Turtle Talk

From tv via A.K.:

ISHPEMING TWP. — Wednesday night, a public hearing was held at Westwood High School to discuss Kennecott’s Woodland Road Project. The road would connect Kennecott’s planned mine site to US-41.

The route is designed to avoid large population areas. Tonight’s public hearing was meant to be informative for both the community and the Department of Natural Resources and Environment, or DNRE. With the Kennecott Mine being such a huge controversy in the U.P., giving the public an open microphone, led to an interesting evening.

Within minutes of the hearing, one environmental activist was escorted out of the auditorium for disruptive behavior. But the interruption didn’t stop the hearing. Only allotted three minutes to speak, community members made sure their opinions were heard.

“I want to see this road put through and the process move forward,” said attendee Bill Hennigen. “We need jobs here in the U.P., and this is another good avenue to providing good paying manufacturing jobs.”

Mike Smolinksi, an environmental quality analyst for the DNRE, has heard both positive and negative reactions to the project thus far.

“Hopefully we’ll be able to gauge how the public’s feeling, and with a little luck get a lot of good comments on the project that we can use as part of the record and help us make a decision,” he said.

They’ve got a difficult decision to make. Supporters of the road say it benefits the community by growing local industries, creating more jobs, and reducing commercial truck traffic in residential areas on County Roads 550 and 510.

But some people say the road will damage our environment.

“Anytime you’ve got 172 wetlands that are going to be filled and we’re talking about wetlands where anywhere from 7 ft. to 139 ft. wide is going to be filled, we’re talking about a massive disruption of an area that is not being used to disrupted before,” said Wetlands Preserve spokesperson, Cynthia Pryor.

The project must meet certain legal guidelines in order to be approved. The DNRE hopes that comments from tonight’s hearing will bring them closer to a conclusion.