Copper Mining or Copper Recycling?

Birch Lake, Minnesota

The battle is raging in Minnesota over whether or not to allow PolyMet to begin mining for copper adjacent to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.  This is in the iron range - mining country - and lots of folks in that area want the mine because of the jobs it will bring.  Lots of other folks are terrified that a copper mine in the Boundary Waters watershed area will pollute the water and have frightening environmental and health consequences for hundreds of years to come.  

The environmental hazards of copper mining are pretty scary to me.  See this article: Sulfide Mining in Minnesota.  This is also disturbing: Recycling copper saves up to 90% of the energy of mining and processing virgin ore, yet the United States only recycles about half of its copper scrap.  The rest is exported to other countries!  Here's a quote from a Bloomberg Business Week article on exporting scrap metal to China: 

"Demand for copper in the U.S. is too low, and labor is too expensive, to be worth any scrap yard’s time." .... "for the last decade  (China) imported more than 70 percent of the scrap copper it uses. Meanwhile, the U.S., which throws away far more scrap metal than it can ever use, has become the world’s most attractive market for the savvy Chinese buyer."

So why do we need to build copper mines here that will harm our environment - and our drinking water - when we have so much recyclable scrap copper here that we export it overseas?  I imagine it is so that we can export even more copper.  Hmmm.Let's save that 90% more energy that mining uses and build some copper/ metal recycling plants on the Iron Range.

Whatever your views are, the environmental review for the PolyMet project is in process.  The last of the three public hearings is tomorrow at RiverCenter.  Show up if you can and make your views known. (5PM Open House, 7PM Public Comments)

If you can't make it,contact a key official.  Here are a few names:

Govenor Mark Dayton
Tom Landwehr, Commissioner Minnesota Department of Natural Resources
Tom.Landwehr@state.mn.us
Lisa Fay, Environmental Impact Statement Manager
Lisa.Fay@state.mn.us
Douglas Brunder, Project Manager, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
douglas.w.bruner@usace.army.mil & mvp-reg-inquiry@usace.army.mil
Tim Dabney, Deputy  Forest Supervisor, U.S. Forest Service, Superior National Forest: t.dabney@fs.fed.us
John Stein, Commissioner, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency
John.Stine@state.mn.us
Rep. Betty McCollum
www.mccollum.house.gov
Sen. Amy Klobuchar
202-224-3244
Sen. Al Franken
202-224-5641