From the Lansing State Journal:
STEPHENSON – Deb Skubal looks out her window and sees a pristine forest and the Menominee River meandering through the woods.
Geologist Tom Quigley looks at the same scene and envisions the riches beneath the ground: gold, silver and zinc, trapped in rock nearly 2 billion years old.
Their viewpoints appear to be on a collision course that illustrates a conflict between the needs of an increasingly global economy and the environmental disruption that may result from meeting those needs.
Quigley is president of Aquila Resources Inc., a Canadian mining exploration company that’s searching for precious metals in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula a stone’s throw from the Menominee River and the Wisconsin state line. Skubal, on the Wisconsin side, is among a group of residents – on both banks – opposed to sulfide mining, in which metals are removed from sulfide rock dug from huge open pits.
“There is gold here,” Quigley said. “And for this type of deposit, we have an abnormal amount of it.”
Aquila has been exploring for ore in what’s called the Back Forty Project, on the Michigan side of the Menominee River. Until 2002, a massive sulfide-rock deposit was hidden. Slowly, its content of zinc, gold, silver and copper has been revealed in core samples extracted by drilling deep into the earth.
“There’s much stronger competition for all of these metals, particularly in China, India and some of the other faster-growing economies,” said Carol Raulston, spokeswoman for the National Mining Association in Washington, D.C.
The Back Forty Project is in the advanced exploration stage, but the metals are within reach using a combination of sulfide and deep-shaft mining.
“Especially with gold selling for about $1,000 an ounce, it’s looking more feasible by the day,” said Philip Fauble, mining coordinator for Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources, who visited the Back Forty site last fall.
It would be at least several years before Aquila could establish a mine on the 8,000 acres it controls near Stephenson – if it’s economically viable and if Michigan grants environmental permits.
Tricky mining
Sulfide mining is tricky because sulfuric acid is created when metals encased in sulfide rock are exposed to air and water. The acid water, much like battery acid, must be kept from leaking into groundwater, streams, rivers and lakes. Mine opponents say it can kill fish plus other aquatic wildlife and release heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury and lead.
Anyone who relies on Lake Michigan for drinking water ought to be worried about contamination from a sulfide mine leaking into the watershed and eventually reaching the lake, said Dick Huey, co-founder of Save the Wild UP, an Upper Peninsula group opposing the mining.
“Acidic water is bad enough … it might or might not kill fish … but it’s also highly efficient in leaching out heavy metals” that can make people sick, Huey said.
Mining advocates say the fears are unfounded and exaggerated. They point to the former Flambeau Mine in Wisconsin’s Rusk County as an example of a sulfide operation that didn’t harm the environment. It produced about 1.9 million tons of ore, including 334,000 ounces of gold and 3.3 million ounces of silver, in about four years starting in 1993.
Concerns for future
Critics said the mine released metals in surrounding water and could threaten the environment for years to come, even though the pit now is sealed.
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources officials disagreed with that pessimistic assessment. There are still some chemical reactions occurring underground, but so far it seems that everything is well-contained, said Fauble, with the DNR.
A sulfide mine stemming from the Back Forty Project could be much larger than the Flambeau Mine and also could include a deep-shaft operation.
“I guarantee you that we would not be able to get a permit if a mine were to affect the river or lake,” said Al Trippel, an environmental consultant from Michigan hired by Aquila Resources Inc.
Opponents have been organizing to block a sulfide mine, even though Aquila hasn’t applied for a permit yet.
“The mining companies have no business experimenting with this on the Great Lakes,” Huey said.
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