This is not an environmental story about landfills, wetlands, wil dlife protection, industrial waste, abandoned mines, dust storms, human-induced earthquakes or contaminated soil, surface water or groundwater.

This is a story about all of those issues intersecting.

It involves more than 14,000 not-so-pristine Upper Peninsula acres nestled between the Porcupine Mountains and the tiny town of Ontonagon, Mich.; local Native American tribes; a mammoth mining company; and state environmental regulators.
The massive site was home to the White Pine Mine, owned by Copper Range Co., which shut down in 1995, leaving behind a mess of environmental issues on an area three times the size of Michigan State University’s 5,200 acre campus.

After nearly a decade of work by environmental and company leaders, everyone is — surprisingly, according to some — happy with the story’s finale.

“A lot depends on the company. If everyone is working well together, then you can get to the good remedies and get to them quickly,” said Bob Delaney, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) scientist primarily responsible for the plan that continues to clean up the former mining site. “Companies that have a lot of resources can move mountains, and these people moved mountains — literally, in fact.”

“The flexibility involved really can’t be overstated,” said Craig Ford, Copper Range’s point man on the project. “There was a willingness to look at different kinds of solutions that would all improve the environment in order to find the one that was most cost effective.”

So what kinds of problems were found at a copper mining site that had been operating
for more than 100 years? Delaney said it was a mixture of problems typical to a major industrial complex — dumps, landfills, barrels of waste and contaminated soil, surface water and groundwater. And there were some very unusual problems that yielded some creative solutions.

Below ground was one of the most unusual problems: 2,600-foot-deep mineshafts. These large dormant areas created a passageway for salt water, normally trapped deep underground, to reach fresh water — possibly contaminating drinking water supplies.

The solution? Cause an earthquake.

Filling the mineshafts with fresh water from Lake Superior created pressure to keep the denser salt water in place. But filling the large underground space with water also caused an earthquake that registered just below a three on the Richter scale.

“It didn’t harm anyone, just rattled some dishes,” Delaney said.

Because this was a first-time problem and solution for the state, Delaney said although the science is logical, they’re “not 100 percent sure” it will work. The DEQ is monitoring the underground water supply and has developed a contingency plan with Copper Range in case Plan A doesn’t work: a trust fund created by the company to construct a water treatment plant to desalinize the water.

Another unusual problem lurked aboveground: More than 8 square miles, known as “tailings basins,” were covered with the leftovers from the mining operation — a rock as fine as talc or baby powder. Without the wastewater generated from daily mining operations to mat it down, this fine particulate matter was liable to create huge dust storms in the neighboring town of Ontonagon.

“It wasn’t hazardous to human health because the metals were no longer there and the particle size was too big to get deep into the lungs,” Delaney said. “But it was a big nuisance, especially for people with allergies.”

Those 4,000 - 5,000 acres were redeveloped into the kind of wetlands native to the area, eliminating the dust storm problem and creating a safer habitat for wildlife. About seven eagles have since made the redeveloped area their home.

“It’s one of the most beautiful places in Michigan now,” Delaney said. “You feel like you’re out on the Serengeti. It was quite a dramatic change.”

The rest of the challenges left by the copper mines, though typical in form, were atypical in scope.

The copper contamination in the soil, for instance, was not toxic to animals and was found only in small amounts. But because the contamination existed in the top 6 inches of soil spread over 10 square miles, the potential for dangerous contamination — especially for plants, which are more susceptible to copper poisoning — was real.

But the DEQ decided a massive cleanup of relatively benign soil wasn’t worth company or taxpayer dollars. Instead, land deeds requiring strict erosion control enforcement have been placed over the entire area. That means any future development should ensure that the soil doesn’t reach the plants it can harm.

More deed restrictions were also placed on the parts of the site that processed and refined the copper. The area where the smelting plant had been located “was a classic environmental site” ripe with multi-colored soil and water, Delaney said.

“We couldn’t remove all of that,” he said. “[Instead,] it was covered so that the water that falls on it does not flow into the wetlands … There’s now no lines of communication between the nasty stuff and the groundwater.”

Because the mining site was so large, it originally hosted several small landfills — 12-13 “mini-dumps,” according to environmental consultant Dave Anderson.

“None of them were lined or capped properly,” said Anderson, who was hired by several Native American tribes, including Red Cliff Band, Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chipawa and Saokogan Chipawa Community.

“Instead of capping each separately, we wanted all materials removed, all soils excavated, and we wanted it all put into an engineered, lined site built to modern standards. That was done, and I believe that was done largely because of our involvement.”

Anderson reviewed and commented on the reclamation plan and its amendments on behalf of the Native American groups many times and was pleased state officials “not only allowed us responses, but actually involved us.”

Delaney, the state representative, brought this particular success back to the company. “It would have been a lot of work at each location otherwise,” he said. “None of the other remedies would have been as complete or effective as that one. They would have been protective [and therefore met legal requirements], but not nearly as solid.”

According to Delaney and other DEQ staff members, Copper Range paid not only for all of the cleanup, much of which was above-and-beyond legal requirements, but also for every part of the oversight the state did there – “millions of dollars” that otherwise would have come out of taxpayers’ pockets.

“People have to want to get it done because there are a lot of things that can stop it from getting done, at least in a quick period of time,” Delaney said. “If I could explain why I wanted certain data, they would do it. They protected their interests, but they were always open minded.”

Ford, the director of the Copper Range site, said the company had two goals: 1.) to clean up the site at the lowest cost for its business, and 2.) to “leave behind some kind of legacy.”

“We wanted to do this at a reasonable cost, but we also wanted to do the right thing,” Ford said. “And we didn’t just want to remediate and clean up the contamination, we wanted to redevelop the whole site to make it desirable for other businesses to come in and use. We don’t want to have a financial void in these places when we leave.”
Redevelopment at the former mine site has included:

• A new laboratory and office space for a biopharmaceutical company, located in what was once an above-ground portion of the mine. “One interesting note about copper – Because it’s so unfriendly to plants, it created the perfect spot for a pharmaceutical company,” Delaney said. “Molds don’t grow there.”
  
• The construction of a water treatment plant, which uses the mine’s existing pipelines to draw water from Lake Superior and distribute it throughout the county.
  
• The sale and use of the existing copper refinery to another company, which is mining copper elsewhere.
  
• The use of the existing mine power plant to produce electricity for the refinery and the public utility.
  
• The expansion and update of the onsite waste water treatment plant, control of which was given to the county.
  
• The reuse of waste material in roof shingles, railroad ballast and asphalt.
  
• The sale of several portions of the facility to smaller businesses and private individuals for recreational uses, such as vacation homes and hunting camps.

In comparison to most other Michigan sites needing cleanup, the Copper Range mine wasn’t the most polluted, but it was probably among the most complex in terms of the size and diversity of problems found there. According to Pat McKay, Delaney’s boss at the DEQ, Copper Range could have used that complexity to hide from its responsibilities, but didn’t.

“Typically, we just encounter corporate shenanigans,” she said. “In many cases, the company is not sincere. They just want to go through the process for looks, but then they end up spending 20 years in the courts and the environment is not helped.”

Without Copper Range’s cooperation, the site might have been termed “orphaned,” leaving it to the state or federal Superfund program to spend many years and millions of taxpayers’ dollars on the project.

“We’ve spent a heck of a lot of money,” Copper Range’s Ford said. “But it’s a heck of a lot less that we all could have spent.”

---

Katie Coleman is the editor of EJ Magazine and a second-year graduate student in MSU's environmental journalism program. This is her second appearance as a writer and her third issue as editor. Reach her at colem221@msu.edu.