Activists say proposed mine in UP would be ecological disaster, and create few jobs
On Monday, February 15, groups around the globe will hold events in solidarity with 560 miners who have been locked out of a Rio Tinto borax mine in California since January.The crowd that plans to gather in a church in Marquette, Mich., that evening has extra reason to closely watch the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 30 members’ struggle with one of the world’s largest mining companies (previously chronicled on this blog here.)
For seven years many residents of the area around Marquette (in the state’s Upper Peninsula) have been fighting a proposal by a Rio Tinto subsidiary to open a nickel mine known as the Eagle Project that they say would pollute groundwater, streams and Lake Superior, decimating fish and wildlife.
As is often the case in economically depressed areas, the Michigan issue has largely been cast as a matter of jobs versus the environment. But mining opponents say the promise of jobs is a largely empty one.
They say many of the jobs would be dangerous and temporary, might not go to locals anyway, and would not be worth the economic trade-off of threatening the tourism and outdoors industry which has become Michigan’s mainstay.
The Eagle Project would be on ecologically sensitive land known as the Yellow Dog Plains, sacred to local Native American tribes and important for salmon spawning. It would be a sulfide mine, which means the disturbance of sulfide-containing ore during the mining process would create acid mine drainage that could severely contaminate waterways.
A century ago, European immigrants flocked to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to build new lives working in the copper, nickel and iron mines, descending into the earth each day armed with only candles for light and the hearty pasties – savory pockets of dough brought from the old world – for sustenance.
Metal mining ebbed in recent decades with falling prices and shifting global markets. But skyrocketing metal prices before the economic crisis of 2007 sparked renewed interest in tapping the copper, nickel and other metals that remain in the Upper Peninsula.
The Rio Tinto subsidiary spearheading the project, Kennecott Minerals, promises on its website that:
The eagle project can meet the local communities’ greatest ongoing need: the creation of local jobs and tax revenues. This project represents an investment of more than $120 million, and will create over 100 full-time jobs, as well as generate an additional 300 to 500 indirect jobs. The estimated payroll without benefits would be in the $8 million - $10 million per year range, new dollars in the community that will be spent by families locally on food, clothing, cars, etc. Kennecott Minerals will commit to hire local residents to fill the majority of these positions.
But Babette Welch, a computer analyst and co-founder of the anti-mining group Save the Wild UP, said Kennecott has progressively inflated the number of promised jobs just to counter opposition.
“First it was in the 40s, 50s, 60s, now it’s hundreds,” she said. “They just keep increasing it. They come in and promise these jobs when they are not being honest about how modern mining uses way fewer people than it used to. It’s not the long-term union jobs some of the locals are thinking of. They’re thinking of what it was like for their grandparents, when you could earn a good living, but that’s not the way it is anymore.”
A group called Yellow Dog Summer – inspired by the anti-mountaintop removal mining movement known as Appalachian Summer – has formed to fight the Eagle Project. Yellow Dog Summer organizer Teresa Bertossi says:
With Rio Tinto trying to slip through the backdoor in our community, we must stand in solidarity with the Borax workers and demand that Rio Tinto finally make good on their claims to respect worker rights and labor laws wherever the company operates.
An international federation of mining and maritime unions, including the Maritime Union of Australia, called for Monday’s day of action. Michigan activists cite this October 2009 letter from the Australian union as one more reason they refuse to trade the health of their streams and soils for mining jobs:
While our Unions have had a long and bitter experience with Rio Tinto and their anti-union, anti-workforce tactics and policies here in Australia, we continue to be amazed at the way in which multi national corporations like Rio Tinto, demand and expect working men and women to sacrifice hard won conditions of employment in order to prop up already bloated corporate profits.
The Februarty 15 Yellow Dog Summer solidarity event will take place at 7 p.m., in the Chapel of Messiah Lutheran Church, 305 W. Magnetic St., Marquette, Mich. For more information, contact Gabriel Caplett at gcaplett@gmail.com.
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Kari Lydersen is a Chicago-based journalist, author and assistant professor at Northwestern University, where she leads the investigative specialization at the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. Her books include Mayor 1%: Rahm Emanuel and the Rise of Chicago’s 99%.
