Editor’s note:
This is the second part of Mike Hillman’s commentary on Ely history and sulfide mining. In the first part, Mr. Hillman highlighted why Ely saw significant benefits, without any significant downside, from iron mining. He finished by posing the question:
“If we did so well with the iron mining, and with all the advances in mining technology, shouldn’t we welcome the proposed sulfide mining with smiling happy faces and grateful open arms?”
Mr. Hillman continues:
Not so fast. Comparing our old iron mining to the proposed sulfide mining is like comparing a potato to a carrot. Yes, they are both vegetables, but while many people would love a breakfast of ham, eggs, and fried potatoes or hash browns, how many people would care to get rid of the potatoes and have a side order of fried carrots instead? It is about the same thing comparing iron and sulfide mining. Yes, they’re both forms of mining, but if anyone thinks that sulfide mining would be as kind to future generations as the iron mining was is either desperate or uninformed.
We were very lucky in the past, but if we open Pandora’s box, and allow these foreign-owned companies to start operating near the Kawishiwi River our luck is going to run out.
When we mined iron there wasn’t much of a process involved. All we had to do was blast the iron and crush it into workable pieces. In Ely we didn’t have to do much of that, because nature had already pre-crushed the iron for us. All we had to do was to haul the iron to the surface and load it on the train. Our iron was all over 65-percent pure, and it was the best iron anyone ever mined in the world.
Sadly, the same thing cannot be said of the vast deposit of sulfide ore lying along the shore of the Kawishiwi River. If we start mining copper and nickel, the process will involve a lot of beneficiation. Don’t be frightened by a big word. All beneficiation means is that before any copper, nickel, gold, or platinum from here can be marketed, it will need a lot of processing, and there is the big rub. We need to understand that process and know what will be left behind when the mining is finished.
Processing the copper and nickel on the Kawishiwi Range would be much closer to the way we process taconite rock today on the Mesabi Range. There are people in Ely who work on the Mesabi Range. Many of us have visited a taconite mine to see how the low grade iron is mined and processed. The first thing that needs to be done with the rock once it is drilled and blasted, is to separate the iron from the rest of the waste rock. Almost all the taconite rock mined in Minnesota is less than thirty-percent iron.
The rock is loaded into trucks and then hauled to a crusher. From the crusher, the smaller pieces of rock are put on a conveyer belt where they go to a big building called the concentrator. The rock enters large mills that turn around like big hollow metal wheels. The mill wheels keep turning and the rock is ground into sludge. From there the sludge is passed through large magnetic separators. The large drum-like magnets takes the iron and separate it from the other rock which is then sent out to the tailings basin. Any one who has never seen just how large a tailings basin is should take a flight over one of the taconite mines and see just how large an area it takes to deal with all that pulverized sludge.
The main difference between taconite mining and sulfide mining comes in the separation process. Copper, nickel, platinum, and gold are non-magnetic, so we need a different way to separate the minerals we want from the rest of the waste rock. In place of magnetic separators, sulfide mining passes its pulverized slurry through tanks filled with thousands of gallons of either potassium or sodium cyanide. The cyanide acts as a bonding agent that keeps the desired minerals while the rest of the sludge is sent out to a tailing basin where the heavier rock settles to the bottom of the pond and the water left over is recycled to be used again in the process. It is this waste product that has always presented a problem for sulfide mining, because it leaves a lot of sulfur exposed to the elements. When water combines with sulfur, it makes sulfuric acid which is bad stuff.
In order to be fair to the sulfide companies I will be generous in the comparison between the desired minerals which will be kept, and the other components which are considered to be waste. The highest concentration that the sulfide mining companies will keep for profit is five percent or less. This means that out of a ton of rock, they will keep about fifty pounds of copper or nickel. That leaves 1,950 pounds of waste that will be left behind. A small percentage of that waste product contains sulfur. There isn’t much the mining companies can do about it, and still make a profit. It is the nature of the beast.
The best that can be said about the proposed sulfide mining, for anyone who cares about the area’s vast resources of fresh water, is that the sulfur content of Minnesota’s rock is less than the rock previously mined in parts of the western United States. Out West, places that once gave sulfide mining a try are still dealing with bright orange-colored creeks and rivers that are polluted with sulfuric acid over a century after the mining was finished. One company employee of Twin Metals tried to pacify my concerns by reassuring me that in the worst case scenario, the acidity of the water that will eventually flow into the Kawishiwi River will only have the acidity of a cup of orange juice. It sounded pretty benign until I tried to put minnows and leeches in a gallon of orange juice. We might be able to drink orange juice, but nothing can live long in a glass of orange juice.
I know that companies like Twin Metals have assured us that everything that can possibly be done will be done to make sure that when the mining is finished in a couple of generations that we won’t be left with the same legacy that they have left in other places all over the world. They like to throw out terms like new technology, to assuage our fears, but in truth there is no technology in the world that will keep the acid from entering our water and flowing into the Boundary Waters Wilderness Area and eventually polluting the Rainy River watershed.
In the past decades Iron Range Resources has poured millions of dollars trying to help the Mesabi Range diversify its economy. They have built elaborate golf courses, the Iron Range Interpretive Center, and the Giants Ridge Ski area, but nothing they have tried has ever turned a profit. The Mesabi Range made a great sacrifice to America’s history. They have a right to be proud of that generous contribution to our nation, and they are still making that contribution today. They have little choice but to continue to mine whatever else can be mined. Every year the huge open pits will get wider and deeper, the piles of waste rock will grow higher and higher, and the tailings basins will spread and deepen across the land. It is too late to change the fate of the Mesabi Range.
But we fortunate few living north of the Continental Divide do have a choice. We can say no to sulfide mining. Ely was a mining town, and it should be proud of its history, but anyone who thinks that sulfide mining will leave us a future nearly as bright as the iron mining did is sadly mistaken. For over forty years we have been a tourist-based economy and a place where people come to retire, because we are one of the few unspoiled and under-exploited places left in the world. If we stick with the beautiful bird that we have in hand, Ely will continue to have a future with no end in sight, but if anyone thinks that sulfide mining and tourism can co-exist they need only to look at places like Virginia to see the eventual ruination that sulfide mining will bring to our future. We can be one thing or the other, but we can not be both.
