Public Agencies Lobby for Rio Tinto Wilderness Road | Headwaters - Community Journalism for the Great Lakes

Rio Tinto, through its subsidiary Kennecott Minerals, continues to dodge requirements of Michigan’s Part 632 Mining Law, with the help of the Marquette County Road Commission (MCRC), the Marquette County and City Commissions, and local township boards.

Local officials are proposing to clear a wide corridor through the isolated and sparsely populated northern regions of Marquette County, primarily to benefit Rio Tinto. A new, north-south county road would be developed under a public-private partnership between Rio Tinto and the Road Commission.

Rio Tinto’s current mining permit allows them to truck ore only along existing county roads, but they continue to pursue construction of a new, 22-mile road that would run directly from the Eagle mine site to a processing facility south of US Highway 41, in Humboldt.

The previous “Woodland Road” haul road proposal, which was to be paid for by Rio Tinto and privately owned, was rejected in March 2010 by three federal agencies, largely due to unacceptable wetlands impacts.

Less than a month later, Marquette Mayor John Kivela expressed his enthusiasm for a motion, unanimously carried, that would “…allow the city and the township to work together to really try to lobby the EPA to allow the permitting of the Woodland Road.”

Marquette City Commissioner Frederick Stonehouse showed a similar disregard for both the federal agencies and their mandates: “…to have a couple of people in the EPA and a couple of people on the civil side of the Corps of Engineers and a couple of folks in the Fish and Wildlife decide that the lives of the residents of the City of Marquette are worth less than the potential life of a frog in a swamp coming down Woodland Road is clearly beyond the pale.”

Here’s a sampling of what these federal experts said:

US Army Corp of Engineers (USACE): “Objections by the public to upgrading public roads to accommodate ore truck traffic may be considered, but do not in themselves result in the removal of an alternative from consideration…The argument that it is beneficial to locate truck traffic so as to bypass major transportation corridors lacks support.”

US Fish & Wildlife Service: “We are concerned that development of the proposed road would not only directly impact wetlands, but indirectly impact the remaining wetlands along the corridor by significantly altering wetland hydrology and causing habitat fragmentation. Alteration of hydrology and fragmentation could result in permanent habitat degradation of remaining on-site wetlands.”

EPA: “The project, as proposed, would result in significant degradation of the aquatic ecosystem by directly impacting 23 streams and 27.1 wetland acres, which include rare wetland types and high quality habitat.”

The EPA also cited a lack of transparency: “The stated purpose of this project is “to construct a multi-purpose road to connect key industrial, commercial, and recreational areas in northwest Marquette County to US-41. There is concern that this does not adequately depict the purpose of the project.”

The applicant’s portrayal of the project as a multi-purpose road was questioned by the USACE, as well: “In our view, a more accurate project purpose would be ‘to deliver ore from the proposed Kennecott mine at Eagle Rock for processing.’”

The latest road proposal is following a similar path of deception.

In a September 1, 2010 e-mailed communication to Michigan MDNRE Water Resource Division regional manager, Steve Casey, MCRC Engineer-Manager Jim Iwanicki asked “How wide of a corridor should we be looking at if we want to develop reasonable and feasible alternatives…”

But at the same time, he specified the route: “The road would start at the intersection of US-41 to CR IAA and go northerly to CR IAA in T50N-R29W section 11.” Once again, it would run from mill to mine site.

In a July 6 letter to Rio Tinto’s general manager, Jon Cherry, Iwanicki says he has already had “several meetings with people from your company to discuss what the process is for the Road Commission to take on a road as a public road.”

He followed that with an August 23 letter to the Marquette County Road Commissioners, asking for one or two commissioners to attend a meeting with him. “The purpose of the meeting will be to discuss the Woodland Road. County Commissioners, Township officials, and the DNRE will be in attendance.”

Consequently, Iwanicki typed up a proposed request that Township Boards, the City of Marquette, and Marquette County should make to the Road Commission, for a new all-season primary county road. He distributed that letter, via e-mail, on September 1, the same day that he wrote to Casey: “Besides public hearings and letters of support from other governmental agencies what other items of documentation will help justify the need for a public road in this area. Is it as simple as the local governmental agencies wanting it and saying so or are their other thing [sic] that come into play?”

The following day, Rio Tinto’s John Meier wrote Iwanicki that he’d like to talk with him about “your meeting with Mqt County Board members and MDNRE. Also Rick Thomas will be in town next week and we would like to meet with you on Thursday, Sept 9…” Iwanicki agreed to the meeting.

The Army Corps analysis of the Woodland Road application states that: “Permit applicants may not bias permit application reviews by making substantial resource commitments in advance of permit decisions. This is one of the basic tenets of the National Environmental Policy Act, outlined in their regulations in Section 1506.1.”

Yet, on September 7, when the Marquette County Commission discussed the request from the Road Commission to develop a new primary county road, Chairman Gerald Corkin hinted that Rio Tinto had already committed financial resources: “I guess I would suggest to the board that we put a request in to the road commission to make application for this Woodland Road as a public road, and obviously would be paid for by Rio Tinto, but it would be a public road…”

House Bill 4961, passed on May 6, 2010, contains provisions for private-public partnerships relating to creation and operation of public transportation facilities, or infrastructure. But it firmly states that “A public transportation facility shall be publicly owned and shall be dedicated to the public use as a public transportation facility…”

The Army Corps analysis of the Woodland Road permit application points out that Rio Tinto is projecting 12,000-18,000 trips per year for their ore transport trucks, while logging trucks would make around 1,700 trips annually. It is difficult to imagine private citizens competing with those numbers.

During an October 7, 2010 Road Commission hearing, the purpose of which was ostensibly to determine whether or not there was a need for a new, north-south county road in Marquette County, Iwanicki stated that they did not have a preferred route for the road. “If the road commission board chooses to go forward, we would then develop possible alternatives,” he said.

In fact, Iwanicki had already received detailed cost estimates from Rio Tinto for three possible alternatives. Only one, the most direct route from Kennecott’s Eagle mine site to its projected processing facility, and the one most nearly mirroring the original Woodland Road proposal, was presented at the hearing.

On October 18, the MCRC approved Rio Tinto’s proposal. According to Iwanicki, the road commission is currently working with Rio Tinto on a draft for a public-private agreement to fund, build and maintain the road. A request for further information, filed under the Open Records Act, was denied, as was a subsequent appeal.

A pre-application meeting between MCRC and EPA officials will take place at 9 a.m. on December 15, at the DNRE offices in Gwinn.