Water

from: http://www.kttc.com/ ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) – A spill at a sand mining facility in Wisconsin has dumped an unknown amount of sand and other sediment into the St. Croix (kroy) River and wetlands near the Minnesota border. Wisconsin DNR officials tell Minnesota Public Radio News it’s too soon to know how much damage was done. Conservation officials learned of the leak on April 22, when a hiker reported seeing cream-colored water in a creek flowing to the St. Croix River. DNR investigators traced the murky water back to a sand mining facility operated by Maple Grove-based Tiller Corp., where they located a leak in a holding pond. ...

By: Ben Cutbank The words that make up this piece were given to me by the Milwaukee River. The Milwaukee River runs through the place where I live. Really, it is the place where I live, or at least part of it. This place would not be what it is without the river. On a warm, sunny day the river will call to me in a bodily way to come into the water, or at least to feel it with my hands or feet. I’m sure this relationship between river and human, river and bird, river and insect, is older and more sacred than I can imagine. ...

from Milwaukee Riverkeeper Yesterday, the Cleaner Valley Coalition, of which Milwaukee Riverkeeper is a member, called on the EPA to take stronger steps to clean up pollution at the We Energies Menomonee Valley coal-fired power plant. Two members of the Coalition - the Sierra Club and its attorneys, Midwest Environmental Advocates (MEA), filed a Notice of Intent to Sue the EPA for failing to comply with its duty to ensure that a new water pollution permit is issued for the plant. ...

from http://www.politiscoop.com/ Madison – In a release today, the blog Cognidissidence posted what it dubbed as a secret email to Gov. Scott Walker from Walker staffer Andrew Davis. The email depicts talking points Walker will use to justify the breaking of treaties with tribes in Northern Wisconsin by opening their lands up to iron ore mining. To give you a brief history, The Ojibwe of Wisconsin signed three major land cession treaties with the United States in 1837, 1842, and 1854, ceding their entire homeland to the U.S. and establishing reservations for four Ojibwe bands in the state. The 1837 land cession treaty between the United States and the Ojibwe was concluded at a conference held near present-day Minneapolis-St. Paul in Minnesota. There, the Ojibwe traded the majority of their Wisconsin lands for a twenty-year annuity of $9500 in cash, $19,000 in goods (blankets, rifles, and cooking utensils), $2000 worth of provisions, $3000 to establish and maintain three blacksmiths’ shops, and $500 worth of tobacco. Congress appropriated another $75,000 to pay debts the tribe owed to fur traders. A final treaty provision reserved the Ojibwe’s right to hunt, fish, and gather wild rice on ceded lands. More, President Obama Promised Tribal Leaders Help with environmental issues in November 2009 when he signed a memorandum directing every Cabinet agency to give him a detailed plan within 90 days of how they will implement an executive order signed by President Bill Clinton nine years ago that established “regular and meaningful consultation and collaboration” between tribal nations and the federal government.

from http://www.intercontinentalcry.org/ BY AHNI JAN 8, 2012 The Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa are working, along with several NGOs, to stop a controversial mining bill that would gut existing environmental protections and effectively silence the public in order to streamline mining projects in the state of Wisconsin. Wisconsin State Assembly Bill 426 looks like it could’ve come straight from former Peruvian President Alan Garcia’s waste basket, for all the good it would do. The 183-page bill wants to: Allow for the destruction of high quality wetlands Allow mining waste to be deposited in floodplains and on the shores of lakes and rivers Remove the right of citizens’ to sue for illegal environmental damage by a mine Prohibit the DNR from monitoring mine waste sites or facilities, stopping work at a mine if there are permit violations or pollution, or making mine companies pay fines for those violations. Force the DNR to make a decision on a mining permit within 360 days, otherwise it is automatically approved.

from http://earthfirstnews.wordpress.com/ Anti-Mining Struggles in the Penokee Hills and Lake Superior Region By Sarah Tops Open water stretches for miles to the north, and a soft, cool breeze whips your hair into your eyes. The hardwood forest opens behind you to a pale sand beach into which you sink your toes. Gulls laugh and a single piping plover searches for mollusks amongst the gentle lapping waves. The rough outline of a commercial tug can be made out through the sea haze. No, you’re not on the east or west coast. This is the northern coast, often overlooked by most Americans, but not Midwesterners. The inland seas, our Great Lakes, have been an inspiration and way of life for generations up here. WHAT’S AT STAKE Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world, covering an area the size of South Carolina. Its sloughs and shorelines contain rich wild rice beds and its waters over 80 species of fish. The Lake Superior region, spanning Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, as well as Ontario to the north, has been home to the Ojibwe people for over two hundred years, and before then, the Dakota and Huron. However, like most of America’s beautiful, natural places, it, too, is under threat of destruction and poisoning by industrial civilization. Since the late 1800s, the Lake Superior region has suffered from large-scale iron mining operations, supplying over three-fourths of the nation’s iron ore. The land was stripped of this resource half a century ago, but with current rising prices of iron and other minerals surrounding Lake Superior, mining companies are going back to dig out the dregs, a low-grade iron ore called taconite. Communities in the upper Midwest have been affected by air and water pollution as well as poverty associated with the boom-bust cycle of resource extraction. In the past several decades, however, Wisconsin has become a stronghold against large mining operations due to a mining moratorium law passed in 1998 after a prolonged struggle against sulfide mining that began in the 1970s. Now, Wisconsin’s strong environmental laws are being rewritten by a new administration working hand-in-hand with mining companies.