Claiming they will drive through the city of Marquette to haul nickel ore, Rio Tinto should stick with original rail plan instead of endangering the public and Upper Peninsula’s outdoors heritage
Last week Rio Tinto announced plans to drop its pursuit of the 22-mile 595/Woodland Road to haul ore from its Eagle Mine to the Humboldt Mill, in Marquette County. The company’s project director, Andrew Ware, claimed Rio Tinto will now “move forward with the originally designated route” and drive through the city streets of Marquette.
Problem is, Rio Tinto didn’t really have an original route to do so.
Click here to read text of Rio Tinto's original and approved ore hauling plan (page 21 of permit application) shows plans to load ore onto a railhead northwest of Marquette, thus avoiding the city's streets
The originally designated route, allows Rio Tinto to haul ore on public roads to a rail line just northwest of the city of Marquette. From there the company can use an existing rail system to haul ore to Sudbury, Ontario, or amend its plan and build a short spur to transport it to the nearby Humboldt Mill.
Or it can access the existing Cliffs-owned LS&I rail line from points far west of Marquette, or extend the line—as it has been in the past to haul ore and timber—to the mine site on the Yellow Dog Plains. A project like this would benefit both Rio Tinto and Cliffs’ logging plans and create a ton of jobs, reducing diesel emissions and construction material use far more than building and driving on a 22-mile road through rough country ever would.
The point is there are a number of options better than the two Rio Tinto is providing that create far less risk for the public and to our rich outdoors heritage.
The company’s favorite route, the private Woodland Road, traveling through wild country north of
Click here to read the EPA's letter criticizing Rio Tinto's haul road plans in March 2010
Ishpeming, raised serious concerns from federal regulators last spring. The EPA listed concerns with wetlands and water impacts; the failure to look at the mining project as a whole, rather than separate parts (mine, mill, road); as well as an insistence on Rio Tinto’s part to describe the project as anything but a designated ore hauling road. It was Rio Tinto that decided to drop the project and not follow the legal process other applicants must follow, not the EPA.
Following the company’s shelving of the Woodland Road it was again proposed last fall, this time as a public “County Road 595.” County officials made boldly clear the change from private to public was an attempt to help Rio Tinto avoid federal legal scrutiny. The EPA still wasn’t buying it and, at a meeting with state regulators and the company in December, apparently told Rio Tinto that no matter how it re-packaged its ore hauling plans, they must still follow the law.
As Rio Tinto cancels its 595/Woodland road plans a second time county officials seem intent on still pursuing the road, possibly by using federal taxpayer money to do so. It seems that with Rio Tinto sending a letter officially dropping its plans for the 595/Woodland road, the county may make a better legal argument there should be no EPA oversight and that Rio Tinto hasn’t promised project funding in advance of a permit application review, which they did with the 595 plan, in possible violation of federal law. If county permits are filed, using county time and resources, and regulators give the project the go-ahead, either Rio Tinto or taxpayer money could then be used to pay for the company’s hauling road and Rio Tinto can finally get exactly what it wants.
Is it a done deal? That doesn’t seem to be the case. A defensive Rio Tinto is already telling tall tales to the public, claiming they will be driving through congested city streets. And some elected officials are ignoring readily available facts on already approved trucking and rail plans and pressuring the EPA to give the company special exemptions to the law.
This map from Rio Tinto's "Woodland Road" application shows some of the ore hauling options, including the existing LS&I rail line
It’s up to the public to compel Rio Tinto and county officials to find a better option. Perhaps a very small handful of elected officials with at least enough guts to ask Rio Tinto some tough questions about the pros and cons of a number of potential ore hauling routes could help. At last week’s County Commission meeting, newly elected commissioner Mike Quayle was a lone voice against sending the EPA a letter asking them to back off. Whatever his opinion on the hauling project, Quayle said he wanted some better answers first. So do we.
Interestingly, the two options Rio Tinto is limiting the discussion to, according to its permit application, happen to be the two cheapest options. Turns out Rio Tinto isn’t really looking out for public safety or local employment, but its own bottom line.
What it boils down to is that large companies like certainty and seldom truly take a risk. The 595/Woodland Road project would lessen Kennecott’s potential legal liability (especially if it were a public road and the burden were on the county) and has cheaper construction costs than most of the other options (especially if the county secures taxpayer money to pay for it). The Marquette route advertised by Andrew Ware as the original plan would entail the cheapest construction costs, yet the potential for legal liability from road accidents or nuisance complaints likely increases the potential cost and uncertainty in Rio Tinto’s mind. This makes the 595/Woodland road option more attractive to them.
Of course, if Rio Tinto decides to willfully place the public at risk and drive through the streets of Marquette it must first obtain support to do so. At this point, local officials can lessen the danger by regulating truck weights and restricting hauling to times of the day where there is less traffic, among other things.
If the argument from some elected officials and Rio Tinto remains that the 595/Woodland Road is essential for public safety, they should examine what would really keep the public safe. Would making a road with steep grades and heavy logging and ore hauling traffic a public, versus private, road really keep the public safe? Certainly Cliffs doesn’t allow teenagers to bomb around on their ore hauling roads at its iron mining complex in Palmer and National Mine for a similar reason.
Some local municipalities are now busy sending letters to the EPA urging them to allow Rio Tinto special exemptions to the law. However, the Marquette County Road Commission and other public bodies would do better to lobby Rio Tinto, not the EPA, to provide the public with full and honest information about all the possible ore hauling routes, not just the two the company prefers. It has been Rio Tinto’s preference, two times already, to place public safety at risk with its cavalier disregard for the law and the company has had years to finalize a workable haul road option, but has failed to do so.
Years into the battle over Rio Tinto’s Eagle Mine it’s time politicians prioritized public safety, clean water, and a preserved outdoors heritage, not Rio Tinto’s bottom line.
Rio Tinto did not respond to an e-mail in time for this story.
Additional research by Catherine Parker.
[This article has been updated from the original]
This post was written by
Gabriel Caplett – who has written 106 posts on Headwaters - Community Journalism for the Great Lakes.
Gabriel Caplett is a writer and market farmer from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
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Please consider the U.P. of Michigan as a natural setting, a place for tourism and business, not natural resource destruction! So much has been done to forests already, there’s not much left! When you live somewhere for a long period of time you appreciate it! Maybe you should live there and then you will know what i am trying to respond to.
Seems like this mine is going to start costing taxpayers more than what would be gained from it. Why should taxpayers have to pay for a road that would serve the mines objectives. Kennecot is playing a game of threatening to use public roads just to goad politicians into getting taxpayers to build this haul road for them. They are out for profit and paying to make their own road is not in their plan. We as a community must be harder on Kennecot and our own Represebtatives and other agencies to hold up their end and protect the communities interest. Poisoned water and a degraded environment is not in our interest. Look at the red tailings lakes that are a scar on our county and our heritage to our younger generations.
There has to be a happy medium somewhere. Bargaining seems to be the key- let the public foot the bill for the road as long as they follow all the rules and regulations concerning the environment -but then after the roads are built how or what can be done to be sure that they make good on their promises for the safety of our citizens and wildlife?
When I was visiting Big Bay this summer sitting at the local bar, I saw some very interesting dynamics taking place that relate to this article. First, there were representatives from Kennecott that would try to “sell” the locals on what they were doing. This was very interesting to see. Second, there was this extreme divide taking place in that little town between Kennecott supporters and Kennecott adverseraries, which at some points almost led to full out brawls. I believe Rio Tinto is being very strategic in its plan to make as much money as possible, and I agree 100% with Devin’s posting that they are playing a “game” with taxpayers. When I was in Big Bay this summer and trying to see through the eyes of the locals, I saw Kennecott’s big scheme, and I saw how it was literally ripping that community apart as well as the surrounding area’s natural resources. The UP’s citizens can’t let this happen; they have to be smarter than these threats and, like Gabriel said, team up with people like Mike Quayle (he shouldn’t be a lone voice) and start asking Rio Tinto some hard questions about what they’re really doing.