2/10/12 WaterLegacy alerted the StarTribune to reasons for PolyMet delay and supplied a detailed brief to responsible and cooperating agencies.  We raised issues of faulty assumptions and lack of adequate data for statistical modeling in the current environmental review of the project's potential water impacts.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources released the contents of PolyMet's Draft EIS for public comment October 28, 2009. 

NEXT STEPS:   Agencies are preparing a Supplemental DEIS, expected in the autumn of 2012.  It will include responses to the unprecedented 3,700+ public and agency comments submitted by February 3, 2010.  It will be expanded to include the impacts of the proposed land exchange with the U.S. Forest Service.  And it will include the U.S. EPA, which has authority for compliance with federal Clean Water Act, as a cooperating agency.

We can have jobs AND clean water; read the PolyMet FACTS sheet.

US EPA rates PolyMet Project & DEIS
"Environmentally Unsatisfactory" & "Inadequate"

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gave its failing grade February 18, 2010 of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) published for the first proposed sulfide mine in MN: the PolyMet NorthMet copper mine.  The agency has given this low a rating to less than 1% of similar projects.

PolyMet menu:

PolyMet Sulfide Mine Proposal -- Description of the proposed project, including map

PolyMet Environmental Review (EIS) -- Summary of the EIS in-process and related documents

Land Exchange legal review -- Proposed exchange for over 6,600 acres of forest and wetlands in the Superior National Forest is now part of the supplemental draft EIS

Water Quality Certificate -- The US EPA and other cooperating agencies also have expressed concerns about the current EIS documents.  (See agency comments, particularly those of the U.S. EPA and tribal agencies.)  In february, 2010, the EPA issued its worst rating of the Draft EIS.

It is prudent to ask the political question, whether we really want to sacrifice our water for jobs.  PolyMet promises to operate cleaner than woeful the industry averages.  So far, there is not enough proof in its own documents that its mine plan will be able to ensure that no pollution is released to the environment beyond its borders.  Indeed, it seems to ensure the need for thousands of years of water treatment to meet water quality standards.

The track record of sulfide mining demonstrates an enormous financial liability to state and local governments for proper water treatment and mine closure.  Across the country, mine plans and financial assurances have proven inadequate.   A quick internet search on “Acid Mine Drainage” +SuperFund reveals the prevalence of extensive and expensive problems with sulfide mines, including sites costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars to remediate.  Even PolyMet and other project proposers admit that their sites will require treatment for decades, perhaps indefinitely, to meet water quality standards.

When faced with clean-up responsibilities and the vagaries of the commodities markets, mining companies all too often have filed for bankruptcy, leaving taxpayers to pick up the bill.

PolyMet has no record of having operated any kind of mine.  It is a Canadian penny-stock company with about 20 employees trying to push through a permit to mine.  But has not even completed the necessary land-exchange for the approximately 6,700 acres of public land in the Superior National Forest that it would require for its open-pit mine.  The substantial irreversible impacts to land, water, wetlands and habitat belong in the Draft EIS, but are missing, according to the EPA.

Citizens must remain alert to the real implications of allowing sulfide mining in general and in the trend-setting first case in Minnesota. The company has said in the media that it wants to comply with all of Minnesota’s “stringent” regulatory requirements.  However, it has been counting on an outright sale of public land through special legislation --  without the normal land-exchange process for federal public lands that includes public comment on the adequacy of wetlands replacement; it seeks to avoid water-quality discharge permits; its EIS is glaringly inadequate.

Furthermore, Minnesota’s laws and rules are no protection as long as giving variances to permit conditions is accepted practice.  And, yet, in the Minnesota legislature, bills have been introduced in 2009 and previous years that would exempt sulfide mines from an EIS all-together.   Indeed, citizens must remain alert to the pollution-permitting aspirations of each profit-seeing extraction company and to state agencies acting contrary to the public interest.