On Saturday, when we moved the shebeen into Joy Reid's studio, I wore a T-shirt that honored the late Frank LaMere, a remarkable man and a Native activist who was central to the defense of the land and the water in Nebraska, and also central to the fight against our old friend, the Keystone XL pipeline, the continent-spanning death funnel and perennial conservative fetish object. I met Frank only once, but he left a profound impression. He passed away in June. What he fought for didn't. From the Navajo Times:

Both the New Mexico Environment Department and the San Juan County Office of Emergency Management reported today that they were notified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of a wastewater spill from the Silver Wing Mine in the area of Eureka Gulch, north of Silverton, Colorado, which occurred Wednesday afternoon. According to the San Juan OEM, the spill was the result of a “burp” from the mine and is unrelated to either the Gold King Mine or the Bonita Peak Superfund site. The source is 10 miles from the Animas River and the spill was expected to dilute by the time it reached Silverton. The spill was moving slowly and was expected to reach the San Juan River.

Yolanda Barney, program manager for the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency’s Public Water Supply Program, said Thursday NNEPA is aware of spill and is still gathering information. Sources in Durango, Colorado, reported Thursday the river appears normal. In 2015, a breach in the abandoned Gold King Mine near Silverton released three million gallons of wastewater into the Animas, causing the river to run orange and closing irrigation canals on the Navajo Nation.

There's a lot of this kind of thing in the news these days. In northeast Minnesota, there's a raging controversy over a copper-nickel mine project proposed by PolyMet, a mining behemoth with something of an appalling track record. The Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general has been looking into the permit process, and that investigation has expanded and is now a nationwide probe. From The Timberjay:

“The OIG’s objective for this audit is to determine whether the EPA’s reviews of state-proposed NPDES permits verify that the permits adhere to Clean Water Act requirements,” wrote Kathlene Butler, Director of the EPA’s Office of Audit and Evaluation. Butler notes that the decision to expand the inspector general’s investigation is based on the investigation completed so far on the handling of PolyMet Mining’s water discharge permit, also known as an NPDES permit. “We will incorporate the results from our work assessing the PolyMet permit review into this nationwide audit of the EPA’s NPDES permit reviews,” Butler stated.

The decision to expand the federal investigation not only suggests that examiners are concerned with their findings to date. It also points to a substantially longer delay before the federal investigation is completed. Whether that could impact the ability of PolyMet Mining to advance its proposed NorthMet copper-nickel mine project near Hoyt Lakes remains to be seen.

Frank LaMere is gone, but what he fought for isn't. Nati Harnik AP

The inspector general’s investigation has already been actively underway for months. Investigators have met with staff in the EPA’s Region 5 office as well as water quality staff from the Fond du Lac Band, which has been intensely engaged in the permitting process for PolyMet, particularly on issues of potential water pollution. “The fact that there is this expanded national audit, predicated on this complaint, tells me they’re taking this very seriously,” said Nancy Schuldt, Water Protection Coordinator for Fond du Lac.

At the same time, a Chilean corporation called Antofagasta plans to open a mine in the Rainy Waters watershed not far from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.

Northern Minnesota sits on top of some of the richest deposits of metal in the world. Unfortunately, what sits atop it is one of the most beautiful and pristine forestland anywhere in the world, and that's not to mention that it sits right next to Lake Superior and 10 percent of the planet's fresh surface water. And those circumstances have been kept in a very tenuous balance that is in imminent danger of falling off in the direction of the people who want to dig out what's beneath all these natural treasures. From the Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. remains one of the countries where the type of dam used in the Brazil disaster, known as an upstream design, is still being built. They are effectively banned in parts of Canada, in many situations in the European Union and now, in Brazil itself. The planned dam outside of Embarrass uses the design. Last month a court suspended permits for the mine until the builder makes clear how it has assessed the Brazil disaster.

“We are allowing dams in the U.S. that countries in the developing world do not accept,” said Steve Emerman, the owner of Utah-based mining and groundwater consultants Malach Consulting.

In the Brazil disaster, a dam holding tons of iron ore tailings near the town of Brumadinho crumbled, sending water, rock and mud flooding over a square mile. Inspectors had worried about the dam’s integrity for months. Upstream design dams are built up with the tailings in a stair-step fashion. The design is one of the simplest and least expensive. Critics say it is also one of the most dangerous. The U.S., unlike some other mining nations, doesn’t have an accessible database of upstream dams, though experts estimate there are more than 500.

And this newest dam is being built to handle the waste from the PolyMet mine. At the same time, the massive Pebble Mine in Alaska threatens one of the world's great salmon fisheries. A number of the Democratic presidential candidates—most notably, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Kamala Harris—have made environmental racism and environmental justice an important part of their campaign platforms. (By contrast, for example, Amy Klobuchar has been wobbly on the issues related to what has been proposed in northern Minnesota.) The current administration* has surrendered entirely to industry; that's part of what keeps Republican politicians from turning against it. We're going to have to clean up more than land and water when these people get done.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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