ELY – A standing-room-only crowd in the Ely City Hall council chambers Tuesday night were decidedly in support of Ely-area business owners, longtime residents and taxpayers who spoke to council members about the threat of sulfide mining to the Ely economy.

Some 14 people addressed the council, who listened but declined to comment, on the impassioned pleas of the mining opponents. The Ely City Council is on record in support of the proposed PolyMet and Twin Metals sulfide mine operations in the Ely area.

In published reports, Mayor Chuck Novak said, “I want the permitting process to go through. We’ve invested millions of dollars in both the federal and state agencies, and I have full confidence they’ll do what is right.”

He said he believed the council prefers to hear only from Ely residents and business owners “who pay taxes in Ely.”

“I am not anti-mining,” said Paul Schurke, owner of Wintergreen Dog Sled Lodge and Wintergreen Northern Apparel on Sheridan Street. “If it could be said that sulfide ore mining was tried and true, and in the end brings prosperity to communities and was proven to be environmentally sound, I would be the first to say ‘bring it on’.”

He said the opposite is true. “Not once have copper-nickel sulfide mines been opened and closed without a legacy of impoverished communities and damaged ecosystems.”

Schurke and the others who spoke were concerned that the City Council was “willing to bet the farm” on an industry with a track record that “is simply atrocious.”

“All we are asking for is some leadership,” Schurke said. “Passing and repeatedly expressing support for resolutions that lend full support to a highly controversial industry without asking for any assurances is not leadership, that’s pandering. Why not at least ask some tough questions?”

‰ “What happens if there is a breach in the proposed tunnel underneath Birch Lake?”

‰ “What happens if the noise and dust of the trucks drives tourists away?”

‰ “What happens isfthere is a breach in the tailings ponds like in Mt. Polley and in Colorado?”

‰ “What happens if mercury in our watershed due to acid mine drainage means that we can’t drink the water or eat those fish?”

“You are our civic leaders,” Schurke told the council. “We trust in you for a lot in this community. Why not at least wait until the science comes in before you sound off on this?”

Steve Piragis and his wife Nancy have been Ely residents since 1975 and worked on various environmental projects as biologists and taught at Vermilion Community College. They opened Piragis Northwoods Co. in 1979 and today they own a half block in downtown Ely and have some 20 full-time, year-round, employees and as many as 53 workers in the summer.

“We are significant contributors to the economy of Ely,” Piragis said. “and I think that gives us reason to speak here tonight.”

He said his business depends on a clean environment. “We are a wilderness edge business and like those who speak here tonight, we depend on the beautiful Boundary Waters wilderness that is clean and don’t think that copper mining is going to keep it that way,” he said. “I think copper mining is going to damage it, taint it, pollute it, and change this whole economy and what you love and what most of you have come to Ely for.”

He referenced many socio-economic issues that could change the community. “What is (sulfide mining) going to do to downtown businesses? How many more policemen will you have to hire? How many more people that we don’t really have the economy to afford will you need to support? What’s going to happen in the future if we have copper-nickel mining?”

Itinerant workers are the norm rather than the exception in mining economies around the world, Piragis said. “People don’t trust mining companies to last,” he said. “Boom and bust is the standard, so people don’t move in and bring their families and fill the schools and churches. That’s not the way mining economies around the world work and we wouldn’t expect that to be much different in Ely.”

Morse Township resident Debra Kleese said she lives and works in the community and supports the Ely retail economy. “I’m here because Ely bumps up against a vast area of forest and water,” she said. “It is one of the most significant freshwater areas on the planet, and it is this resource that is the community’s source of present and future value.”

Ely resident Carol Orba n said she was concerned about the footprint of the proposed sulfide mine project. “I’m trying to imagine what it would be like driving down Highway 1 and seeing and hearing the huge trucks and other equipment plowing down hundreds of acres of trees, creating roads, building a huge concentrator just south of our airport, (and) creating the corridor for the pipeline that would take the slurry all the way down Highway 21. That beautiful drive from the North Shore to Ely would be no more.”

Steve Koschak, who was born and raised in Ely and owns the River Point Resort with his wife Jane, passed out nickel mining rock core testing waste from samples that were conducted and left near his business on the Kawishiwi River.

“I picked up these rocks 45 years ago along Spruce Road,” he said as he put the rocks on the council members’ desks. “If I was to take these and hit them together your custodian would have a job cleaning up the mess. There is virtually no integrity left in the rocks.”

Ely resident Ted Spaulding asked the mayor a rhetorical question. “Why is Twin Metals going to be different? Why will they do, ‘what is right?’” Novak thanked Spaulding without commenting.

Bob Tammen, who lives in Soudan, and has property on Birch Lake, previously worked in mining. “Around 1970, before I married a school teacher from Ely and got civilized by matrimony, I lived in Mt. Iron not far from the mine’s main gate. There was a grocery store next door and a bar across the street and life was good,” he said. “Now that we are retired we go back to some of the places I had worked. Even having the largest single taconite mine in North America right next to your main street does not guarantee a healthy community, and I don’t think the copper mining industry will guarantee Ely a healthy main street.”

Tammen said mining economics is a good deal. “It was good for me and it is good for a lot of individuals, but the fact is, it is not good for communities and that’s where I see your problem,” he told the council.

“You aren’t worried so much about an individual getting rich. You’re about a community that is prosperous. We have no examples of mining making communities prosperous. We’re lucky to have the economy that we do in Ely.”

Several other speakers related concerns about the City Council’s formal support for sulfide mining.

“You are getting a lot of misrepresentations,” said Becky Rom, “and you need to understand that before you endorse a project like this.”

Mayor Novak thanked all those who spoke. “We have lots of information to digest and we will consider it. We have both sides of the story and need some time to work through it.” With no further comment, he adjourned the study session.