Saturday, August 31, 2013

GOP Legislators Bow To Mining Company, Again

Republican legislators and Gov. Walker continue to bow and scrape before the GTAC iron mine and its out-of-state mountain-top removing owners.

Bad enough that they all went behind closed doors and wrote a sweetheart bill that let the company dynamite away pristine hills and wetlands in the Bad River watershed and haul out low-grade ore from an open pit more initially than four miles long, 700 feet deep and a half-mile wide.

But now the same Republican politicians, exaggerating the scope of a confrontation between a handful of protesters and a test drilling crew that led to a single arrest are again gearing up the entire state legislative machinery - - this time to restrict access to thousands of acres of forest land near the mine site to which the public is guaranteed access. 

The land is leased to the mining company, but, by law is open to hunters, hikers and others because the land's owners have received tax breaks in exchange for the open access.

Another sellout of the public's interest and resources.

And an abrogation of treaties with the Ojibwe who ceded the land in exchange for access, and the state constitution's Public Trust Doctrine which guarantees unfettered access to any lake, river or stream in the forest.


4 comments:

Gareth said...

Events will transpire in this order:

(1) Grothman's bill is passed and signed into law.
(2) The state attempts to enforce the law by removing the encampments.
(3) This violation of the treaties is challenged in Federal Court and an injunction is issued, resulting in just one more barrier to the mine ever going into operation.
(4) The Ojibwe announce the initiation of "Glenn Grothman Day" during which people play stupid, pointless jokes on each other.

James Rowen said...

Or somebody gets hurt.

Dennis Grzezinski said...

Has nobody noticed that the new bill was introduced within a week of GTAC threatening the Bad River Tribe with "trespassing" for arranging to have a wetlands expert walk through the proposed mining site to check the wetlands delineations there?

James Rowen said...

I should have noted that, Dennis. Thanks for the reminder.