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Canoe Trip Aimed at Copper Mine: ENVIRONMENT:An Underground Mine at Birch Lake is Inching Toward Reality.

Posted on: Wednesday, 21 June 2006, 06:00 CDT

By John Myers, Duluth News-Tribune, Minn.

Jun. 21--Northeastern Minnesota environmental activists are planning a canoe trip Saturday to draw attention to a proposed copper mine under Birch Lake at Babbitt.

About 20 people are expected to join the group, which will canoe to a site on the lake where Franconia Minerals is exploring a major copper deposit.

The event is organized by local members of the Sierra Club's Mining Without Harm project.

It's part of a slowly growing opposition to proposed copper mining projects in the region that had been moving forward for years with little notice from the public.

"We're trying to spur some discussion, to see how the public can get involved in this," said John Doberstein of Duluth, a Sierra Club volunteer. "It's almost scary how most people don't even know this (the copper mine proposals) is going on in our backyard."

Franconia is looking at drilling under Birch Lake, where drill core samples show extensive deposits of copper and other valuable minerals. But environmentalists say the potential damage from sulfuric acid runoff isn't worth the project's benefits.

Birch Lake drains north into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Copper-bearing rock is often high in sulfur and, when exposed to air and water, can cause sulfuric acid runoff into local waters. That can kill aquatic life in streams and lakes. The problem can last for

decades after mining operations cease, as has happened at many mines worldwide. Minnesota has never had a major copper mine. Taconite, by comparison, comes from rock with little or no sulfur.

But Franconia President Brian Gavin said the underground nature of the mine will "limit the environmental footprint" of the project and will allow the company to keep water out of the mined area. The richness of the mineral vein also will yield little waste rock that could be exposed to water and cause acid runoff.

"We can make it water-tight," he said. "We can minimize the environmental impact by being underground and having so little waste rock that would potentially a be a source of acid drainage."

Earlier this month, Franconia announced it also has access to substantial copper deposits at another site three miles north of Birch Lake, called the Maturi deposit. Together, the two mines would feed a single processing plant near Birch Lake, Gavin said. The combined project estimate is now more than $450 million, with an estimated 450 jobs created at full production. The Birch Lake mine could last about 22 years.

The company is drilling test borings under Birch Lake and hopes to have results from large-scale process testing by 2008, about the same time the environmental permit process would be conducted. Gavin said the mine could be in operation by 2012.

Franconia, a Canadian-chartered company that's based in Spokane, Wash., last week received a $1.25 million loan from the Iron Range Resources agency for the Birch Lake mine project and expects another $1.25 million from the state Department of Employment and Economic Development. The money will help pay for large-scale testing and a feasibility study.

Franconia's underground mine proposal is about two years behind another copper mine plan by PolyMet Corp. that already is entering the permitting stage and will release a financial feasibility study this summer.

PolyMet plans to dig copper in an open-pit mine north of Hoyt Lakes and process it at the former LTV taconite plant there. PolyMet hopes to be mining copper by 2008.

PolyMet officials say the minerals in that area are so low in sulfur that any sulfuric acid runoff will be easy to collect and treat to prevent any major pollution issue.

The surge of interest in Northeastern Minnesota's copper is beginning to draw more attention.

"In all the research we've done, we've never found one copper mining project that didn't cause problems with acid runoff and heavy metal leaching," said Elanne Palcich of Chisholm, another Sierra Club volunteer. "All the things the companies say they can do to prevent it is theoretical. The risks of sulfide mining aren't worth the few jobs it's going to create."

In May, dozens of Aitkin County residents packed a meeting by the county Planning Commission to oppose copper exploration on private land within the county. Kennecott Mining has explored on public land in the county for several years, but the commission voted to prohibit private land exploration. The company has asked the Minnesota Court of Appeals to overrule the county's decision.

Meanwhile, some residents of southern St. Louis County have been battling an effort to create a giant wetland in their township that would partially replace wetlands lost in the PolyMet project. The 1,200 acres destroyed to dig the mine would be the largest single loss of wetlands in Minnesota since modern mitigation laws were in place.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Duluth News-Tribune, Minn.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: Duluth News-Tribune (Duluth, Minn.)

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