State mining law is moot

So says the headline on a column by Steve Jagler, the executive editor of the authoritative business publication BizTimes. The piece reviews the law's history and consequences to date:

...the bill is being exposed for what it was: a law written by proponents of the mining industry that was not tenable with federal environmental standards...

However, a recent report by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources’ Research Bureau warned that iron mining in northern Wisconsin would pose a variety of potential threats to human health and to the water supply that connects the complex ecosystem in the forest to wetland bogs and Lake Superior.

In a Dec. 23 letter to Matt Moroney, deputy secretary of the DNR, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ regulatory branch chief, Tamara Cameron, said the federal agency would not be able to work alongside the state to develop a joint environmental impact statement for the proposed Gogebic Taconite.