Please take a moment to read this. A Canadian company wants to build a sulfide copper mine near Lake Superior, which holds 21% of the world’s freshwater. The mine would produce 98.5% toxic waste, stored in a dam just two miles from the lake. The dam can only withstand a 1-in-100-year storm, but the area has had two 1-in-1,000-year storms in the past decade. If it breaks, toxic water could flood the lake. Copper sulfide mines in the U.S. have consistently contaminated nearby water sources, and this mine could hurt local communities with lower employment, income, and property values. The company wants $50 million in taxpayer funding to move forward. The Michigan Senate is about to vote, if they don’t get the funding they can’t build it.
Sign this petition if you want to prevent this disaster by searching “Protect the Porkies, Protect Lake Superior— Stop the Copperwood Mine!” at change.org.
Crowds of families, tourists and local folks paused on that sunny Saturday in September, watching the group curiously as it passed. Was this a protest or a celebration, they wondered.
It was neither. It was ceremony, a walking prayer of gratitude and acknowledgement of the essential role clean water plays in life on the planet. Such a message would seem to offer a universal spiritual appeal. But deep in the Upper Peninsula’s mining country where generations of European immigrants have depended on digging copper and iron ore from the earth for more than a century, such a prayer had a whiff of blasphemy.
“This goes all the way back to the 19th century with fur trading, timber, iron and copper mining; if there’s any environmental fallout the folks who ran the operation aren’t around to pay for the cleanup,” said Tom Grotewohl, a resident of Wakefield Township and founder of Protect the Porkies, a nonprofit organization opposing the mines that draws its name from the Porcupine Mountains, known as the Porkies, in the Upper Peninsula.
“Mining is a false tradition,” Grotewohl told ICT. “A tradition is something that everyone can benefit from and share equally.”
The Copperwood Mine Project is emblematic of a global struggle to address climate change and support the clean energy industry without further damaging the environment and treading on Indigenous rights. The demand for energy transition minerals such as copper, lithium, cobalt and nickel disproportionately affects Indigenous peoples and lands.
amhrancas 