REGIONAL— PolyMet Mining has gone on the political offensive to counter official comments that groundwater flow from the company’s proposed NorthMet Mine will likely flow to the north, entering a major watershed of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.

The story, first revealed in the Aug. 21 issue of the Timberjay, was the subject of front page coverage in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune on Wednesday.

In an emailed statement to supporters following release of the Timberjay’s story, the company labeled Dr. John Coleman, the Environmental Section Leader for the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, or GLIFWC, as an “anti-mining activist.” But the company, when asked for documentation of the charge, failed to provide any substantiation to the Timberjay. In addition, some of the claims in PolyMet’s statement are clearly inaccurate.

GLIFWC is a cooperating agency on the development of the supplemental environmental impact statement, or SEIS, for the proposed NorthMet Mine. Coleman, who has signed official comments on the SEIS for GLIFWC, is based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

PolyMet officials, in their response, call Coleman’s comments an effort to create doubt in the process. “Water from the NorthMet project will never cause harm to the Boundary Waters or any other watershed,” reads the company statement, which did not appear to be posted on the PolyMet website. “The comprehensive and thorough state and federal environmental review now nearing completion, demonstrates our copper-nickel project meets applicable environmental standards. The agencies have appropriately evaluated all concerns submitted to them from the public, including the one from Mr. Coleman. There have been no miscalculations, fundamental or otherwise in the Environmental Impact Statement,” reads the statement.

But the issue is far from resolved, despite PolyMet’s claims. DNR officials say they’re evaluating the issue and haven’t ruled out the possibility that some water flowing from the mine could drain towards the nearby Peter Mitchell pits, which drain into Birch Lake, part of the Kawishiwi River watershed.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency has also weighed in on the issue, as first revealed by the Minneapolis Star Tribune on Wednesday. The EPA, in an Aug. 5 letter urges the DNR and other co-lead agencies working to finalize the ongoing environmental review for the proposed mine to disclose the possibility of a northwards flow and propose mitigation measures. “EPA’s review and discussion with co-lead and cooperating agencies indicate that a northward flow path is possible and can be addressed through adaptive management,” states the EPA letter, signed by Alan Walts, director of the agency’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance.

PolyMet charges unsubstantiated

PolyMet, in its statement issued to supporters, claims that Coleman unsuccessfully “challenged ground water models at the Eagle Mine in Michigan and the Flambeau Mine in Wisconsin in attempts to stop them from being developed.”

But the company appears to be making claims it cannot substantiate.

The Timberjay requested documentary evidence of those claims from the company. PolyMet spokesperson Bruce Richardson, in response, issued the following statement: “John Coleman admits in correspondence with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources that he is not a water modeling expert and he was exposed as an anti-mining activist in court proceedings associated with the Eagle Mine in Michigan.”

Coleman has, in fact, stated that he is not a water modeling expert, although he does have extensive experience in computer modeling and has worked on water modeling in conjunction with the U.S. Geological Survey.

The Timberjay could find no available documentation to substantiate PolyMet’s claims regarding court proceedings at the Eagle Mine, nor did PolyMet spokesperson Bruce Richardson respond to a request for such evidence.

From the available online record, Coleman appears to have provided input on stormwater management at the Eagle Mine in Michigan, but the Timberjay could find no evidence that he had challenged water modeling for the project. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality’s approval of a permit in 2007 was challenged in a contested case hearing by four entities, but neither GLIFWC nor Coleman were litigants in the case.

The Timberjay can confirm that PolyMet’s claims regarding Coleman and purported efforts to stop development at the Flambeau Mine are false. Kennecott Mining operated the tiny Flambeau Mine, near Ladysmith, Wis., for just four years, beginning in 1993. Environmental review on the project began in the late 1980s. The Wisconsin DNR completed environmental review in 1990 and issued permits in 1991, according to Kennecott. Coleman began working for GLIFWC in 1994. Prior to that, he had been working for the Florida Fish and Game Department studying the impacts of hydrological changes (unrelated to mining) in the Kissimmee River floodplain.

Coleman did testify as an expert witness in litigation in 2007 after toxic levels of copper and other contaminants were found in waters adjacent to the Flambeau Mine site. By that time, however, the mine had been closed for a decade.

GLIFWC responds

GLIFWC officials were reluctant to respond directly to the charges leveled by PolyMet. The agency’s public affairs official, Charlie Rasmussen, said he prefers to let the science speak for itself. “There’s nothing radical in calling for using the best science available to drive decision-making,” he said. “GLIFWC is charged to protect treaty resources and that means using the best environmental analysis that can be done. With something this important, all the co-managers need to take a very close look at all the available data.”

Rasmussen said GLIFWC has taken no position on the PolyMet project at this point. “GLIFWC stands against unsafe mining, that would cause damage to treaty resources. But by no means is GLIFWC anti-mining as an organization.”

Eleven Indian bands from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan formed GLIFWC in 1984, after a series of treaty rights cases confirmed that the bands retained rights to hunt and fish on off-reservation lands within their treaty territories. Rasmussen said the treaty rights cases made it imperative that tribal authorities had a real voice in the management of all public lands in their treaty areas, and that’s the role that GLIFWC plays. “What good is a treaty right if your resources are despoiled,” said Rasmussen. “We take our marching orders from the tribes. They want the resources clean and useable seven generations down the road.”

Latest response from PolyMet

Following release of the Star Tribune’s story this week, PolyMet did post a statement on its website, which again attributes the dispute over water flow to an “anti-mining activist,” without mentioning Coleman by name.

The release also cites four reasons why the company believes water from the PolyMet mine won’t flow to the north:

• Dewatering activities on nearby taconite mines have not had an adverse effect on the water levels in the Iron and Argo lakes nearby or the surrounding aquifer. In fact, the water level in these lakes has gradually increased by 2-3 feet in the 30-year dewatering period.

• Dewatering of taconite mine pits more than a mile from the NorthMet mine site would not affect the direction of groundwater flow at the NorthMet mine site. We know this based on an assessment of historical dewatering of taconite pits in the region, including the dewatering of one of these taconite pits, which has not affected the water level in another taconite pit that is only 500 feet away.

• Almost a decade of monitoring water levels in bedrock at the NorthMet mine site shows that groundwater from the NorthMet site will stay in the St. Louis River watershed.

• Open pit mines on the Iron Range historically and consistently do NOT create cones of depression that would shift groundwater flows at distances as great as those between the NorthMet and taconite mines.