Mining in Wisconsin

Wisconsin faces a number of threats to our water, air, and culture from mining. At the top of the list is a proposal by Gogebic Taconite, a subsidiary of the Cline Group owned by coal magnate Chris Cline, to begin a 22-mile-long open pit iron mine in Ashland and Iron Counties of northern Wisconsin. The Penokee Mine would be near the headwaters of the Tyler Forks and Bad Rivers, upstream of the Bad River Ojibwe Reservation and the Kakagon Sloughs, the largest and ecologically richest wetlands complex on Lake Superior.

Elsewhere in the state, Frac Sand mining is turning much of our rural countryside into quarry pits, contaminating the air with silica dust and pumping out massive amounts of groundwater, to provide a product necessary for the dangerous fossil fuel extraction process called hydrofracking. A sulfide mine is being developed along the Menominee River just on the Michigan side of the boder, and Canadian mining start-up Aquila Resources is prospecting for gold in sulfide deposits around northeast Wisconsin.

Mining companies and their supporters claim that mining is good for economic development, but real-world data on mining economies paints a different picture. In addition to perpetual environmental problems, mining damages the cultural lifeways and livelihoods of indigenous people. In Wisconsin, Native American tribes were instrumental in fighting off sulfide mining in Wisconsin and passing the state's landmark mining moratorium law in 1998. They have taken an out-front position against the proposed Penokee Mine.