The leader of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe is accusing mining company Gogebic Taconite of covering up recent findings of asbestos on a proposed mine site.
In separate revelations this week, the Department of Natural Resources and Northland College geo-science Professor Tom Fitz released information that asbestos fibers have been found in an area of the iron ore body in northern Wisconsin.
Bad River Tribal Chairman Mike Wiggins says mining company Gogebic Taconite has been hiding that information: “A cover-up of asbestos [that] geologists and children could walk in there and see with the naked eye,” he said. “[It] is such a compelling, premeditation for disaster, a disaster that would befall the Bad River Reservation and non-tribal people of the Bad River Watershed. It’s a deal breaker.”
GTAC spokesman Bob Seitz says they’re not covering up anything, and that Professor Fitz’s findings are not credible. “I don’t know of any regulator that would make determinations based on a rock that somebody finds. They require much more of us than that.”
Wiggins, however, says GTAC is playing public relations with the asbestos findings. “They had the gall to say, as a company, that they’re merely recreating the circle of life. Explode an asbestos rock that Tom Fitz has found with the highest level of asbestos he’s ever seen in some of those rocks and tell me how that’s creating the circle of life. I’ll say this: It’s recreating the circle of life by causing death.”
The DNR says they need more information before it can say if the asbestos fibers represent a threat at the proposed open pit iron ore mine.
