Friday, May 26, 2017

More disconnects between WI beauty, tourism & toxic mining

I had noted the other day that right-wing GOP Gov. and chief state environmental trasher Scott Walker was again touting to tourists the same wetland-and-waterfalls-rich area he'd worked to change with dynamite, drilling and deforestation into North America's biggest open-pit iron ore mine.

Now here's yet another example.


The Journal Sentinel is running another in its 'see Wisconsin' parks and hikes series, this time directing people to scenic sites along the Menominee River on the state's border with Michigan's Upper Peninsula.


But where yet another open-pit mine is planned which could discharge toxic sulfide residue into important waters including into the river, Green Bay and Lake Michigan.

Note these comments in a Michigan publication:

The River Alliance of Wisconsin, the Front 40 citizens group and the Wisconsin Resources Protection Council oppose the mine over fears that pollution could contaminate the adjacent Menominee River, a major Lake Michigan tributary flowing into Green Bay which is the focus of state and federal downstream fishery projects aimed at restoring lake sturgeon populations...
Joan Delabreau, Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin chairwoman, said she was "sickened" by the DEQ draft decision to permit a mine on historic burial grounds. 
I'd written about this, and more than once:
I'd posted about this travesty a few months ago - - 
Regulators in Michigan thought few people would notice on the first day of the three-day Labor Day holiday weekend that the state began formally moving to approve an environmentally and culturally destructive open-pit mine at the water-rich Michigan-Wisconsin border on land sacred to the Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin - - 
- - and now it looks like the mine thanks to right-wing GOP Rick Snyder's water and environmental 'regulators' is a big step closer to opening.
And by the way, anyone think Walker's 'chamber of commerce DNR' will do anything but help out Walkers bestie Rick Snyder? 

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