2/28/12 APALLACHIA

CLEAR SAILING

MOUTH OF THE SIOUX RIVER

EIGHT MILES OF OPEN WATER

Tuesday, 8:00 AM.  25 degrees, wind WSW, calm.  The sky is overcast and the barometer predicts snow.  It si snowing lightly, big dime-sized flakes.  Very pretty, but I have had about enough of it.  There is open water now from Bayfield past the Sioux River, some eight miles. 
        The mining law proposed by two state Senators, one Republican (Schultz) and one Democrat (Jauch) called “The Wisconsin Way Mining Reform Act” seems to me to be a wasted effort, as it was rejected by the Wisconsin Assembly when it was substantially presented in amendment form earlier.  As I read the summation of their bill, it still does not address the most  basic problems with current Wisconsin mining law: the ability of third-party law suits to interfere with mining permits literally before they even get started; and the open-ended permit process which never has a date-certain end.  Without those problems honestly addressed and solved, the result will be, as top-ranking Assembly Republicans have stated, that “it ensures that no [mining] company will ever do business here.”
         One would assume that the DNR and the Army Corps of Engineers and the local counties and townships with all their resources and legal purview could determine water quality and other environmental issues during and after the permit process.  Assuming that, the fundamental opposition to mining must perforce be driven by personal and political opinions or philosophical objections.  While I would not trivialize the later, if there is to be economic and social advancement and fairness, and reasonable use of scarce and valuable resources, those who oppose mining simply because they do not like it are in my opinion morally obligated to compromise their position. 
        Northern Wisconsin, absent the vacation homes and lake front mansions of the wealthy, is akin to Appalachia.  Read the newspaper and note the advertisements for full-time jobs at $6.00 an hour.  A relatively good full time wage might be $12.50 an hour.  Most  of the decent paying salaried jobs are in local, state or federal government service. Objecting to mining, which is a traditional and legal business in Wisconsin, on purely political, philosophical or aesthetic grounds denies ordinary, decent citizens, our friends and neighbors, the right to live here and raise their families in relative comfort and security.