish, hike, and otherwise enjoy nature would be closed to exclusively benefit a for-profit foreign-owned company. 
  • Second, the Governor has promised Michigan a future secured with 21st century jobs but is now pointing to fewer than 100 mining jobs as justification to endanger the Upper Peninsula's tourism industry and the Lake Superior watershed.
  • Finally and most importantly, engineers and scientists analyzing the mining proposal have found numerous errors and omissions in the materials provided by the mining company and the Department of Environmental Quality's own experts have raised serious concerns about the stability of the roof of the mine.

Despite voluminous expert testimony stating the danger of the sulfide mine to people, wildlife and natural areas, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources issued Kennecott Eagle Minerals permits in 2007 to perform sulfide mining on the public lands.

Legal challenges mounted by the National Wildlife Federation and its partners are pending in several jurisdictions, effectively halting the project for the foreseeable future.