Wisconsin's Mineral Mining

Wisconsin has had a vast history of mineral mining over the course of its existence. A miner can even be seen on the Wisconsin state flag. In Wisconsin’s early days, much of the migration in the early 1800s to the state was due to its vast ore deposits in the north. The prosperity of mineral mining in Wisconsin quickly began to decline right after Wisconsin gained statehood, due to the California gold rush. Recently, several republican state assemblymen and senators are attempting to revitalize this the mineral mining industry in order to boost Wisconsin’s struggling economy. On October 27th, the Wisconsin state assembly passed a piece of legislation known as Assembly Bill 499 that would clear the way for mining copper, gold and other precious minerals by ending limited moratorium on sulfide mining and ease the way for future mining projects. If signed into law, the bill could usher in a new era of mineral mining in Wisconsin. The state is home to deposits of copper, zinc, gold and silver, and companies have already conducted exploration work in northern Wisconsin. Assembly Bill 499, if passed, would effectively replace a law passed under Former Governor Tommy Thompson that barred companies from mining precious minerals due to pollution concerns. The state’s first bill that restricted mining was signed into law in 1998 with strong majorities in the Assembly and Senate. It requires a mining company to show that another sulfide mine in the United States or Canada operated for at least 10 years and then was closed for 10 years without acid mine drainage or pollution. Assembly Bill 499, passed in a 53-38 vote, with four Republicans joining the assembly Democrats to oppose it. The republicans who voted no were Reps. Jeffrey Mursau, Todd Novak, Patrick Snyder and Travis Tranel. The environmentalists and other State Legislatures that oppose the bill claim that metallic mining would threaten the the state waterways, which could cause long term damage. One opponent of the proposed legislation, State Senator Jon Erpenbach, said lawmakers were turning the state's environment into a testing laboratory by removing the requirement that the mining technology and approaches be proven elsewhere. "How do you prove a company is capable of not polluting? There’s a huge difference between proven and capable," Erpenbach said. Republicans and businessmen who support the bill refute these claims by citing that technology today is much better than twenty years ago and there is little to no chance of the water becoming poisoned. Another state legislature Representative Rob Hutton, the chief Assembly sponsor of the bill, said the measure would allow Wisconsin officials to consider mining proposals just as its neighbors have for decades stating that "Minnesota is doing it on our left and Michigan is doing it on our right. We need to be part of that discussion." While also defending the legislation, Senator Tom Tiffany, one of the bill’s lead sponsors stated, "Someone should just do an amendment to take the miner off the state flag if we don’t pass this bill ... because he’s not going to work here anymore." Despite this, many Wisconsin Senate republicans are still skeptical to vote yay on the measure, which will most likely lead to the Assembly having to rewrite the bill and present it again. The bill still has a large amount of debating and discourse to go through before it will get anywhere near Governor Walker’s desk.