Anarchy in Wisconsin!

reposted from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Madison — Republican lawmakers want to act quickly to limit public access to a proposed iron mine site in northern Wisconsin following the destruction of mining company property there by environmentalists at the site last week.

Rep. Mark Honadel (R-South Milwaukee) said he will try to convince fellow GOP lawmakers to slip the change into the state budget bill when it comes up for debate in the Assembly Tuesday, though he acknowledges that there’s little time.

“I don’t know if it’s too late for the budget but something’s got to change. We just can’t have these people running around on a worksite,” Honadel said in an interview. “We certainly don’t need this when we’re trying to get a good viable business going in the state.”

The protest and vandalism at the mine site, and a separate incident at a Department Natural Resources service center in Wausau last week, underscore the emotion surrounding the possible construction of an open pit mine. A spokesman for the mine described the vandalism the as “eco-terrorism.”

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) acknowledged the discussions on limiting public access to the mine site Monday, saying that they were in the early stages.

Currently the public has access to the land where exploratory drilling is being carried out by Gogebic Taconite as the first stage in the possible siting of a $1.5 billion mine in a heavily wooded area of Iron and Ashland counties.

“They want to do something to limit the areas they can go,” Fitzgerald said.

Gogebic has an option on the mineral rights of the land, which is regulated under the state’s managed forest law. In exchange for sharply lower property taxes for the landholder, the managed forest law gives the public access to wooded lands for activities such as hiking, hunting and fishing.

Honadel said he wants to rewrite that law to prohibit the public from being in areas where mining work is happening. He said the public is already prohibited from being in areas where logging is going on.

“It just makes common sense,” Honadel said.

Frank Koehn disagreed. Koehn is the president of the Penokee Hills Education Projection, a group opposed to the mine that organized a hike with about 50 people to the site of the mine on Saturday. There were no incidents, according to Koehn and Iron County authorities.

Koehn, who hadn’t heard about the GOP plans, said it’s crucial for people to see the mine site to be able to learn about the impact of the proposal.

“So far there hasn’t been much coming out of the Legislature on mining or much else that makes sense of late,” Koehn said.

When logging operations are under way under the existing program, signs can be posted to keep the general public 300 feet away from the logging site, according to Kathy Nelson, who oversees the managed forest program for the Department of Natural Resources. Within a year, at least half of the logging that was to be done must have occurred for the public to continue to be excluded, Nelson said.

The terms of the arrangement are set by administrative rule, rather than state statutes. Administrative rules are written by state agencies but must receive the approval of the governor and lawmakers.

Gogebic’s spokesman Bob Seitz said last week the company is worried that a separate act of vandalism earlier last week could foretell more trouble. Seitz called it “eco-terrorism.”

Seitz didn’t immediately return a message requesting comment.

Iron County Sheriff Tony Furyk on Friday estimated damage at $2,000 after protesters with covered faces slashed tires, damaged equipment, destroyed a worker’s camera and took away her cellphone.

In a posting on Earth First! Newswire on Friday, an unidentified person wrote:

“… Folks took the space over for about an hour. They jumped on trucks and the collection tank and threw pieces of equipment like pickaxes, fire extinguishers, and shovels down the hillside into the thick of the woods. Fences were knocked over and broken…

“We were able to inflict damages upon the company in the form of an entire day of labor costs through the disturbance and subsequent police reports that their workers had to spend their shift doing, as well as shatter their sense of security.”

Also, on June 10 [sic], a group of protesters briefly occupied the DNR service center in Wausau, yelled profanities and nailed a banner to the roof stating opposition to the mine.*

They tried to make their way into non-public areas of the building but were stopped. No arrests were made, according to the DNR. But one day later in a memo to the entire agency, Deputy DNR Secretary Matt Moroney said the department is working with law enforcement agencies to develop an “action plan for managing mining protest incidents.”

Journal Sentinel reporters Patrick Marley, reporting from Madison, and Lee Bergquist, reporting from Milwaukee, contributed to this article.

 

*This actually occurred on May 20th according to a system-wide email sent out to staff by DNR Deputy Secretary Matt Moroney.