Ground Water Questions relating to Mining :

A public meeting to address how a mine (should there be one) and mine exploration activities will affect the ground water and wells of our community, will be held on Thursday Jan 29th 2004. It will be at the Maple Air Apartments Activity center, E 838 Gerue St. in Stephenson from 4-5:30 PM. 
"Protecting our ground water is an extremely vital issue not only on a global scale but especially in Menominee County where we have such an abundance of this valuable natural resource. Protecting it is not only critical to Michigan residents but to all those who border the Great Lakes" says State Representative Tom Casperson. Although he will be in Lansing at the time of this meeting, he will be sending his aide, Dale McNamee, to continue to gather information and listen to concerns. 
 The time was set to accommodate the attendance of Joe Maki from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). Joe will be involved with permits and overseeing compliance to state regulations involved in this project and will be extremely helpful.
Al Trippel, from Environmental Resources Management (ERM), a consulting firm with 2400 scientists and engineers in 37 countries, will be there from the Back 40 Joint Venture.
Clayton Ebsch of Stephenson, with 27 years experience and knowledge gained with the US Geological Service, will be a valuable asset to represent our community.
Dr. Richard Gertsch, Michigan Technological University professor, will also attend. Dr. Gertsch is currently writing a grant proposal for the university to try to get funding to cover some of the costs for our efforts to address the concerns of our community. With him is James Stewart a grad student in Mineral Economics.
Stephenson High School senior Jamie Eichhorn will represent the Agricultural Issues team for FFA. The team chose the topic of the mine, considering that it is an issue that has brought about much debate in our community. Their team is a leadership team, which means that they are neither for nor against the mine. They are also required to present both sides of the issue. The other team members, also attending, are Colin Phillippo, Anne Nuttall, Katie Beechner, Emily Zweber, and Kim Gaudes.
The County Health Department has been a great source of information and Mike Snyder Environmental Health Supervisor for Delta & Menominee Counties will attend.
Your participation and questions are important to us as we work together to gather and provide information to those who need to make decisions about this complex issue. Gathered information will be posted on our web site and in the Journal as much as possible. Dale Andersen from mine-or-ours will be conducting the meeting
 

By Todd Hartman, Rocky Mountain News 
December 8, 2003 
Colorado's list of polluted streams and rivers is longer than ever, with 125 stretches of water needing some kind of cleanup, according to the state health department. That's about 30 more than the last count. The state's list of "impaired" waters includes river and stream segments in every major river basin, including the Colorado and the South Platte, and names nearly two dozen contaminants harming fish and water quality. Many of the latest stretches added to the list are tainted with selenium, a naturally occurring element. When excessive irrigation sends too much water into the soil, selenium is leached out and carried into rivers. The selenium is most threatening to fish, which can be poisoned. Dozens of other streams are laced with toxic metals such as copper, zinc and mercury that often run off abandoned mines. Others are affected by fertilizers coming off agricultural lands, or by water that leaves sewage-treatment plants. Regulators at the health department's Water Quality Control Division say the growing list of troubled waters doesn't mean that Colorado's streams are getting dirtier, but that better and more prolific data collection is opening their eyes to the extent of the problem. "It reflects a better state of knowledge, not a worsening of water quality," said Phil Hegeman, the state's coordinator for impaired streams. This latest list is a draft, to be finalized in the spring of 2004 after public debate. The proposed 2004 list includes about 30 more water segments than the previous list in 2002. In all, this is the seventh time that Colorado has assembled such a list, dating to 1989. The work is required under provisions of the Clean Water Act, which also calls for creation of a cleanup plan for waters that make the list. Controversy certain Some of the segments undoubtedly will prove controversial. The 2002 list was the source of complaints from several industrial interests who feared that listing certain stretches would require they take costly steps to cut discharges into the streams. Environmentalists also scrutinize the list. Already, Trout Unlimited wants segments of Bear Creek in Jefferson County and the Dolores River below McPhee Reservoir in southwest Colorado to be added, saying fish habitat has been degraded by changes to river flows and temperature. "A decade ago, this river had 40 pounds of fish per acre, and now it has less than 10," Melinda Kassen, an attorney for Trout Unlimited, 
said of the Dolores. "There were browns, cutthroats - they're all gone. (Population) is down 70 percent or more, and they're refusing to list it." But Kassen acknowledged that the Dolores and some other stretches were tricky because restoring fish habitat also could force regulators to address river flows, something that could interfere with private water rights. Colorado law prohibits regulators from altering water rights to correct water quality problems. 
Then there's the Environmental Protection Agency. It wants state regulators to add two other water bodies to the list, as well. They are Red Mountain Creek in southwest Colorado, which the agency believes needs to be cleansed of metals so it can support more fish, and Fountain Creek in Colorado Springs, where elevated levels of zinc threaten aquatic life. That's down from last year, when the EPA and the state came to a standoff when federal officials demanded that Colorado list at least 12 additional stretches the agency said needed attention. That problem was resolved this year, when Colorado relented, agreeing to change the criteria that had prevented the waters from making the list. One of those stretches was on the lower Colorado River, where U.S. wildlife agents feared elevated selenium levels threatened federally protected endangered fish. Colorado regulators countered that the data wasn't thorough enough. This year, the stretch appears on the draft 2004 list. Keystone 'surprised' Another party with concerns about the latest list is Keystone Resort. Colorado has listed three streams near the ski area with high acidity levels. "They were surprised" to see the streams listed, said Sarah Johnson, who oversees assessments of the state's waters for the health department. "They don't believe we have all the data." A consultant for the resort said his firm's studies haven't revealed problems with acidity levels in Camp Creek, Keystone Gulch and Jones Gulch. "We're at the very early stages of looking at this and trying to figure out whether it makes sense to put the streams on the list," said Bob Weaver of the Boulder-based consulting firm Hydrosphere. "And if it does, what the implications of that may be." Weaver said the acidity can be traced to contamination from abandoned mines high on the Peru Creek drainage. The selenium problem Getting the bulk of attention, however, will be the selenium problem. One-third of the 125 stream, river and lake segments on the 2004 list include selenium as a contaminant of concern. Regulators say one of the big keys to reducing selenium concentrations would be to irrigate fields and lawns more efficiently. If just enough water was provided to be taken up by the plants or grasses, then little else would be left to seep into the ground. Lining irrigation ditches with concrete also would help, as that would prevent water from seeping from the ditch deeper into the soil. "It's not that you need to stop irrigation, but sometimes practices can be adjusted," Johnson said. "You try to provide plants with just as much as they need. If you can match that up more closely, you don't have the deep leaching" that extracts the selenium. Regulators, however, have their work cut out for them. As the list grows every few years, projects to stem the pollution take far longer to put in place, making it difficult to ever catch up. Colorado officials do point to some successes, including the cleanup of a site near the Climax Molybdenum mine above Leadville that eased pollutants in the Arkansas River, as well as cooperation among several sewage plants in the Boulder-Longmont area that cut ammonia concentrations in the South Platte basin. But they have plenty to keep them busy. A secondary list of waters, called the "monitoring and evaluation list" amounts to a kind of watch list. It is growing, as well. Waters on that list need more study to determine whether they should be moved on to the cleanup list, or can be left alone. The latest total of water bodies on that list: 143.