My Point of View by Jennifer Vogt-Erickson

 

“Mom! Is that the ocean?”

This was my first impression of Lake Superior as my family drove along Minnesota’s North Shore in the early 1980s. I was about 6, and I desperately wanted to see an ocean. It looked so vast that when I finally did see an ocean at age 15, it didn’t look any more impressive than Lake Superior had.

Lake Superior is the largest of the five Great Lakes, which together contain over 20% of the world’s surface fresh water. It’s an amazing and valuable resource.

Current events indicate that this extraordinary store of fresh water will only become more precious in the future.

This past week, the World Resources Institute released a study that determined one-quarter of the world’s population is at risk of running out of water. The perilous situation is driven by a combination of factors, including population growth, agricultural usage and climate change.

Climate change disrupts water cycles, making flooding worse and droughts deeper. Chennai, India, with around 9 million residents, reached “Day Zero” in June, the point at which its reservoirs were nearly empty. Two years of unusually dry monsoon seasons left the city in this precarious position, even though less than four years ago it received the most rainfall in a century, causing deadly flooding.

Another piece of news in the past two weeks was the enormous volume of water pouring off Greenland’s melting ice sheet. The torrent raised oceans a measurable amount in one week — 1/10 of a millimeter. According to ice core data, events like this are rare over the past 1,000 years.

This is the second huge melt event since 2012.

Climate change means that we may not recognize the climate within a few decades. The heat waves this summer in North America and Europe will become normal. Without reductions in our fossil fuel consumption, what is “normal” will keep changing, more radically than at any other time in human history.

Considering the gravity of these developments, is Minnesota adequately protecting its incredible water riches? Our water is in serious jeopardy due to a pair of proposed Iron Range copper-nickel mining projects: Polymet and Twin Metals.

I’ll focus here on Polymet since it’s connected to Lake Superior. (Twin Metals would affect what is — for now — the pristine Boundary Waters wilderness, and water in the impacted lakes flows through Canada into Hudson Bay.) The Polymet copper sulfide mine would be centered near Hoyt Lakes, and its runoff would flow into the St. Louis River, which is Duluth’s drinking water source, and then into Lake Superior.

While the Obama administration held up the permitting process for both Polymet and Twin Metals, the Trump administration has weakened federal environmental oversight, and Polymet received its final permits late last year. Since then, a dedicated opposition has exposed a number of alarming details. It won a critical hold last week on a state water quality permit that governs how much lead, arsenic, mercury and other pollutants Polymet can discharge.

The Minnesota Court of Appeals’ stay is based on the discovery of irregularities in the process between the EPA and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. According to the Star Tribune last week, leaked emails show that the MPCA asked the EPA to hold its comments until after the public comment period. A memo enumerates the EPA’s reservations about the permit, including the permit’s lack of specific pollution limits, enforcement provisions and protection for downstream communities from mercury. These are glaring problems.

Copper-nickel mining is notorious for pollution, and the deal does not specify who will be responsible for remediating contaminated soil and water. Former Gov. Arne Carlson and others have pointed out that Polymet, a heavily-indebted company, doesn’t have to put anything in escrow for these potential costs. Such cleanups easily run into the billions of dollars.

Glencore, a multinational corporation based in Switzerland, now owns majority control of Polymet but is not a party to the contract. It will reap the profits without being liable for damages.

What is the benefit to Minnesota? The promise — not guarantee — of 350 good-paying jobs. We should be skeptical of that number, but do a little math with me. If 350 workers receive $125,000 annual compensation (salary plus benefits) for 25 years, that amounts to $1.1 billion. The cleanup for the pollution that taxpayers will be left on the hook for on the backside of this deal could easily be higher.

In short, Minnesota is setting itself up for an economic and environmental hit-and-run.

Knowing that freshwater is only going to become more valuable in a rapidly changing climate, please tell Gov. Walz and other leaders in very clear, clean terms to permanently block the Polymet project from writing a chapter of disaster for our awe-inspiring water resources.

Jennifer Vogt-Erickson is a member of the Freeborn County DFL Party.