When: Tuesday, April 19 at 6 PM
Where: Mesabi East High School, 601 N. 1st St. W, Aurora, MN
What: The Minnesota DNR is holding a public information session in Aurora to discuss the potential permitting path for PolyMet, and we need you there to voice your concerns and show your opposition.
While this is not a public hearing and no "official" public testimony will be taken at this meeting, there will be an open house with all of the public agencies that are considering permits for PolyMet's open pit copper-nickel sulfide mine. That means it is a perfect time to voice your opposition to granting permits and ask them the questions they haven't answered, such as:
- How long would polluted water from PolyMet require expensive treatment? Who will monitor hundreds of years of projected treatment?
- How can the DNR say that PolyMet would capture 99% of the polluted water from their proposal when nobody has ever done so before?
- Why is Reverse Osmosis considered a long-term treatment plan for PolyMet when it is too costly for taconite mining?
- What is the risk to people living in downstream communities that include Duluth, Superior, Cloquet and Fond du Lac Reservation, from mercury, Acid Mine Drainage, toxic heavy metal pollution, and catastrophic mine tailings failures?
- Would polluted groundwater flow into both the Lake Superior and Rainy River watersheds, thus polluting two watersheds of international significance?
- How many thousands of acres of wetlands would PolyMet's mine degrade and destroy? According to the EIS, the project will result in the direct destruction of nearly 1,000 acres of wetlands and degradation or impairment of 8,000 plus acres of wetlands. What would be the impacts upon water and wildlife resources?
- There is no analysis regarding the cumulative effects of opening a sulfide mining district in the heart of Superior National Forest and in the headwaters of both the Lake Superior and Rainy River watersheds. How is this acceptable on both ethical and scientific grounds?
- Thousands of acres of protected Superior National Forest are proposed to be transferred to PolyMet for their open pit mine, despite the fact that these public lands were set aside by our nation for watershed protection. How can PolyMet's massively destructive and "perpetually" polluting sulfide mine, which would be situated on the headwaters of Lake Superior, be permitted?
Not worth the Risk - Say No to the PolyMet Mine
Despite years of environmental review, nobody has answered these questions and many others. Help us raise these questions and show that people across northern Minnesota are opposed to this project and are deeply concerned about the hundreds of years of pollution that PolyMet would create.
It is critical that state and federal regulators deny permits for PolyMet because it would harm the St. Louis River, Lake Superior and the communities that depend upon the water.