Environmentalist charged with trespassing at site of contested nickel sulfide mine

Cynthia Pryor, a prominent opponent of a nickel sulfide mine planned for state land on the Yellow Dog plain northwest of Marquette, spent two days in jail this week after being arrested for trespassing on land where Kennecott Eagle Minerals has begun clearing trees for the first phase of construction for the mine.

Pryor, 58, the director of the non-profit Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve said that she was arrested midday Tuesday after she sat down on an uprooted tree on state land and refused to leave the area.

According to Pryor and other environmentalists and groups in the area, Kennecott’s construction activities are illegal because the company has not obtained a federal permit for its waste water disposal system.

On Wednesday Pryor was arraigned in Marquette County District Court and entered a plea of not guilty to the misdemeanor charge. Her bail was set at $1,000 but she refused to pay the $100 bond and spent another night in jail.

Pryor said that on Thursday afternoon she was re-arraigned and dismissed from the jail without bond.

“I think they were concerned about all the attention this was getting,” she said.

“I think the big question in everyone’s mind is who is really guilty here,“ said Kristi Mills, director of Save the Wild UP. “We are from the camp of believing that they do not have all of the legal permits needed to do what they are doing.”

Mills said that according to the land lease agreement between the mining company and the state all permits have to be in place before any work can begin on the site. This condition that has not yet been met, she said, because federal officials have yet to decide on a permit matter relating to wastewater.

“It was a bold move on [Kennecott’s] part,” she said. “It was pretty gutsy. They are pushing this forward as fast as they can.”

“No one is holding Rio Tinto accountable for this at all. Media has been so slanted here it is disgusting.”

Since 2007 Pryor’s organization, together with the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC), the National Wildlife Federation, and the Huron Mountain Club, have challenged state permits for the mine through administrative appeals and action in court. They argue that the planned mine will devastate the area.

Following a years long contested case hearing an administrative law judge determined that the rock outcropping known as Eagle Rock held religious significance for members of the KBIC. State officials were in the process of considering that finding when, in January, Granholm appointee Frank Ruswick intervened and determined that the permits for Kennecott should be finalized without further judicial review.

The state determined that because Eagle Rock was not a building it was not subject to protections as a place of religious worship.

That move left Kennecott with one final permit hurdle for the mine — it still required a permit from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to discharge treated wastewater into the ground.

But in a March 22 letter, Kennecott notified state and federal regulators that it had changed its design for a wastewater treatment system and determined that it no longer required an Underground Injection Control (UIC) permit from EPA.

That same day Dept. of Natural Resources and Environment Forest Management Division Chief Lynne Boyd responded that based on the company’s certifications, the state was giving the go ahead to begin work on the mine.

Mine opponents argue that Kennecott’s design modification — covering their discharge pipes with Styrofoam rather than a man-made mound of soil — does not change the fact that the company will be releasing 500,000 gallons of treated wastewater into the soil and and ultimately the drinking water.

They say that nothing in Kennecott’s design alteration changes the fact that EPA is responsible for regulating the mine discharge under the Safe Drinking Water Act, and they’ve urged the agency to insist that the company obtain a permit.

EPA spokeswoman Karen Thompson said Wednesday that the agency has not yet reached a decision on the matter.

MDNRE spokesman Bob McMann said that the state only requires the company to certify that it has all the necessary permits before beginning work on the site.

“If that turns out to be wrong (in other words, if EPA were to come back and decide they DID need a permit from them), that would put them in violation of their agreement with us which could result in penalties against them,” McCann said via email.

“Kennecott’s work on public land right now is illegal activity,” local activist Teresa Bertossi said in an e-mailed statement. “I don’t know what we’ve come to when a citizen can sit on a tree stump, with her dog next to her, and get arrested for being on public property while Kennecott blatantly breaks the law. Do foreign-owned companies now decide what we can do on our own land in the Upper Peninsula?”