Recent letters from Tom Rukavina and Gerald Tyler and a column by Ross Petersen reflect opinions about sulfide-ore mining and the related debate that are different from mine. I have set forth below some facts that help shape my opinions.

Ninety people have volunteered to work at Sustainable Ely to meet and educate the public about the threat that sulfide-ore mining presents to water, land, public health, businesses, and hunting, fishing, and other recreational opportunities in the Ely area. Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness (NMW) has more than 2,400 supporters. Some of those people live and work elsewhere but they come to Ely and other Boundary Waters communities on vacation or to spend time at the cabin. They spend their money at local businesses.

Companies proposing mining in the Superior National Forest (SNF) tread on the property rights of all of us. PolyMet seeks the largest permitted destruction of wetlands in Minnesota history. For the project to go forward, the people of the United States must convey to PolyMet 6,650.2 acres of land that we own as part of the SNF. That property includes a large wetland complex that has been identified by the Minnesota Biological Survey and the United States EPA as being of unique value because of its high biodiversity. In exchange for this unique property, the people of the United States would receive five separate parcels of land in St. Louis, Lake, and Cook counties. The water resource and biological value of those parcels is a fraction of the value of our land that would be transferred to PolyMet.

Twin Metals engages in the destruction of our SNF lands at scores of locations where they create clearings for exploratory drilling. Twin Metals now seeks permits for further drilling on our land to conduct so-called hydrogeological testing—apparently so they will know how much of our water will be draining into the mines they want to build, and where the polluted water from the mines, waste, and tailings will flow in the earth.

Rukavina and Tyler claim that mining has kept northeastern Minnesota alive for more than a century. On life support is more like it. Leading mining boosters are unendingly puzzled as to why the Range doesn’t do better economically. On September 21, 2013, the Mesabi Daily News commented on Minnesota unemployment figures: “Even though mining . . . is running at near-full capacity, the employment and jobless numbers don’t add up anywhere near as well for the Iron Range as the statewide averages…For the first seven months of 2013…a comparison of the statewide employment rate with that of the Iron Range shows the area’s jobless rate is 64 percent higher than the overall Minnesota level.” In the same edition of that newspaper, Senator Dave Tomassoni was quoted as follows: “It’s always a mystery to me why we are lagging in employment when our mining industry is doing so well.” 

It is no mystery. Around the United States, mining drives out healthy sustainable economic activity—Appalachia, the ghost towns of the West, the Minnesota Iron Range.

But don’t take my word for it. The PolyMet SDEIS says this, among other things, in section 5.2.10.1.4:

“[The] “boom and bust” phenomenon is often present in mining communities . . . . [The Skurla UMD IMPLAN program] does not model this phenomenon . . . . [The] duration of a boom or bust and the severity . . . cannot be predicted.

“Throughout the nation, “regional labor productivity [in mining and overall] . . . has increased dramatically” since publication of the 2009 DEIS (BBER 2012). Over the longer term (since approximately 1980), mining productivity in the Arrowhead region has also increased, due to mechanization and technological innovation (Powers 2007). As a result, far fewer miners are now required per unit of extracted material than before, which therefore lessens the effects of booms and busts in mining communities. Continued technologically driven productivity increases could lead to lower employment than assumed by IMPLAN or other projections.”

In his March 7 column, Ross Petersen acknowledged that people who have moved to Ely, and who like it “the way it is now . . .to a degree . . . have a point.” The people that the Mayor mentioned are people who live in or near Ely by choice; they are here because of the lakes and forested lands of the Boundary Waters and the SNF and because Ely is an interesting and lively place. And they are important to Ely’s economic well-being. But Petersen claims that those people do not “support . . . a strong middle class community anywhere close to the way mining does.” Petersen, like Rukavina and Tyler, pines for a mythical mining industry of the past. The evidence shows that mining is not a pathway to stable, middle-class communities. In the face of such facts, however, the politicians want more mining. Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Reid Carron

Morse Twp., Minn.