We're set.
Okay.
All right, can you just talk to me?
Yeah, absolutely.
So, I guess let's start with giving
me the Sierra Club's overall
perspective on mining.
Because I'm sure there's some people
that are like, oh, you're opposed to
all mining from the start,
so that's your only point of view.
Yeah, no, it's important to note
that the Sierra Club,
both at the state level and at the
national level, we're not an
anti-mining organization.
We recognize that modern society
has a certain demand
for metals.
Our perspective, though, when we
look at potential mining development
in Wisconsin is that
the environment here is
especially water-rich.
And that makes it really
almost incompatible with
modern mining, especially
metallic sulfide mining, where
the mining itself takes place in a
water-rich environment.
The wastes have to be impounded
safely forever in a waterproof
environment.
And that carries risks
that we
don't see in other parts
of the US, Canada,
and across the globe.
When you hear some of the people
that talk about,
oh, we've got a miner on the flag,
it's part of our history, that's
part of our culture, how do you
respond?
Sure,
fundamentally, mining a
century, century and a half ago was
much, much smaller in scale.
The potential risks and the amount
of damage that was caused was
very limited.
And so, yes, there's a heritage
there that I
don't have any problem embracing
that. We're the Badger State,
and that comes from that
historical mining.
But it does not compare
to the industrial scale mining
that is being proposed here
in the state.
So walk me through, I guess, some of
the evolution of the last half
century in terms of
mining proposals.
Because obviously, there were some
mines that got up, and some of
them were close, and then we had a
moratorium.
And then since then, now there's
been a lot more exploratory drilling
going on.
How much has the industry changed
and the facts on the ground?
Sure.
So, say in the last 50 years,
there was a huge exploration
boom.
Major oil companies,
major mining companies with deep,
deep pockets, spent
millions and millions on
exploration in northern Wisconsin,
beginning in the 1970s
through probably the early 1990s,
by the time that the Prove-It-First
law was passed in
1991.
They really weren't very successful.
A big part of it is the geology
of the state itself.
There are some scattered deposits
that have been identified,
but they all struck out, basically.
So we have the Flambeau Mine, which
was the one and only mine developed
under the former
legislative
and legal regime.
Things have since changed.
But that was a very small mine,
it was sort of a unicorn in a way.
It was very rich and very small.
In fact, it so rich that they were
able to ship their ore
directly to Canada for processing.
So they didn't leave the wastes
behind that would be a
more normal sort of
operational aspect of
modern mining.
The Crandon deposit was discovered
in the 1970s.
Attempts to permit it took place
over about 20 years.
Ultimately, it failed largely
because of the deep opposition
in the state, but also on
the fact that they couldn't engineer
the project to be safe,
safe enough to meet
the regulations and protections at
the time.
There is a couple other deposits
that have been identified, one up in
Oneida County, and then, of
course, the Bannon deposit, which
Greenlight Metals now is doing
exploration on in
the National Forest in Taylor
County.
But the history of
mining up to this point is largely
that millions and millions of
dollars have been spent by companies
with very deep pockets,
really only to discover a handful
of potentially economic deposits.
Everything else that's been
identified is simply not economic.
It's too small, too low grade
to ever get developed,
at least, you know, to date.
The change, of course, that's
happened is that the Prove It
First law was repealed back in
2017.
That was a major goal
of the mining industry as a whole.
And now we have Greenlight Metals,
which is the first company to come
back.
And sort of try to stake a
claim in as many
proposals as possible or as many
deposits as possible
with the hope of
kind of, I think, squeezing out any
potential competition in
the state. And that's where we're at
now in 2025,
going into 2026.
People say oh well the
technology around mining has changed
so like your grandfather's mine
and like the safety aspects that
really were legitimate back in the
80s and 90s are no longer applicable
the way we can do mining today is
so much different so much safer how
do you respond to when making those
claims
Yeah, that's largely mining industry
happy talk.
Because the actual process
of mining, the extraction of the
ore itself, how you process
it, how you deal with the waste
materials, really is
largely unchanged in the
last 50 years.
What has changed technologically
for the mining industry is
the increasing use of
automation, robotics,
artificial intelligence.
All of which have
been a focus of
the industry to reduce its labor
force and
certainly make things somewhat
safer.
But the overall technology behind
metallic mining and
metal processing is
largely unchanged.
There are no serious
innovations that make it a
safer industry.
So when people nowadays think
of mining, like they may think of
coal mining or like back, if they'd
know anything about Wisconsin
history and like, you know,
Southwest Wisconsin, what is the
difference between that and
the sulfide metallic?
Yeah, sure.
Well, the historic sort
of badger mining, if you will, in
southwest Wisconsin, these were
largely relatively
shallow.
A number of them were underground
mines. There were very few open
pit mines just because
of the
nature of the geology.
They were chasing veins, if you
would, of
the minerals, lead and zinc,
largely.
And they were very small scale.
The deeper you go, the more
difficult it gets.
You have to dewater
the groundwater and
deal with the wastewater.
So they were relatively small
operations.
So, you know, fast
forward to today,
what we're seeing now are
companies going back after
deposits that were previously
uneconomic.
They're smaller,
or even if they're larger, they're
low grade because the high
grade ore was largely harvested
a long time ago.
And so what
naturally happens is
that by chasing those
deposits that previously uneconomic
that are low grade.
And maybe high quantity is
that you're actually increasing
the amount of wastes that you
produce.
And, you know, mining companies
largely are are
waste handlers more than they
are miners.
They're in the mining waste disposal
business because the vast bulk
of the material that they extract
is not economic
ore. It's waste material that has to
be dealt with perpetually.
To maintain its safety and
avoid risk to the environment.
So walk me through the safety
issues. What is it that they're
bringing up and separating, that
process that makes that
waste so dangerous?
Yeah, well, let's look
at Bend, which
is Greenlight Metals' only
flagship project currently
that they're attempting to develop
in Taylor County on the National
Forest.
So again,
this is the fourth company,
along with various partners over the
years since 1986
when the deposit was discovered,
to go after Bend.
Up until now,
the the prior companies have failed
to develop it or opted
not to develop Bend because
it wasn't considered economic.
And the reason for that are twofold.
One is that it's a metallic sulfide
deposit.
And so the vast majority of the
waste materials are metallic
sulfides.
And the sulfides, when exposed to
air and water, produce acid.
And the acid, in turn, leaches
heavy metals from the
waste material.
So imagine a finely ground
up, almost powdery
waste material that's left over
from the processing to skim off the
metals in the first place.
And you have this
acid-producing material that
is chock-full of nasty
toxics that
if they get into groundwater
or surface waters or wetlands
are absolutely
polluting and damaging
the environment. So this includes
lead, mercury,
arsenic, and then
processed wastes such as,
for example, cyanide
has been proposed.
To process the band ore,
in part to increase the
amount of gold that they can
retrieve from the mining.
But the overall deposit
at band is under 2%
copper, meaning 98%
of the material that comes out is
waste.
And it's an even much, much smaller
amount of golden silver of
precious metals that are there.
And the process,
you know, to get the medals out in
the first place is also not 100%.
Efficient.
Point being is that they believe
they can get efficiency up
to maybe 90 percent of the
copper.
Ten percent of that copper that
comes out of the ground goes out in
fine tailings, which is also a toxic
material, especially to
aquatic wildlife.
So that material needs
to be safely handled,
isolated from groundwater,
from surface waters,
essentially forever.
And the result is you've got
habitat loss, you can't
grow anything on top of a tailing
stuff once it's closed.
You've got Habitat Loss, Habitat
Fragmentation, this is all
after mining, but during mining,
you have a highly industrial
activity on
the national forest, if
we're talking about the Bend
Deposit, where
you have virtually a 24-7
operation.
It's loud, it's noisy,
it is dirty.
It requires a
fair amount of clear cutting of the
site, up to 200 acres in
the most recent full mining
proposal at Bend,
and a
waste dump that would be up to
100 acres of permanent
habitat loss there.
And then, again,
basically dropping a factory into
the middle of a national forest.
You know, that is going to require
new utility lines, new
roads, truck traffic, possibly
rail into the site where
it doesn't currently exist.
So, you know I think it's a
fundamentally incompatible
land use to
have on our national forest to
extract a,
you that can't be
renewed, you know, unlike
timber, unlike logging.
You know, our national forests are
working forests, and that's
certainly something that we
understand.
And we don't always embrace
it, because timber
harvests can be damaging as well,
but at least it's a renewable
resource, unlike a
metallic deposit that
once it's gone, it can't
be renewed.
How much longer is this going to go?
A little bit.
Yeah.