Natalie Lashmet - Letter to Editor

Dear Local High School Teachers: 

Thank you, and I respect you, for educating your classes with my “The 5 Top Issues” presentation on damages ALL gold mines cause locally and beyond.

Your science students learned how 100% of gold (sulfide) mines generate sulfuric acid mine drainage locally, and no man-made laws or regulations can ever prevent that. Contact air or water makes sulfite naturally become sulfuric acid. The proposed Back 40 mine is in a “massive sulfide” deposit.

Your students saw how that sulfuric acid then attracts other metals from the rock into local waters, becoming opaque yellow-orange poison called Acid Mine Drainage. The EPA calls mining our most toxic industry. (search: ‘Animus River Spill’)  It will kill everything in the river.

Mining involves explosions, chemicals, digging, hauling, pouring from heights, crushing, pulverizing, smelting and storing on-site. This talcum-sized dust becomes sulfuric acid blowing in the wind. (search: ‘Acid Rain’ images) Now the students understand acid rain.

Mining’s acid-generating solids, slurries, liquids and chemicals (1.24 billion pounds of CYANIDE predicted over 16 years) are kept on site, hopefully not spilling!  A rice grain size of cyanide can be fatal. (“Dirty Metals Mining, Communities & the Environment”) Mining’s toxic waste WILL be kept on-site forever, or until their simple earthen dam (no concrete, no steel) fails! “Dam failures typically happen somewhere in the U.S. every year”. Thousands of lives have been lost and substantial property damage has occurred due to dam failure”. (FEMA’s “Living with Dams: Know Your Risk”)  Dam failures’ tsunami-like floods are more sudden & violent than natural & leave tornado-like damage. Power dams’ destruction means no electricity. Our jobs, tourism economies, structures, & property values will be crushed. Once toxins exceed allowed limits, the cities will have to stop supplying us water. How will we cook, bathe, flush toilets?

Colorado’s Gold King’s dam disaster polluted rivers in 3 states. In Brazil’s 2015 dam catastrophe toxins flowed 350 miles. From here that’s via Lake Michigan to Chicago and east well into Lake Huron.  Why would we let one company ruin life for over 50 million people, tourism and nature? 

Someone asked why we’ve not heard much about this lately. “GORO” took over assets from Aquila after the Judge found they falsified at least one permit that he then revoked. “GORO” is behind their own timeline on a feasibility study to show investors they can be profitable. They need investors to start planning, complete applications for permits, building, and then mining. We will keep working to prevent mining in this massive sulfide deposit.

Thanks again, for asking me to help educate your students.  They are smart and asked great questions.

Natalie Lashmet,
Menominee