Wisconsin’s mining sellout --- excellent perspective on how things now run in Wisconsin
Please read and share...
A small free monthly publication goes where the "wink wink" mainstream media will not, and paints the reality our state is facing in this well written piece.
Is the Proposed strip mine in Wisconsin just an excuse to pass favorable minig laws for another purpose .... like maybe frac-sand mining?
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“GTac does not really exist. If you try to find information, there’s nothing,” Bjornerud said. “There was a storefront in Hurley. GTac is owned by Christopher Cline, a multi-billionaire coal man, big climate change skeptic and big supporter of right wing causes. He is not a known player in taconite. No one knows anything about GTac. They are a complete blank, a black box, yet the whole state of Wisconsin seems ready to rewrite laws as they ask us to and do whatever they’re saying. It’s Orwellian.”
The low grade iron ore the company says it wants to mine – Bjornerud puts it in the 10-15% iron content range – is steeply inclined at an angle of 60-65 degrees. That, she says, is why taconite mining companies such as U.S. Steel, Minntac and Cleveland Cliffs Corp. have never been interested in a Penokee mine.
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“It’s just never been economic,” Bjornerud said. “It’s not a high-grade deposit. There are just more easily accessible ore bodies in the Iron Range in Minnesota and the Marquette range in Upper Michigan. The demand for iron ore has never been that strong. Even now, just a month ago, Cleveland Cliffs in Marquette laid off a very large fraction of their workforce because the market for taconite has dropped.”
/snip/
“The reaction among many geologists is befuddlement, not quite understanding where this is going,” Bjornerud said. “The two disparate conclusions we reached as possible explanations, first of all, it may be economic. If you can roll back every single environmental regulation you can and essentially put the cost of disposal of a colossal amount of mine waste on the public by allowing mine waste to be dumped on natural areas, wildlife refuges and other areas that it had not been previously legal to dump. Or, perhaps this is a sham project. GTac doesn’t have any serious interest and it’s simply a way to roll back environmental regulations for future things that we don’t know about. I honestly don’t know which way to read this, but the geological consensus, it’s not an effective deposit, it’s never been economic, there’s no market pressure now or in the foreseeable future.”
http://foxvalley.scenenewspaper.com/wisconsins-mining-sellout/
Pictured in red is Frac sand deposits in the United States
Or, perhaps this is a sham project. GTac doesn’t have any serious interest and it’s simply a way to roll back environmental regulations for future things that we don’t know about.
Perhaps so
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