me? Okay. All right. Okay. That sounds good. All right. Well, I guess let's start with
so describe the group that you're a part of and what you were when you were formed
how you came to be and what you're looking to do. Okay. Well, there is a group and we
call it Friends of the Yellow River and it's an informal group and we have just
kind of got together and started talking and decided to keep communicating and
that's all it is in a way so it's not an organization with officers or
treasury we don't vote on things we just keep each other informed informed
about the issues protecting the environment and you know a lot of the
impetus was because of the Ben deposit my next expiration but we were really
paying attention to the environment in a bigger sense because there's forestry
projects up there as well and things that affect the wildlife and the
environment and it's a it's an important area it it's 80% of the water flow to a
big recreational area we call it the Miller Dam area the Schwamigan flow
age and so we just keep communicating we have a lot of different viewpoints but
we don't vote on things people independently contact the mining company
the DNR etc. So when did the group coalesce? It's about two years ago and was it
directly related to the green light metals in the exploration or was it kind
of just how did that percolate up at that time? No that's how it started I
mean people knew that there's exploratory mining activity starting there and so
people concerned about the environment local people some you know some literally
in their backyard and others in the county here wanted to be proactive and
protect that area. So does the group have a stance on the exploratory drilling pro
recon? Well in some ways the group does not there's a variety of opinions in the
group some are not in my backyard type of attitude you know and not in my state
and some of us are just trying to be sure if there's activity up there that
it's monitored closely so mistakes are less likely to happen and maybe more
for responsible mining than we are opposed to it or against or in favor of it.
And how have you found green light to work with in terms of being open and
communicating what's going on what their intents are? Yeah it's been
sometimes a challenge really frankly sometimes they have not gotten back to
us very quickly but on the other hand they've been very open for the most part
you know so welcoming us to come by and snoop around and see what they're
doing answer most of our questions that we have but the green light company got
off on a bad foot I think a couple years ago when the CEO of the company
Matt Filgate stated to the stockholders that there's no water concerns for miles
down from where we're mining but they were drawing wanting to draw water out
of the north fork of the Yellow River there so it was a little bit puzzling
and I think we got a lot of that straightened out and so overall they're good to
work with but there's been a few snags here and there. When it comes to the
concerns do you think that there are federal and state rules that are strong
enough to protect the Yellow River if you know if the mining company does
everything up to the extent of what they're permitted to do? Well that's a really
good question and I think we're really eroding those regulations especially
at the federal level I mean for example there is endangered resources some
species we're watching really closely and going out there and looking at them
and saying wow you know this is dangerous what they're doing here for
these endangered threatened species and meanwhile at the federal level they're
cutting the funding so they aren't even doing surveys to see if they're
there or not anymore or it's drastically cut back. Same with water
concerns there there's a steady erosion I would say of other regulations that
don't pay attention to small pools of water. These small pools of water in the
area are important to the ecosystem you know they're scattered throughout that
area. The Wisconsin DNR has been doing their job and catching some of these
things when they first started to explore the area they had designated
where the water concerns are then we had a wet season and they were on top of it
and they identified some wet areas that had not been identified before and they
had to change the mining plans last summer kind of right in the middle of
the season so I mean that you could look at that as alarming but I also think
it was a success because the DNR was on top of that.
Does your group feel that mining can be done safely in this area without
threatening the water? Well I think that there's some people in our group that
think it's impossible. I think it's really difficult myself and I guess if
it has to be done we want to be as careful as possible. It's kind of ironic
because in some areas of the country there's very little water and they say
because we have so little water and mining requires water and we could
contaminate the little water we have we wish mining was done in a place that
had more water not in this arid area so it's hard to find a totally safe place
I don't think there is such a thing but yeah here we have a lot of water
concerns and right now I think they're maybe not being adequately addressed and
we're trying to see if the regulators can be more careful than they are. I mean
there's kind of two basic scenarios there's one of if they do everything
right is there still some damage to the environment or if there's an accident
what is the catastrophic fallout that could come from that? Yeah I mean both
areas are a big concern. You cannot do any kind of activity without some
pollution and you know it so it has to be controlled. I mean it's just just the
way it is. Copper mining for example is 6,000 years old in this area and the
evidence of the copper mining is from the pollution left over 6,000 years ago
it's some amazing scientific articles. We're not going to avoid pollution but we
can do we need stronger regulations than we have and as far as disasters I'm a
little bit optimistic myself some people are not I understand that that we can
avoid the big tailing dam failings and so forth. I just went by a site that 45
years ago wiped out a whole town of 300 people and 10 of the mining company
engineers and CEOs went to jail so nobody wants that. I think in the last 40 years
there's been improvements so I'm just myself a little bit optimistic we can
avoid a big catastrophe but pollution is always going to be a problem. When you
think of where this deposits located it's in the seated territory so now the
tribes have a rights here. It's in a national forest. Exactly. It's in a
watershed with the threatened species in a valuable watershed for its natural
resources and recreation. Do you think that there should be any mining here at
all given the location and all the other competing aspects of that? I think
there should not be mining in this area for a lot of those reasons. That's my
personal opinion and I think many of the friends at the Ella River would feel that
way. If the law and regulations are say it's going to be here we're going to have
to be on top of it as much as we can to prevent damage but you mentioned the
seated territory and the American Indian tribes that seated that territory the
current law is that they have to be consulted and then what? Ignored. The
law needs to be changed. They have their equivalent to the DNR but they
have no real power it seems or the courts over rule them or good over rule
them. So that's one of the issues and being in the national forest near
threatened species. I'm not against mining in the entire state of Wisconsin
but you know it's not a good place to do it at the bend deposit. When you hear
there's a few different traditional arguments supporting mining in Wisconsin
and one of them is a miner on the flag it's part of our state's heritage. What's
your response to that? Well I think we need to have mining even the Amish
need to have the metals that they need you know we're not going to go back to
the stone ages so I support the idea of having mining somewhere somehow but it
just simply one of those things that we have to control but I don't think this
is a good place for it for reasons we just talked about and if it has to
happen it has to be really monitored closely. One of the newer arguments that
their brain forward is this is about national security but there's so many
precious metals down there that instead of having to go through China or get
them from Africa or some other place we should be securing that for here. Yeah I
think they're looking for a lot of reasons political reasons to make it
sound better because there's a lot of rare earth and other metals and Sweden
and Peru and you know there's a global market and it's not really there's
actually quite a bit of mining in other parts of the country here in the US too
so you know Canada is another place you know because Canada some people regard
that as like China I guess nowadays but I really think it's you know it's a
global question and it's very complicated. So another thing that's really
interesting about the timing of this is Tom Tiffany sponsored and helped write
the bill that changed Wisconsin's mining laws to make this even theoretically
possible. He's under the old law he really wasn't ever going to happen. He's
now running for governor. What does that bring to this race or to this topic at
this time? Does that heighten all the things around it that you know one of
the lead sponsors of this that created the environment to allow this to happen
and make it realistic is now running to be the top agent of the state and
obviously he would be able to see mining here. Yeah well I think that's kind of
out of out of control type of approach to mining you know Tom Tiffany is from
Northern Wisconsin where all this hunting and fishing and recreation
happen that he supposedly supports and then to risk all of that you know by
weakening the laws I think we have mining and probably forestry laws as
well environmental laws that need strengthening at this point in time. I
don't think Tom Tiffany is one that's gonna head us in that direction. When I
interviewed all of the Democratic candidates for governor last December and
I asked each of them about mining and about the bend deposit specifically and
I got a lot of blank stares. I got a lot of reactions. How much outside of this
immediate area how much do people know that this is happening that this is
back on the radar? I don't know how much they know and I think it's good that
we're that public media here is covering it it's an important issue. Some people
say that because it's just exploratory mining that well it doesn't matter much
and till a real mine comes then we'll start to worry about it but I think
there's water issues. One of these endangered species we've been keeping an
eye on. I don't know if it's gonna be the next summer or the summer after. The
activities with increased road traffic and so forth. I mean I've seen you know
dangerous situations already and you know for the breeding habitat and so
forth. I think it's something to to be concerned about now and it should be a
political issue. I understand the politicians trying to cover both sides
of all issues but you know sustainability is something I wish
politicians would talk about you know for that would make sense. You know we
can have some mining in the state to go back to basically a moratorium on all
mining. It's probably not going to be politically popular I don't think but we
need any politicians to lead the way and have stronger environmental laws for
sure. How much of this is known even around here immediately? There's small
communities and there's pockets of communities but this is still happening
out in a very rural isolated area. Is it well known locally that this is
happening or is it still like you run into people and you're like oh hey did
you know this is going on? Well our local paper the star news and the Green
Light Metals is putting on some meetings but of course they're not talking too
much about the environmental hazards. So I guess we're gonna have to try to make
some effort. We've been a private little group ourselves but I think might be
up to the media and up to people like us to make people more aware. I think we
need to do that. Do you think there are people especially considering the
political environment we're in that are they're willing to listen for will this
fall into my side your side? That's a good question but I don't have a good
answer. I must say I don't know we have to just keep trying trying to
educate. What do you think is the benefit of your group coming to exist in the
first place? I mean is this something that even if I mean the Bend deposit
could fizzle out on its own entirely? I mean it's been looked at a hundred times
over over the past half century and it's been found to be noneconomically
viable. If that happens again will your group still like find other things to
exist or will you kind of stand down because that one's gone for? I think it's
made us environmentally aware of the of this area and there's forestry
projects and other projects and I'm hoping that there be continued efforts
to protect the environment. There's always going to be challenges. I'm hoping
the group continues to educate each other and work on issues whatever they
are. One of the one of the things that make me proud of the group is that we
just are existing and making and making the DNR and other people aware. I know
in the previous mine the last mine in Wisconsin and Lady Smith the complaint
there from the environmentalists is that stream C it was contaminated. Well it
turns out that nobody even knew stream C was there because it was so dry when
they did the original inspection and there were no friends of stream C. There
are friends of the Yellow River so just awareness is important. You said right
now it's a private group and you're kind of keeping each other aware. Yeah. Do you
think that will change as this goes on that it'll be time to be public and even
if there's people that may not agree with you it's time to engage you know
outside of just the like-minded people and reach a broader audience. I don't
know that'll be up to people in the group. I think other groups like the Sierra
Club and the River Alliance are public groups and they may take the lead at
more of a statewide basis of awareness. Same with the Great Lakes Indian Fish
and Wildlife Service Wisconsin Greenpeace. So there's several public groups like
personally I kind of like being kind of a smaller group that just informs each
other but we'll see. Are you going to be at the meeting I think Monday night at a
local township? Yeah I think Wednesday night right here in town. Yeah but yeah I
don't know about about the ones at the townships and they'd probably be good
for we need to discuss that as as our own group if anybody would go to these
other meetings. I hope the townships are aware we don't need you know with the
challenges in the environment concerned about the townships doing road
improvements and all kinds of things that in a sensitive environment. I mean it's
interesting to see that townships like how much of this is about presence like
having people that may come to that meeting to learn more if they only hear
from Greenlight Metals and they just hear all the positive things or how safe they
are. Like how much of it is is there an onus on you guys whether you like it or
not to be a presence to say well yeah this is the other point of view. Yeah well
yeah I think there is onus on us to to speak up at meetings and we've done we've
tried to do a little of that there was a meeting last summer and the they had
difficulty with their microphones and so forth so the pointed environmental
questions nobody could hear them it was supposed to be a town hall meeting and it
was difficult to communicate the communication was pretty much from
Greenlight Metals about the wonderful jobs and how much valuable minerals are
and that was the gist of the meeting so we need to come to those meetings and
speak up. Well if there was a question that you would want to ask to Greenlight
what would you want asked? Well in the environmental resource review there were
I think about five different species plant and animal that were threatened
and they had one required action that they were supposed to do to protect
them and they had about three or four recommended actions and then in the
permit they say you're required to do this. I'd like to ask them in public are you
doing any of the recommended actions to protect threatened species or are you
only doing the minimum requirements as far as I can see they have just doing
the minimum needed and there's certain things they could do to protect these
species and they're making efforts beyond what they required. One of the
things when I've talked to them that they've said is that they're trying a new
approach as a mining company to be more transparent to hold a town hall when
they may not have to allow people to come on to the site and write groups out to
look and try and present a more Wisconsin focused face instead of like a foreign
national face and they're trying to learn from the mistakes of past
efforts where they have isolated and turned off the locals by not being
open and making a much scarier and more threatening. Do you think they've done
that? Have they fulfilled that and can they lull people past the concerns by
being like oh we're from Wisconsin this is our backyard too and look how honest
we're being downplaying the same concerns that exist. It's obvious to me
that making efforts in that direction and it'll be interesting to see in future
meetings how that pans out but I'm concerned that they're making efforts as
a PR ploy and not as sincere as I would have hoped but maybe I'm wrong and we'll
continue to work with them. There's been communication with them. I've talked to
Steve Donahue who is the local representative and they've made some
effort but you know sometimes just I'll get back to you later and then we don't
hear anything too. I'm sure you heard but the cores that they sampled that they
brought up last summer they found gold like visible flexible which they said
were actually quite rare. I mean as they find more and more things in in these
cores that have more value does that just heighten the stakes? Well maybe for
them I guess for the mining company the something like 25 30% of the expense is
with permitting and reclamation and environmental concerns and so it makes
it more profitable for them the more things they find there but my concern is
about the environment and I don't care if their stockholders make money or not as
long as the environment's protected. But would you feel better if they weren't
finding all that valuable stuff down there like in the less incentive to try
and go down and get it in the first place? Well it'd be better for this
sensitive area if they didn't mine yeah so if economics mean that they don't
but you know at the national level there's all kinds of things they can do to
help incentivize mining you know they can provide grants they can do all kinds of
things change the economics that's not in my control. You mentioned some of the
threatened endangered species can you just list off a few that we're talking
about? Well it's really interesting because the threatened species are
redacted in the reports and as environmental people up there you know
with our boots on the ground so to speak we figured out what they are and we're
watching them closely but it's not for public information just think if they
published or the bald eagle-ness or whatever you know then you you're
gonna have the possibility of people shooting them capturing certain species
for pets or even just nature observers like us bothering their breeding so
they just don't allow sharing that information. One species that I can
talk about are the river mussels because none of them are endangered so we can
name them off there's the tree ridge and others up there and they're
fascinating and they're there's quite a few in that area and they are cleaning
the water and making the water clean downstream and you know down through the
florages and so forth where all the recreation is so yeah but yeah the
others I'm not allowed to speak of makes it hard to protect them sometimes.
That feels that odds with trying to inform the public of why something needs
to be saved to protect when people don't know. I mean you hear the stories about
oh it's one owl or it's this one snail. Everyone shrugs their shoulders but if
it is bald eagles are something that people find more value. There's a different
collective sense of worthiness there. Yeah yeah yeah there certainly is and I
think but people have to realize is that ecosystems are complex systems and if
you find a challenge to a threatened species you're protecting an environment
in the ecosystem you're not just protecting one owl you're protecting a
whole system and the parts are critical to the operation of a complex system so
it doesn't matter if it's a little snail or an insect or what if if the
environment is protected it's gonna stay whole and function better. When you're
trying to pitch this to the public and get people to care is it easier to tell
them like well Miller Dam all the fish are gonna die if there's a sulfide leak
or you know you won't be won't be safe to go in the river and use it for your
own uses. I mean is there a different there's almost like two different
messages and one to sell the average public who may not care whether they
should or not about you know the individual species versus those that
already care about them they could be persuaded with this message but the one
over here about yeah can't go out the water. Yeah well that's true you know in
in mining there's the potential of leaking mercury arsenic and so forth and
we can talk to the public about the warnings about how many fish meals you
can eat because of the mercury in the fish and that's easier salesmen
shipped up job to the general public for sure but it's also true you know
that's a challenge we start polluting the environment. The interesting thing is
that the rivers like the North Fork of the Ella River will clean themselves
chemically as you go down stream because they're being filtered by the bed of
the river just like a septic system you know so the water gets cleaner but these
toxic metals and things enter the food chain so there's been mining operations
in South America where they've discovered mercury a thousand miles away in
penguin feathers because these toxic metals have entered the food chain it's
not just a simple water equation and so people can be convinced maybe because
it'll catch we've it'll affect be when I'm out there fishing mm-hmm no I don't
think so thank you. Can I get you to say and spell your name just so I have a correct
sure it's Scott Stahlheim the two T's and Scott STAL HEIM and you are with
friends of the Ella River yeah yeah help coordinate the messages and the
emails and so forth and there's a Facebook page about how many members do
you have about 35 great thank you okay what we were telling Kathy before is what