Today I took a hike on the Sleeping Bear Point trail at the local Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Living in a tourist area and seeing just how this economy creates gross inequalities, it is easy to observe that those of us who are not sufficiently wealthy to afford lakeside or riverside second houses rely on our public lands for recreation opportunities and to enjoy our natural world. This has been highlighted for me with the expiration of the Land and Water Conservation Fund which will not only impact Sleeping Bear Dunes, but all our public lands.
So, what does that have to do with Michigan?
Looking at the history of corporate use of public lands over my lifetime I'm continually reminded that once public lands are converted to private use, especially use for extraction at an industrial scale, those lands are rarely whole again, restoration, like trickle-down economics, just does not work. To protect public lands we need to win again and again and again while those seeking conversion to private profit only need to win once for us to lose access to our public property. Corporations count on it.
Michigan's propensity for extraction, from mining, to logging, to sports characterized by intensity of use, is reflective of a Department of Natural Resources and Department of Environmental Quality that look toward industries as customers rather than as regulated entities. DNR Director Keith Creagh has stated his belief that wise use of natural resources is a powerful economic driver for the state of Michigan. Well, not to put too fine a point on it, "wise use" is merely an anti-environmental dogwhistle. To see such bias in action we only need to consider an item I recently saw about a current lease requested by North American Nickel Inc. on 320 acres in Marquette County which will benefit from the "wise use" doctrine of our DNR Director.
This area is very sensitive, being on part of the Canadian Shield (thin soils over an ancient bedrock scoured clean in the last glaciation) and contains the watershed of several streams. It took the area 14,000 years to reach its current diversity and reclamation is not possible - a good example is the wholesale destruction around Sudbury Ontario. Not to worry, DNR spokeswoman Karen Maidlow, said, because any lessee would have to get permits required under federal, state and local laws. But, here's how it really works; corporations like North American Nickel recognize that once that first hurdle, the lease of public lands, is approved the lease can be leveraged every step of the way through permitting. So, in fact, the people of the state of Michigan have one, and only one, chance of stopping the privatization and destruction of our public lands. Meanwhile, corporations like North American Nickel can keep on coming back for more leases, more permits to do further damage.
[For those wanting to comment about the North American Nickel lease request, comments from the public will be accepted by the DNR until Oct. 12 and can be emailed to Maidlow at maidlowk@michigan.gov, or mailed to the DNR Office of Minerals Management, 525 W. Allegan, P.O. Box 30452, Lansing, MI 48909-7952.]
Anyway, to see just how the DNR and DEQ rubber stamp subsequent leasing and permitting with little public attention, one only needs to see the current history of Rio Tinto's Eagle Mine in Michigamme Township. The Michigan DEQ permitted ground water discharge into the Salmon Trout River and most recently an increased amount of discharge has been approved, all rubber stamped by the DEQ who knows that this discharge is acidic mine waste, not merely groundwater. Now, Rio Tinto which has no lease on an area designated the Eagle East area has been creeping their operations in that direction with clearcutting and damaging exploratory drilling, polluting the Yellow Dog river watershed. Any lease to that area will be rubber-stamped by the DNR; Rio Tinto is so certain of this that it has highlighted the new findings to stockholders. So, once you lose a specified portion of public land to extractive industry, the losses steamroll, especially in Michigan.
But so far I've been talking about State Forest holdings. Michigan has 2,864,566 acres (4,474 square miles) of National Forest lands. While the public has the right to comment about its use, republicans are seeking to eliminate all public input. HR 2647 and S 1691 seek to disfranchise public stakeholders, and even many other current stakeholders, in our National Forests in order to give free rein to the forest products industry. Michigan's National Forest lands will be as subject to industry control as the State Forest Lands already are.
Add a war upon public lands and our National Parks to to the malignant governance by republicans. We can no longer afford that party, not at the state level, not at the federal level.