Mining boom in Michigan: economic boost or environmental nuisance?

Mining boom in Michigan: economic boost or environmental nuisance?

Demand for metals on the world market is prompting a mining boom in Michigan’s rural Upper Peninsula, where jobs are scarce. But possible environmental damage to forests, lakes, and rivers alarms some locals.

By Richard Mertens, Correspondent / March 27, 2012

A December 2011 photo from the Kennecott Eagle Minerals Co. shows the entrance (large metal tube) to the nickel and copper mine the company began drilling in Michigan in September.

Kennecott Eagle Minerals Co./AP/File
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Big Bay, Mich.

Jeff TenEyck was glad to come home last year. He had left Michigan for a small trucking business in South Carolina but returned to work at a new mine just outside Big Bay, the little mill town where he grew up.

‘[The new mines are] the biggest shot in the arm for the economy here since Henry Ford was here,’ says Jeff TenEyck, a Michigan native who recently moved back to work at a new mine outside Big Bay, Mich.

Richard Mertens
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Graphic: Map of Michigan
(Rich Clabaugh/Staff)

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“This is the biggest shot in the arm for the economy here since Henry Ford was here,” says Mr. TenEyck, whose grandfather worked in a lumber mill that Ford bought in 1943.

Driven by a worldwide surge in demand for metals, mining is on the rebound in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, bringing the hope of jobs to remote and economically depressed rural communities. A dozen miles south of Big Bay, London-based mining giant Rio Tinto PLC and its subsidiary, Kennecott Eagle Minerals Co., are digging a shaft beneath a pine-covered flat called the Yellow Dog Plains. They plan to begin extracting nickel and copper early next year. Rio Tinto says the Eagle Mine will be the largest nickel mine in the country and will create as many as 700 new jobs.

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Meanwhile, Orvana Minerals Corp., a Canadian mining company based in Toronto, is close to final approval for a copper mine expected to create hundreds of jobs in the sparsely populated western Upper Peninsula. Next in line, Aquila Resources Inc. and HudBay Minerals Inc. plan to apply for a permit later this year to mine zinc, gold, and silver at a small, open-pit mine along the Menominee River called the Back Forty Project.

There could be more. Mining companies have been busy prospecting for new deposits, crisscrossing the Upper Peninsula by plane and helicopter, drilling exploratory holes, leasing land, and buying up mineral rights. They’ve revisited old mines to see if new technology might make it profitable to reopen them.

“It’s like flies to honey,” says Theodore Bornhorst, professor of economic and engineering geology at Michigan Technological University in Houghton. “It’s got a lot of people interested.”

The prospect of jobs has also excited the hopes of residents. “It’s a no-brainer for most people,” says Amy Clickner, head of the Lake Superior Community Partnership, an economic development corporation in Marquette, Mich. “We do have a culture used to mining here. And the people who live up here do have to have jobs.”

At the same time, many residents worry that new mining could damage the environment and threaten the natural abundance that they enjoy as hunters and anglers.

Around Big Bay, opponents of the Eagle Mine, including a local group of Ojibwa Indians, have packed hearings, gotten themselves arrested, and traveled to London to speak out at meetings of Rio Tinto shareholders. They have sued Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality for granting a mining permit in 2007. Most recently, they have been fighting the construction of a haul road through a wild area south of the mine.

“Of course we want jobs back in Baraga County,” says Susan LaFernier, tribal council secretary for the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, which lies west of the mine in a county with 18 percent unemployment. “We’d be crazy if we didn’t. But we think the harm isn’t worth those jobs.”
The revival of mining in Michigan is driven by rising demand for metals on the world market, especially in developing countries like India and China. Michigan’s neighbors, including Wisconsin and Minnesota, and Western states like Arizona and Utah have also seen increased mining.

‘[The new mines are] the biggest shot in the arm for the economy here since Henry Ford was here,’ says Jeff TenEyck, a Michigan native who recently moved back to work at a new mine outside Big Bay, Mich.

Richard Mertens
Enlarge

Graphic: Map of Michigan
(Rich Clabaugh/Staff)

Related stories

Thirty ideas from people under 30: The Environmentalists
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“Everyone’s hiring like crazy,” says Carol Raulston, a spokeswoman for the National Mining Association.

Mining has long been a part of the local economy in Michigan. Native Americans excavated copper from surface de-posits around Lake Superior and traded it as far as the Gulf Coast and the Rocky Mountains. Large-scale mines opened in the 1800s. But the heyday of mining soon passed; today just two open-pit iron ore mines survive in the Upper Peninsula.

Some communities, especially small cities like Houghton and Marquette, have diversified their economies and no longer depend on only one or two industries. Others, like Ironwood, a town of 5,494 in the western Upper Peninsula, have never recovered from mining’s collapse.

James Oliver, a Gogebic County commissioner, says the town’s population has fallen by two-thirds since the copper mines closed, and it’s still shrinking. At a hearing in March, most of the nearly 400 people who showed up supported the new Orvana copper mine.

“It means a lot of jobs for us in the area, trickling down from the mine,” says Mr. Oliver.

Still, the need for jobs has not eclipsed worries about mining and the environment. This conflict was thrown into sharp relief in March in northern Wisconsin, where mining company Gogebic Taconite proposed a $1.5 billion open-pit iron mine in the Penokee Hills near Mellon – but only if Wisconsin streamlined its application procedure. On March 6, the Wisconsin State Senate narrowly rejected a new mining law, whereupon Go­gebic Tac­onite announced it was giving up.

“We’re heartbroken,” says Jo­seph Barabe, Mel­lon’s mayor and the grandson and great-grandson of miners. “We wanted the mine.” But the new law would have offered too little protection for local water and too few financial guarantees for communities, he adds. “We would get all these jobs, but it would bankrupt the town.”

Mr. Bornhorst, who directs the A.E. Seaman Mineral Museum in Houghton, says mining’s environmental record is much improved. Stricter regulations, he says, have reduced its risks. “I think all mining companies are put on notice that they have to be as responsible as they can be,” he says.

At the Kennecott Eagle Mine near Big Bay, mine operators are collecting runoff in lagoons and treating it to prevent acidified and metal-laden water from trickling into streams. Mine waste will be stored and put back in the mine when the mining is finished.

But around Big Bay, many residents aren’t satisfied. They say officials have been too eager to please mining officials and that state regulations are lax.

“I’m not against mining,” says Chauncey Moran, an activist who has been testing water near the Kennecott mine and taking regular flights over the site to watch for problems. “It’s the health of the water and the health of the community that really matter.”

Many also question the real potential for new mining jobs. Rio Tinto has pledged to give 75 percent of the jobs to local residents. But skeptics believe the jobs will be too few and shortlived to have much lasting economic benefit.

Even Jeff TenEyck wonders. He’d like his 26-year-old son to move back to Big Bay, too. But despite the new mine, he laments, “there’s no work.”

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HIGH WINDS CAUSE OUTAGES

Integrys Energy Group, Inc. : Gusting Winds Causing Power Outages
03/27/2012 | 11:56am

For Release: 03/27/2012
Gusting Winds Causing Power Outages

Ishpeming, MI – Gusting winds are knocking down tree limbs into power lines causing electric service interruptions for some parts of the Upper Peninsula this morning.

Upper Peninsula Power Company (UPPCO) reports crews have been busy working to keep up with customers calling in that had their power knocked out.

As of late morning, nearly 3,000 customers were without power. The hardest hit areas are Keweenaw County (950 customers), Ontonagon/White Pine (700 customers) and Munising/Chassell (138 customers).

UPPCO expects outages to continue as long as the winds continue gusting and hopes to have power restored sometime later today. All available crews are now working to restore power.

Residents who are without power should call UPPCO’s Emergency Outage line 800-562-7809 to report their situation and location. Everyone is advised to stay away from all potentially dangerous situations involving downed tree branches and power lines. The lines may still be “live wires” and very dangerous. If there are any potentially dangerous situations, contact 9-1-1.

To follow the outage repair effort on line, access www.uppco.com and access the Outage and Service Problems section in the “For Homes” area of the home page.
For More Information, Contact:

Keweenaw Invasive Species Management Area to hold Planning Meeting March 20

Keweenaw Invasive Species Management Area to hold Planning Meeting March 20
Botanist Janet Marr, second from left, leads a group of volunteers in pulling invasive garlic mustard from a site in Laurium in May 2011. (Photo courtesy Janet Marr)

HOUGHTON — The Keweenaw Invasive Species Management Area (KISMA) will hold a Planning Meeting from 9 a.m. to Noon on Tuesday, March 20, in the Community Room of the Michigan Tech Lakeshore Center, 600 E. Lakeshore Dr., Houghton. The meeting is open to anyone having an interest in controlling invasives.

The Houghton Keweenaw Conservation District is partnering with the US Forest Service, Ottawa National Forest, to provide for a Cooperative Weed Management Area covering Baraga, Houghton and Keweenaw counties. Funding for this project is from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

The preliminary agenda is as follows:

1. RRIP-IT-UP summary: 2010 and 2011
2. Review draft of KISMA Memorandum of Understanding
3. Develop work plan for 2012. What infestations would you like to see treated?
4. What educational efforts do you recommend?
5. Are you aware of an invasive species area in need of a survey?
6. Plans for Spring 2012 garlic mustard work.

Bonnie Hay of Gratiot Lake proudly displays a bag of garlic mustard she pulled from a property in Laurium in May 2011. (Photo by Keweenaw Now)

For more information contact the Houghton Keweenaw Conservation District (HKCD) Office at 906-482-0214.

For The Birds

« Spring 2011: FINAL RESULTS!
Embarking On A New Season »
Coming (Very) Soon! KRS Spring 2012

March 13, 2012 by awg

Things only seem quiet here! The count shelter was erected on Brockway’s West Bluff earlier this month. Arrangements for lodging & snowmobile have been finalized. And that guy from New York is back in Copper Harbor gearing up for another season. With only two days to go before we start the count, we hope you’re ready! It’s going to be a terrific season!

KRS associates Joseph Youngman and Greg Cleary in front of the newly erected shack.

Apart from the unseasonably mild winter, this early thaw may bode well for the weeks to come. Spring hawkwatches throughout the US have registered early migration for raptors & non-raptors alike. While the central/midwestern flyways tend to lag several weeks behind those more easterly, already the West Skyline count in Duluth, Minnesota registered an almost backbreaking number of eagles on March 11. Could something similar happen at Brockway Mountain this year? It’s certainly possible!

Throughout the count from March 15 to June 15, this blog will be tracking news of the KRS count and will try hard to offer articles of interest to fellow raptor enthusiasts. We’ll also be submitting reports of our daily results to HMANA’s HawkCount, as we did last year, so you can see what we’re seeing down to the age & sex of each bird we’ve counted. We invite your comments to the blog, and better still, hope to see you up on Brockway this year!

See you Thursday!

Microbreweries are popping up everywhere, you’re not far from wrong. The Upper Peninsula now has eight of them with a ninth opening up in a few more months.

More than 100 are opening up every year
Read more: Local, National, Economy, Business, Tourism, Consumer, News, Microbreweries, Brew Pubs, Brewers Association, Black Rocks, Vierling, Marquette Harbor Brewery, Ore Dock, Jasper Ridge, Library, Keweenaw Brewing Company, Herefor and Hops, Red Jacket, Calumet, Houghton, Marquette, Beer Consumption, Craft Beers, Paul Gatza, Dave Beckwith, Paul Gray

If you get the sense that microbreweries are popping up everywhere, you’re not far from wrong. The Upper Peninsula now has eight of them with a ninth opening up in a few more months.

“People are tired of drinking water,” says Dave Beckwith, the head brewer at Lake Superior Brewing in Grand Marais. “The younger generation wants good beer. They’re discovering that there’s more to beer than Bud and Miller.”

Lake Superior Brewing, a brew pub in Grand Marais, has been brewing since 1995. A brew pub is a microbrewery that also serves food.

Other U.P. microbreweries and brew pubs in the U.P. are the Marquette Harbor Brewery at the Vierling Restaurant and Black Rocks, both in Marquette; the Keweenaw Brewing Company and the Library, in Houghton; Hereford and Hops in Escanaba; the Jasper Ridge in Ishpeming; the Red Jacket in Calumet; and the soon-to-be opened Ore Dock in Marquette.

The Red Jacket is technically a “nanobrewery.” In other words, a tiny, tiny brewery. How tiny? Well, it’s located at the Michigan House restaurant in Calumet, and one day a week, it closes down the kitchen and fires up the brewery to make a half barrel of local brew. That’s only about 15 gallons of beer.

A microbrewery is defined as a brewery that makes no more than 15,000 barrels a year. That’s roughly 465,000 gallons of beer.

Nationwide, more than 100 microbreweries, brew pubs, and regional craft brewers (which are larger than microbreweries) are opening up every year. There are now more than 1,700 across the United States.

And we’re drinking their beer. In 2010, craft brewing grew by 11 percent in volume and 12 percent in dollars. Consumption of the most popular American beers, in the meantime, was stagnant.

Most drinkers will concede that microbrews have a stronger taste and frequently more alcoholic content than mainstream beers. The small brewers will often experiment with different ingredients, like chocolate, coffee, and berries. Some of the mixes are highly successful, others not so much.

Who are the microbrew fans?

“They tend to be people who are middle class, more men than women,” explains Paul Gatza, the director of the national trade group, the Brewers Association. “They’re generally more travelled than others. Many have been to other countries, and they’ve gotten a good taste of craft brews, and they want beer with a richer taste. Generally, I’d say they’re millenials, between 21 and 28 years old.”

But, he says, there are many in their 40s and older who’ve developed a taste for craft beers. Craft beers are most popular in the Pacific Northwest, Colorado, the Great Lakes, and New England. Growth has been more sluggish in the South. Some observers have likened the growing popularity of craft beer to the Starbucks craze.

“I just think the microbreweries and brew pubs are like a little coffee shop,” says Paul Gray, a co-founder of the Keweenaw Brewing Company in Houghton. “We’ve got the same type of atmosphere, only it’s with beer. People like that. They’re looking for something different.”

Keweenaw Brewing Company, or KBC, has shown explosive growth. In 2004, it brewed 460 barrels. By 2008, it was up to 3,240 barrels, and this year, it’ll be around 8,000. In 2013, Gray expects to brew 10,000 barrels. KBC has expanded from Michigan to Wisconsin, and by April, it’ll be in Minneapolis-St. Paul. By next year, KBC will be available in Ohio.

Craft beers still account for only about five percent of the beer we drink, but that percent is growing every year. The major brewers are taking notice.

“They’re concerned,” Gatza says. “They’ve made public statements about the fact that craft beer is a threat, and the reason is simple: shelf space is precious. Craft beers are taking up more and more shelf space.”

Has their growth peaked? Not likely, especially since they’re most popular among the younger generation. The millenials are likely to be earning more money in the years ahead, and that probably means they’ll have more cash for those special brews.

Keweenaw National Historical Park

Keweenaw National Historical Park (photos not included)

Michigan

Fifth Street in downtwon Calumet
Fifth street in downtown Calumet
Courtesy of the National Park Service, Dan Johnson
Upper Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula was the site of one of the most abundant deposits of pure, elemental copper in the world. The copper range here forms a narrow spine around which tens of thousands of people came to coax copper from out of the ground. In the 19th century, Americans and immigrants flocked here to fulfill the American Dream and improve their own lives. They developed a complex system of mining, processing, smelting, and transporting copper, which stimulated America’s Industrial Revolution. The thousands of people from around the world who sought success and the large corporate mining companies eager to make a profit together transformed the Keweenaw Peninsula, forever changing its landscape and cultural makeup.

Today, Keweenaw National Historical Park, at its Calumet and Quincy units, preserves and interprets the varied elements of the copper mining industry and tells the stories of the diverse people who settled the area and worked the mines. The many preserved buildings, streets, and mines, located in the Calumet National Historic Landmark District and the Quincy Mining Company National Historic Landmark District within the park, provide visitors with a snapshot in time of how the newly industrialized America looked and felt. Dozens of cultural sites throughout the Keweenaw Peninsula (inside and outside of official park boundaries), including those of 19 official Keweenaw Heritage Site partners, also help tell the stories associated with the Keweenaw’s mining history.
Keweenaw Heritage Center, formerly St. Anne’s Church
The former St. Anne’s Church
now serves as the Keweenaw Heritage Center
Courtesy of the National Park Service

American Indians began mining and using copper in the Keweenaw Peninsula over 7,000 years ago, as is evident from the prehistoric mining sites throughout the area. Native peoples used the copper to construct tools and make items to trade. When European priests and explorers reached the Keweenaw Peninsula in the 1600s, they learned of the copper from the Ojibwa. The early European explorers attempted to mine the copper but were unsuccessful. By the 1840s, people started having success extracting the copper from the earth, prompting one of the first mineral mining rushes in the United States — one that predated the California gold rush by six years.

For a time, the Keweenaw Peninsula saw a massive rush of individual fortune seekers. After this initial rush, other entrepreneurs arrived to direct a more systematic extraction of the copper. A more lasting copper industry evolved with the establishment of the major mining companies, the Quincy Mining Company and later, the Calumet & Hecla (C&H) Company. By 1849, this area provided 96% of the entire United States copper production; from 1845 to 1887 it was the largest copper producing region in the United States. By the late 1880s, the Keweenaw Peninsula lost its dominant position as the leading copper producing region to mines located further west; but for over a hundred years, the copper mining industry had a direct effect on the lives and landscape of the people and communities in this area.

Between 1843 and 1920, miners and immigrants from all over the world, including Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Finland, Croatia, China, and Lebanon, among others, flocked to the area to work in the mines and the industries that supported their operation. These workers provided a large labor force and contributed to the evolution of a varied and diverse cultural landscape throughout the peninsula. While many of the first generation immigrants came to work in the mines, the second and third generation Americans found ways to enter other occupations. Some opened, managed, or worked in groceries, hotels, restaurants, and sawmills, while others taught school, farmed, or logged forests. Others began commercial fishing operations in Lake Superior, which surrounds the Keweenaw.
Mine Workers
Between 1843 and 1920, miners and immigrants from all over the world came to the Keweenaw Peninsula
to work the mines
Courtesy of the National Park Service
Immigrants established ethnic benevolent societies and churches. Visitors can still see some of them today like St. Anne’s Catholic Church (originally built for a thriving French-Canadian population), the Community Church of Calumet (originally serving a Scottish Presbyterian congregation), St. John the Baptist Church (originally for Calumet’s Croatian Community), and the Norwegian Lutheran Church. These institutions helped new arrivals make their way in the community and find jobs and places to live. Churches and benevolent societies played a crucial role in immigrants’ lives by attending to their spiritual needs and provided them places to speak their native tongue comfortably, listen to their traditional music, and eat their traditional food. Established immigrants built hotels or apartment buildings like the Coppo Block and the Holman Block, which visitors can walk by today in downtown Calumet. At one time, at least 38 different ethnic groups lived in the area. The workers and their families varied in their dress, politics, religions, foods, and languages, but they shared a common interest in their goals and intense desire for better lives.

Visitors can learn about the social, ethnic, commercial, and company-planned aspects of a mining community by visiting the Calumet Unit of Keweenaw National Historical Park. In the historic village of Calumet, known as Red Jacket until 1929, and throughout the C&H Mining Company’s property, visitors can see what it was like to live and work on the Keweenaw Peninsula in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Visitors can take the Calumet Walking Tour, a 1.5 hour and 1.5 mile easy terrain walking tour to explore the former C&H Mining Company’s industrial area and downtown Calumet’s historic business district.

In its heyday, the C&H Mining Company produced one-half of the country’s copper. The company, which Swiss-born Alexander Agassiz led for many years, attained success through its highly efficient management of both people and natural resources. The company utilized modern technologies and the management style known as paternalism to build its reputation as one of the nation’s best-known business enterprises.
The C&H Public Library and Agassiz House
The C&H Public Library and Agassiz House
Courtesy of the National Park Service

By practicing corporate paternalism, C&H created a mutually dependent relationship between the company and its workers by offering both benefits and constraints to its workers and the nearby communities. Like many mining companies, C&H provided not only jobs but also schools, homes, bathhouses, hospitals, tennis courts, bowling alleys, a swimming pool, and a library for its workers. The company also provided land for fraternal organizations, churches, and other social groups. Many of these corporate-sponsored community buildings are still standing today, including the C&H Public Library, many Calumet grade schools, the C&H Bathhouse, the Miscowaubik Club, and the churches on God’s Little Acre. By 1898, C&H owned nearly 1,000 dwellings and the land on which many other employee-built houses stood. C&H’s fire department served the mines and surrounding communities, and the company’s water system pumped water to employee houses.

While company management saw paternalism as the benign manifestation of a new age of enlightened capitalism, it allowed the company to control many aspects of the workers’ lives, including discouraging the organization of labor unions. In 1913, workers’ frustration with the impersonal style of management, low wages, long hours, and poor working conditions culminated in a strike that lasted for nearly a year. C&H never fully recovered from the strike. The company enjoyed some profits in the early 20th century, but as the depths of the mines increased, the copper content diminished. In 1968, the mines closed permanently, but the C&H Mining Company left its mark on the people, land, and communities of the Keweenaw Peninsula.
Quincy No. 2 Mine Shaft
The former Quincy No. 2 mine shaft with accompanying hoist house
Courtesy of the National Park Service

Twelve miles from the Calumet Unit, visitors can explore the Quincy Unit of the park to learn about the processes and technologies of copper mining. The Quincy Unit, just northeast of the Hancock community and adjacent to the Portage Lake waterway, preserves the remnant structures and mines of the Quincy Mining Company, established in 1846. Visitors can take the Quincy Ruins Walk, a guided 1.5 hour, one-mile walking tour to explore the surface ruins of the mine.

Quincy and C&H share similar histories. The Quincy Copper Mining Company was also a leader in copper production in the late 19th century, attracted workers from various ethnic groups, practiced paternalism with its workers, and suffered greatly from the strike of 1913. The company eventually closed its mines for good in 1945. Today, visitors can explore the Quincy No. 2 mine shaft and hoist, which are a Keweenaw Heritage Site owned and operated by the Quincy Mine Hoist Association. Visitors can also see the world’s largest steam hoist, explore the mine’s surface area and ruins, and ride a cog-wheel tram to a mine side entrance. From there, visitors can go underground to have a firsthand view of the mine and see for themselves the miners’ working conditions.

Visitors can also explore the 19 Keweenaw Heritage Sites associated with the park. Places such as the Coppertown Mining Museum in the former C&H Pattern Shop, the former St. Anne’s Church that is now the Keweenaw Heritage Center, the Red Jacket Fire Station that is now the Upper Peninsula Firefighters Memorial Museum, and the Laurium Manor Mansion Tours, all help tell the stories of copper mining and the birth of an industrialized society.
Plan your visit

Keweenaw National Historical Park, a unit of the National Park System, is located on the Keweenaw Peninsula of Upper MI. Click here for the National Register of Historic Places files: Calumet Historic District, text and photos; Quincy Mining Company Historic District, text and photos. Calumet Historic District and Quincy Mining Company Historic District have also been designated National Historic Landmarks. The park’s visitor center is located in Calumet at 98 Fifth St. and headquarters is open Monday through Friday from 9:00am until 5:00pm, except on federally designated holidays. Visitor services for the park are also provided through the park’s non-Federal partners, known as Keweenaw Heritage Sites. Hours and days of operation at these sites vary with the season. For more information and directions to the park, visit the National Park Service Keweenaw National Historical Park website or call 906-337-3168.

Keweenaw National Historical Park has been documented by the National Park Service’s Historic American Buildings Survey.

EAGLE RIVER – A group of citizens still has concerns about the new cell tower on Brockway Mountain,

Tempers flare at Keweenaw County meeting
Board wants cell tower issue put to rest
February 16, 2012
By STACEY KUKKONEN – DMG writer (skukkonen@mininggazette.com) , The Daily Mining Gazette
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EAGLE RIVER – A group of citizens still has concerns about the new cell tower on Brockway Mountain, but the Keweenaw County Board of Commissioners does not want any more public comment on the issue.

About a dozen individuals attended the Keweenaw County Commissioners regular meeting Wednesday evening in Eagle River to address concerns over the location of the cell tower. In December, the Zoning Board of Appeals voted in favor of putting the tower on the summit and since then, a petition has circulated asking those who are opposed to sign. The petition has garnered more than 3,000 signatures from people all across the Upper Peninsula and the world.

However, when Alex Protzel asked the board to speak during public comment Wednesday, he was immediately turned down by the board.

“What would your public comment be about?” Chair Ernest Mooney asked Protzel.

When Protzel said he wanted to talk about the proposed cell phone tower on Brockway Mountain, and said he had new information to share with the commissioners, Mooney said they had heard enough.

“Let me tell you what’s going to happen,” Mooney said. “I think that this board has a responsibility when we have issues before this board to give everyone who is interested an opportunity to express their opinion whether for or against. And I think that has taken place. … Now this issue is not before this board. This issue is a closed issue. It’s been decided. So I do not feel this board has any obligation whatsoever to provide a forum for people who just want to comment on this to do so and express their views.”

Mooney compared the comments about the cell tower to a politician making a campaign speech the week after the campaign is over. Mooney said comments will no longer be accepted on the tower issue and suggested those with concerns should do so on the federal level.

“My comments were not allowed because of the reasons you gave,” Protzel, a Copper Harbor property owner said. “I was not allowed to make a public comment.”

Mooney said the issue has been closed and decided, so further comments would not have an impact.

“I think the issue we’re concerned about is there is additional information, new information that’s available today that wasn’t when those decisions were made,” said Copper Harbor property owner Phoebe Wienke.

Mooney said resolutions to problems come from people working together and said nothing is ever accomplished by people taking one adversarial side of one issue or another. Mooney said the board is open to taking suggestions about an alternate plan to provide cell service to people of Keweenaw County that is cost-effective.

“We’re not interested in people just making their statements about how many birds are going to die,” he said. “We’ve heard it all before. Everyone has had their opportunity to make their comments.”

Mooney ended his comments with the bang of his gavel and the party interested in making comments turned to leave.

Tom Liljegren of Allouez asked to make a public comment concerning the individuals leaving the room.

“The discourtesy of those who are leaving simply because their issue … if they paid more attention to what the county is doing, they would be at meetings every time like some of us are,” he said.

Peggy Kauppi, who owns a Copper Harbor business open during evening hours, said she comes to as many meetings as she is able.

“I’m not discourteous,” she said.

According to the Open Meeting Act 267 of 1976, “a person shall be permitted to address a meeting of a public body under rules established and recorded by the public body. The legislature or a house of the legislature may provide by rule that the right to address may be limited to prescribed times at hearings and committee meetings only.” The agenda for the Keweenaw County Board of Commissioners allows for two sections of public comment at no more than three minutes per individual.

There is nothing specific about public comment in the commission’s bylaws. Per the county’s rights of public address, as followed by the county from the “Guide to Michigan County Government,” the public has a right to address the county board. This right, though, is more limited than the right to attend meetings and “the board or committee and its chairperson may not make up the rules as the meeting goes along.” The board may determine when and for how long a person may speak and the rules must be officially adopted and recorded.

In an interview this morning, Protzel said he wanted to tell the commissioners about alternative locations that could be investigated.

Protzel said he became aware the tower will most likely require approximately 2 miles of utility poles to provide power. That prospect of having a string of utility poles crisscrossing Brockway is unacceptable, he said.

“This issue was covered briefly at the Dec. 20, 2011, planning commission meeting,” he said. “It was raised and the tower company (representative) declined to answer, and the planning commission declined to pursue it. I was there and I said, ‘This is real important, because if this tower goes up, we can’t ignore it.’”
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