Caulk Can't Fix Mine's Potential Damage To WI Water, Law And Public Policy

About a year ago, GOP West Bend State Sen. Glann Grothman told Mellen farm family members living near the proposed GTac open-pit iron mine that their well could be protected with caulk.

Video here.

Now a lengthy internal Department of Natural Resources report about the mine's possible pollution impacts on the region's surface and groundwaters has made its way into the debate, making three things clear:

*  Serious people know that these issues transcend caulk.

*  Because the mine raises potential major threat to public health.

*  And also to the integrity of fundamental, long-standing state law; Article IX of the Wisconsin State Constitution (the Public Trust Doctrine) says the DNR is required to put protection of water at the top of  regulatory options because state waters and access to them are held in trust for all the people.

As the DNR says on its Public Trust Doctrine webpage:

The [State Supreme] court has ruled that DNR staff, when they review projects that could impact Wisconsin lakes and rivers, must consider the cumulative impacts of individual projects in their decisions. "A little fill here and there may seem to be nothing to become excited about. But one fill, though comparatively inconsequential, may lead to another, and another, and before long a great body may be eaten away until it may no longer exist. Our navigable waters are a precious natural heritage, once gone, they disappear forever," wrote the Wisconsin State Supreme Court justices in their opinion resolving Hixon v. PSC.(2)

These principles have been federal policy since 1787.

Little wonder then that the mainstream Wisconsin Wildlife Federation is calling for the repeal of a recently-passed, GOP-led, industry-backed, fast-tracking iron mine enabling law, and that the US Army Corp of Engineers has said in writing since 2011 that the state mining law as approved would actually complicate and delay permitting reviews.  

Details, links, here.

Also little wonder that the DNR report is being attacked by GTac as biased, so the value of science in making state water policy is on the line, too.

Which also means the Journal Sentinel editorial calling for the law's "tweaking" is insufficient, since the paper knows full well the law was rotten from the get-go.

Cross-posted at Purple Wisconsin.