Don’t save the world
In March, Congressman Tom Tiffany (R-Minocqua) told a listening session in Weston that America had to make a choice between mining strategic metals in the United States and relying on foreign, often despotic nationals for these vital materials.
The congressman, noting that a hybrid electric car, such as a Prius, contains 64 pounds of copper, questioned whether the United States could step into the future without digging up the copper, gold, silver, nickel and cobalt that lies across a wide swath across northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
The congressman made an interesting, indeed, challenging point. Are those of us ready for a hightech, green and electric future willing to sanction mining “in our backyard” to get the needed metals? Or are we willing to make a deal with the world’s most unscrupulous countries to acquire those needed raw materials in order not to disturb our local environment?
Until last week, these were ponderable, academic questions.
But now they are real. Jacob Langenhahn, chairman of the county’s Environmental Resources Committee (ERC), announced last week that he would meet with a representative of Green Light Metals, a Toronto, Ontario-based company to discuss the company’s intention to mine gold in the Reef deposit, located off of Thornapple Creek Rd. in the town of Easton.
The meeting follows the Wisconsin DNR on Feb. 22 issuing Green Light Wisconsin, LLC a license to spend a budgeted $815,000 to drill 90 holes over six grids across the site to confirm the Reef gold mineralization. Laurie Miskimins, director of the Conservation, Planning and Zoning Department, confirmed that Green Light has also asked for a county metallic mining permit.
Tiffany makes his point. This country may not be able to satisfy its thirst for essential metals and meet its environmental commitments.
It is, however, not the job of the ERC or the county board to save the world from bad actors on the world stage. Nor is it the county government’s job to make us independent from the world market.
No, it is the county’s job to process Green Light’s mining application according to the compromise mining ordinance passed in 2017. It needs to care about heavy truck traffic on CTH N. It needs to worry about potential groundwater contamination from an open pit mine. It needs to protect at all costs water pollution traveling a mile and one half to the Eau Claire River.
Our hope is that the county ERC handles this mining project by the book and doesn’t succumb to gold fever, especially when Green Light or its allies, as always happens, starts talking about jobs and economic development.
The county needs to stay on task. It needs to protect the interests of the local landowners, the groundwater and public highways.
We reject the idea that, somehow, the United States can free itself from international tyrants and bullies by developing its own mines. Green Light is a Canadian company. That firm bought the Reef deposit from Aquilla Resources, which was mostly owned by Baosteel Resources, a major Chinese government steel producer. Gold extracted from the Reef deposit will add to the international stockpile of gold sold to the highest bidder. Will a Reef gold mine make this country stronger? Not if the gold is marketed to the world.
Prospectors discovered gold in the town of Easton back in the nineteenth century. A town road, Gold Dust, memorializes this history. Since then, three different companies since the early 1980’s have drilled 129 holes hoping to justify the cost of digging up an estimated 454,000 tons of gold ore. So far, the price of gold hasn’t justified the investment.
County government need not mess with the economics of mining. The world has mined all but 20 percent of its known gold deposits. The Reef deposit will be mined when the markets say so. In the meantime, the county needs to protect the county, not save the world.
Editorial by Peter Weinschenk, The Record-Review
