Clean water coalition
thursday, june 12th | 1 PM
The Minnesota Prove It First Bill and the Myth of Sulfide Ore Mining without Environmental Contamination
Steven H. Emerman, Ph.D.
Presentation to the Clean Water Coalition
June 12, 2025
Prof. Steven H. Emerman
Today’s Presenter
The presenter’s 60th birthday party at Standing Rock Indian Reservation
Prof. Emerman has evaluated proposed and existing mining projects in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. He has testified on issues of mining and water before the US House Subcommittee on Indigenous Peoples of the United States, the European Parliament, the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the United Nations Environment Assembly, and the Commission on Human Rights of the Chamber of Deputies of the Dominican Republic.
Prof. Emerman testifying before the U.S. Congress on March 12, 2020
The Minnesota Prove It First Bill and the Myth of Sulfide Ore Mining without Environmental Contamination
The full report is available at:
Related report in the context of Nova Scotia:
https://www.keepcoxheathclean.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Cape_Breton_Emerman_Report.pdf
What is Sulfide Ore Mining?
Minnesota Prove It First Bill:
"Nonferrous sulfide ore" means any ore, other than iron ore, consisting of sufficient sulfide minerals to generate acid mine drainage.
Red-brown color in discharge from dam drainage pipes after treatment, Morro do Ouro Mine, Paracatu, Minas Gerais, Brazil
Identical color in water from hand-dug wells in village of Santa Rita (after addition of bleach)
Acid Mine Drainage: Quick Tutorial
Pyrite (iron sulfide) + oxygen + water → dissolved iron + sulfuric acid
Left to right:
Pyrite (iron sulfide)
Galena (lead sulfide)
Sphalerite (zinc sulfide)
The Inevitability of Environmental Contamination is Generally Accepted within the Mining Industry
“This article is based on four facts: … 4. Exploitation of individual mineral deposits or occurrences involves environmental degradation … Ensuring future generations’ supply of mineral products requires balancing mineral product recovery with an acceptable amount of environmental degradation … Various mitigation measures can reduce, but not fully eliminate, the negative impacts of this exploitation.
The costs of complete remediation of a mine site will eliminate the possibility of profitable extraction, yet society’s need for mineral products requires that exploitation of mineral deposits will continue into the future.”
There is no “Society” that is Weighing the Risks and Benefits of Sulfide-Ore Mining
“Risk analysts do not normally consider whether the risk is acceptable to those on whom the risk is imposed. Rather the question is whether the risk is acceptable to ‘society.’ This does not make much sense. Society is not in a position to accept risk; governments might, on behalf of society, but society is not an entity that can make these normative judgements …
However, we believe that rather than seeing the existing distribution of risk as a result of some kind of value consensus, it is better to see it as the outcome of a political process, the result of a contest between unequal political forces.”
Wisconsin Legislature, 1997:
“Moratorium on Issuance of Permits for Mining of Sulfide Ore Bodies”
“Beginning on May 7, 1998, the department [Department of Natural Resources] may not issue a permit … for the purpose of the mining of a sulfide ore body until all of the following conditions are satisfied: (a) The department determines … that a mining operation has operated in a sulfide ore body which, together with the host nonferrous rock, has a net acid generating potential in the United States or Canada for at least 10 years without the pollution of groundwater or surface water from acid drainage at the tailings site or at the mine site or from the release of heavy metals. (b) The department determines … that a mining operation that operated in a sulfide ore body which, together with the host nonferrous rock, has a net acid generating potential in the United States or Canada has been closed for at least 10 years without the pollution of groundwater or surface water from acid drainage at the tailings site or at the mine site or from the release of heavy metals.”
Nine Candidates for Sulfide Ore Mines without Environmental Contamination
Cullaton Lake, McLaughlin and Sacaton mines were formally proposed and rejected by Wisconsin DNR. The six other mines were informally proposed.
No sulfide ore mines were approved in Wisconsin during the tenure of the statute. The impasse was broken in favor of the mining industry when the statute was repealed in 2017 with effect in 2018.
“The commissioner [of Natural Resources] may not issue a permit required to mine nonferrous sulfide ore unless the commissioner and the commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency both determine … that a mine for nonferrous sulfide ore has operated commercially for at least ten years and has been closed for at least ten years without resulting in a release of a hazardous substance, hazardous waste, or pollutant or contaminant … The mine must have operated in the United States in a similar environment to the mine for which the permit is sought …”
Minnesota Legislature, every session since 2021:
“Moratorium on Issuance of Permits for Mining of Sulfide Ore Bodies”
(Prove It First Bill)
Nine Candidates for Sulfide Ore Mines without Environmental Contamination
The nine candidates that were rejected during the tenure of the Wisconsin statute are the same nine candidates that are being put forward as examples of model sulfide ore mines in response to the Prove It First Bill.
The absence of new candidates is the best proof of all that there has never existed a sulfide ore mine without environmental contamination.
An open-pit mine owned by Flambeau Mining Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of the British-Australian company Rio Tinto, that extracted a sulfide ore for production of copper, gold and silver. The mine operated only from 1993 to 1997.
Flambeau Mine
According to Rio Tinto, the mine had been reclaimed by 1999.
The Flambeau mine is an atypical example in that all ore was shipped to Canada for processing and no mine tailings were stored on-site.
The open pit is 140 feet from the Flambeau River.
Numerous Exceedances of Groundwater Quality Standards after Mine Closure
Groundwater Quality near the Backfilled Pit is Unlikely to Improve
Moran Report:
“After the limestone has reacted with the waste rock, its neutralizing action will diminish and the pit waters will become increasingly acidic and the concentrations of potentially-toxic contaminants are likely to increase … As the limestone becomes coated with other chemical reaction products, the buffering action ceases. It is reasonable to conclude that the Flambeau ground and surface water quality will further degrade in the coming decades …”
The backfilled waste rock was mixed with limestone to attempt to neutralize its acidity.
Stream C, a Tributary of the Flambeau River that Crosses the Mine Site, is on the EPA List of Impaired Waters
A 2005 study contracted by the mining company concluded that Stream C was nearly devoid of all life, including vegetation, insects and fish
Prediction by consultants for mining company:
“All of the groundwater flowing through the Type-II [high sulfur] waste rock in the reclaimed pit will exit the pit through the Precambrian rock in the river pillar and flow directly into the bed of the Flambeau River. Since this flow path is very short and occurs entirely within fractured crystalline rock, there will be little if any dispersion or retardation of the dissolved constituents in the groundwater … the concentrations of these constituents in the groundwater leaving the pit will be the same as the concentrations entering the river bed.”
Numerous Pathways for Contaminants to Enter Flambeau River
The Water Quality of the Flambeau River is not Monitored
The Mining Company has been Allowed to Report Results only from Filtered Samples
The Flambeau Mine as a Fake Success Story
Wisconsin DNR issued a Certificate of Completion (COC) of Reclamation for the Flambeau mine on December 20, 2022. The Certificate of Completion of Reclamation indicates only that the mining company has completed its reclamation plan. It in no way states that there has been no environmental contamination.
Response by Deer Tail Scientific, Wisconsin Resources Protection Council, and Sierra Club Wisconsin Chapter:
“In handing down its decision to certify that FMC had successfully reclaimed the Flambeau Mine project site, the DNR cited provisions of Wisconsin’s mining code that allowed them to do so. Primarily, they focused attention on their determination that FMC had ‘completed reclamation in accordance with the approved reclamation plan.’ That approach was consistent with what FMC had maintained in a legal brief filed in 2007, the first time the company sought COC certification. When making their legal arguments before the judge, the company characterized the COC process as ‘simple and limited to essentially checking off whether FMC has or has not completed certain specified reclamation tasks …’. Absent was any consideration of whether or not the reclamation plan had actually succeeded in protecting public waters … In other words, Wisconsin’s mining laws simply require a mining company to prove they did whatever their reclamation plan said they were going to do …”
Wisconsin DNR: “DNR and Flambeau Mining Company have agreed that additional assessment of the biologic condition of Stream C is appropriate to determine whether Stream C is attaining its designated uses … The Department anticipates the company will initiate assessment activities in 2023 and that all critical aspects of the work, including sample collection and analysis, will be verified by DNR … The Revised Mining Permit will remain in force until the remaining reclamation bond is released, which will not occur for a minimum of 20 years.”
Wisconsin DNR did not State that there is no Environmental Contamination from the Flambeau Mine
Various claims that all reclamation bonds for the Flambeau mine have been released are not correct.
The Prove It First Bill is a 20-Year Moratorium
Why some other jurisdiction?
Minnesota has no Obligation to be the Sacrifice Zone for the Testing of New Technology
“[The sacrifice zone] is fundamentally a geographical concept about the production of space: environmental harms are concentrated in some places in order to protect the environmental health and sustainability of other places. Geographies of environmental sacrifice have been the necessary corollary of geographies of environmental abundance. The latter depend on and are constituted by the former … In short, the sacrifice zone concept signals a ‘we’ who are singled out by some criteria as an acceptable sacrifice and ‘they’ who use the powers of state, market, and mindset to do both the rationalizing and the sacrificing.”
No One and No Place has an Obligation to Serve as a Sacrifice Zone
Is there any world religion that offers any justification for the concept of a sacrifice zone?
“As for me, I accept the degradation of part of our environment for the betterment of the whole to get sufficient energy production to keep our society functioning, and bring health, electricity and better living conditions to the rest of the world … So, although to some it may seem callous, I accept the loss of the pristine deserts in South America to get the lithium we need … But it will be lost and probably has to be lost unless we find another way to build Tesla's (and other) batteries.”
-- Past President, Geological Society of America
How Far have We Fallen that is Now Acceptable to Demand that Someone Else Serve as a Sacrifice Zone?
How Far have We Fallen that is Now Acceptable to Demand that Someone Else Serve as a Sacrifice Zone?
Email from Harry Cabrita, CEO of Nova Copper to the Mayor and Council of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality:
“Communities that do not welcome safe, responsible copper mining will be abdicating their responsibility to act on climate change.”
Take-Home Messages
MN legislative session update
www.friends-bwca.org
THANK YOU!