Minnesota Public Radio asked the following question – “Are you confident the proposed PolyMet mine would avoid polluting Minnesota’swater?”
My answer follows.
Having worked for 30 years in the environmental field, I
have come to understand that environmental regulations are not designed to
prevent industry from polluting; they are actually designed to permit
industries to pollute. The goal of the
writers of these permits is of course to encourage the mine operators to manage
the pollutants as best they can, so as to not cause any immediate threats to
the surrounding ecosystem out of which the mine will be carved.
But pollution will occur despite our best attempts to manage
it; even if there were no accidents, no equipment failures, or no operational
negligence along the way. Therefore, as
long as a mine is permitted to occur, it will pollute. And those pollutants will get into the
people, plants, and animals that depend on that ecosystem for their life.
The process will begin when the land which is to be mined is
cleared off all life that exists there.
Runoff from the now denuded and disturbed landscape will begin to be
carried off the site by stormwater and wind, despite permit requirements that
require the mine to "control" this runoff with best management
practices.
The equipment used to clear the site, and mine the mine,
will pollute the air when the fossil fuels that power the equipment is burned
in the engines the move the equipment.
The pollution laden exhausts will then expand into the atmosphere, where
the pollutants will dissolve or be suspended in the moisture in the air, where
eventually some of them will fall to the ground and run into our surface and
ground waters.
As the mining process continues, the overburden from the
mine will be stockpiled, and when the rains and the winds contact it, sediments
containing minerals and heavy metals that have been sealed in the earth will be
exposed to the biosphere, and the pollutants they contain will again continue
to run off the site, again despite any best management practices or treatment
required by a permit. Sure these
practices will again prevent some pollution from running off site, but no best
management practice or treatment system is 100% effective. And the reality is that any treatment system
used to treat the runoff will require more fuel to operate it, resulting in
more pollutant containing exhaust to be released into the air.
Eventually the mine will reach the groundwater levels. And when the natural biological and physical
filtration system that took billions of years to be placed is removed from the
site, some of the sediments containing minerals and heavy metals that are
mobilized in the mining process, and some of the equipment fuel or lubrication
fluids that spill in the mine will find their way into the groundwater, again
despite any requirements that the permit specifies to minimize these impacts or
cleanup the spills.
And then when the mining process is finished, and hopefully
the mine is “reclaimed” the metals and minerals and sulfates that will remain
will continue to leach into to the groundwater and stormwater that contacts
them. And again, any treatment systems
or management practices required by a permit will only remove a portion of the
pollution they contain, the rest will be released back into the surrounding
ecosystem and the now permanently changed ecosystem of the “reclaimed”
mine.
So the only way to be confident that the proposed PolyMet
mine would avoid polluting Minnesota’s water, would require the concluder to
not understand the permitting and mining process.
The question I have – is pollution of our ecosystem worth
the benefits of some short-term jobs, some metals to make some more stuff, some
tax money for the state, and potentially huge profits for the mining company?
If your answer is
“yes”, I would ask – is this the best we can do?
