Wisconsin Legislators Didn't Even Look At Scientific Data Before Giving OK To Huge Upstate Iron Mine
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The bill removed environmental hurdles for Gogebic Taconite’s (GTAC) proposed 4.5 mile long, 1.5 mile wide, 1,000-foot deep open pit iron ore mine in northern Wisconsin’s Gogebic Iron Range. It created a separate set of regulations for ‘ferrous metallic mining’ of iron ore as opposed to mining for sulfide minerals, which require higher environmental standards because of the potential for acid mine drainage.
However, scientific analysis contained in a July 2012 report, ‘Geochemical, mineralogical and structural characterization of the Tyler Formation and Ironwood Iron Formation, Gogebic Range, Wisconsin,’ shows that sulfide minerals such as pyrite are present both in one layer of the iron formation and throughout the overburden rock that would need removal to mine the iron deposit.
The report, co-authored by Marcia Bjornerud, PhD, a geology professor at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, describes a 3-meter thick layer rich in pyrite near the base of the targeted 150-meter thick Ironwood Formation. Joseph Skulan, PhD, a geochemist then with the UW-Geology Museum used backscattered electron microscopy that showed pyrite in that layer constituted up to 20 percent of the rock volume.
Bjornerud, a Geological Society of America Fellow, told Indian Country Today Media Network many scientists were very disheartened by the lawmakers’ disinterest in incorporating sound science into the bill. “There were plenty of us trying to speak out. The only thing they cared about was the jobs, jobs, jobs, mantra.” Legislators suggested “no need for worry” when they passed the “special laws,” Bjornerud said, because the mining project wasn’t about sulfide, which her work refutes.
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http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/08/06/wisconsin-disregarded-science-rewriting-mining-laws-scientists-say-150757
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