Eagle Rock S.O.S.

“Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he’s been given. But up to now he hasn’t been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life’s become extinct, the climate’s ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.”

-- Anton Chekhov 1860-1904: “Uncle Vanya” (1897)

“What have they done to the earth?

What have they done to our fair sister?

Ravaged and plundered and ripped

Her and did her,

Stuck her with knives in the side of

The dawn,

And tied her with fences and dragged

Her down.

Jim Morrison 1943-71: “When the Music’s Over” (1967 song)

I had a list of things to talk about, let’s see.

Ok….my review.

Today, I

will attend a lunch to honor my passing of the

periodical review visited on we lecturers every three years. Three cheers for me! But seriously, negotiating this scrutiny can be nerve wracking. And why shouldn’t it be? I mean, it’s only one’s life we’re talking about here. Just the small things: health benefits, a salary, the modicum of dignity afforded one in a system set up to spend you like one more commodity, and a cheap one at that.

Ok…Mcgee's Birthday Bash.

70's today, 80's tomorrow. It’s spring, baby, and if you’re a native Michiganian, here comes the easy part of enjoying the four seasons. Commencement is upon us, and Shadow and I will be walking down to observe the hoopla surrounding the Prez’s speech. It’s also the time when the summer musical season arrives, festivals (the Blueberry and Medieval), concerts (Top of The Park and the Manchester River Fest), and special events (weddings and wakes) abound.

But first and foremost, it’s that time when our thoughts turn to Lake Superior, Marquette, and Big Bay. The plan is to repair to Squaw Beach for a month of R&R. As is our habit, during that time some music will be made. And it seems to me there is no better time to do that

than the weekend of Mcgee’s birthday, July 29, 30, and 31.

Ok…My last blog.

It’s the saddest scene I’ve ever witnessed

Ok…The Gulf Tragedy.

This is bad, really bad.

Consider these excerpts from letters concerning the catastrophe on the Gulf:

To the Editor:

Re “In Gulf Spill, Marshes Face a New Threat” (front page, May 2):

“Birds have always had an extraordinary capacity to fire the human imagination. Their beauty and variety are remarkable, but it is the power of flight that humans have always found magical — and enviable. That is why oil spills that devastate large bird populations are the most heartbreaking of all environmental catastrophes.

To see creatures suddenly robbed of the freedom to fly is both an assault on the natural order and an assault on our most primal fantasies. If negligence and greed are found to be contributing factors to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, our sadness and shame should be all the greater.

David Hayden
Wilton, Conn., May 2, 2010”

“To the Editor:

Recent coal mine accidents and the explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico deliver a message. It is the need to recognize modern society’s insatiable demand for energy.

Accidents in ever-deeper coal mines and oil wells bored three miles into a seabed beneath a mile of Gulf water show how demand for energy pushes energy companies toward, and sometimes beyond, the frontiers of technical feasibility.”

John J. Kohout III
Alexandria, Va., May 2, 2010

And why this push?

John Hofmeister, president of Shell’s U.S. operations, had these reassuring words for homeowners who live in coastal states like Florida and California, who fear that their views and property values would be hurt: "Those numbers of people are large, and influential, and politically active," he said. But he also believes that data and reason will bring them around. "The phenomenon of the roundness of the earth means that at a certain point away from the shoreline you can't see operations offshore." he said. He believes the industry's safety record—there hasn't been a devastating spill since the 1969 Santa Barbara debacle—should inspire confidence. "You'd have to say the industry has performed very well."

How does this apply to what’s happening in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula?

Simple, Kennecott, and their parent company, Rio Tinto, like BP, are ruthless corporate gangsters that can’t be trusted with our environment.

Consider the testimony of a BP employee on the rig that exploded and caught fire: “At least one worker who was on the rig when it exploded April 20 and who handled company records for BP said the rig was drilling deeper than 22,000 feet, even though the company's federal permit allowed it to go only to 18,000 to 20,000 feet.” (May 3, 2010 NYTimes)

Kennecott isn’t BP, you say?

Think about Alder Falls, Eagles on the Salmon Trout, and Bears on Squaw Beach. Don’t kid yourself brothers and sisters, it can happen here.

Also think about the irrevocable damage that liars can wreak. And what about the question of whom would benefit from the degradation of the Yellow Dog Plains -- China.

“China sentence Rio Tinto Employees in Bribe Case

By DAVID BARBOZA

SHANGHAI — Four employees of the British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto, including an Australian citizen, were found guilty Monday of accepting millions of dollars in bribes and stealing commercial secrets.

They were given sentences of 7 years to 14 years in prison.

Rio Tinto, which until Monday had defended its employees, said court evidence showing that in recent years the employees had accepted about $13.5 million in bribes was ‘beyond doubt.’ Stern Hu, the Australian citizen who served as Rio Tinto’s general manager in Shanghai, was sentenced to seven years in prison for bribery and five years for stealing business secrets.

Although the court reduced his sentence to 10 years in prison, it is still one of the stiffest sentences ever handed down against a high-ranking executive working for a multinational company here.

From 2003 to 2009, the court said, the four defendants used “improper means” to gain information that allowed Rio Tinto to “jack up the price that China paid for its iron ore imports.” The Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court said that it would soon charge at least two Chinese steel industry officials with passing trade secrets to Rio Tinto.

Rio Tinto is one of the biggest suppliers of iron ore to China, which imports tens of billions of dollars’ worth of iron ore every year — a vital component for steel that is fueling this booming economy.”

The grim point: China’s economy -- Rio Tinto’s consumer focus -- is being fueled by the mortgaging of our children’s environment. Following the pillaging of the plains, the polluters simply move on to foul the earth where someone else eats and breathes.

There are those of us, however, who choose to do something, however futile.

Environmentalist charged with trespassing at site of contested nickel sulfide mine

Kennecott has begun mine construction without a water permit from EPA

By Eartha Jane Melzer 4/23/10 7:14 AM

Cynthia Pryor, a prominent opponent of a nickel sulfide mine planned for state land on the Yellow Dog plain northwest of Marquette, spent two days in jail this week after being arrested for trespassing on land where Kennecott Eagle Minerals has begun clearing trees for the first phase of construction for the mine.

Pryor, 58, the director of the non-profit Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve said that she was arrested midday Tuesday after she sat down on an uprooted tree on state land and refused to leave the area.

According to Pryor and other environmentalists and groups in the area, Kennecott’s construction activities are illegal because the company has not obtained a federal permit for its waste water disposal system.

On Wednesday Pryor was arraigned in Marquette County District Court and entered a plea of not guilty to the misdemeanor charge. Her bail was set at $1,000 but she refused to pay the $100 bond and spent another night in jail.

Pryor said that on Thursday afternoon she was re-arraigned and dismissed from the jail without bond.

“I think they were concerned about all the attention this was getting,” she said.

“I think the big question in everyone’s mind is who is really guilty here,“ said Kristi Mills, director of Save the Wild UP. “We are from the camp of believing that they do not have all of the legal permits needed to do what they are doing.”

Mills said that according to the land lease agreement between the mining company and the state all permits have to be in place before any work can begin on the site. This condition that has not yet been met, she said, because federal officials have yet to decide on a permit matter relating to wastewater.

“It was a bold move on [Kennecott’s] part,” she said. “It was pretty gutsy. They are pushing this forward as fast as they can.”

“No one is holding Rio Tinto accountable for this at all. Media has been so slanted here it is disgusting.”

Since 2007 Pryor’s organization, together with the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC), the National Wildlife Federation, and the Huron Mountain Club, have challenged state permits for the mine through administrative appeals and action in court. They argue that the planned mine will devastate the area.

Following a years long contested case hearing an administrative law judge determined that the rock outcropping known as Eagle Rock held religious significance for members of the KBIC. State officials were in the process of considering that finding when, in January, Granholm appointee Frank Ruswick intervened and determined that the permits for Kennecott should be finalized without further judicial review.

The state determined that because Eagle Rock was not a building it was not subject to protections as a place of religious worship.

That move left Kennecott with one final permit hurdle for the mine — it still required a permit from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to discharge treated wastewater into the ground.

But in a March 22 letter, Kennecott notified state and federal regulators that it had changed its design for a wastewater treatment system and determined that it no longer required an Underground Injection Control (UIC) permit from EPA.

That same day Dept. of Natural Resources and Environment Forest Management Division Chief Lynne Boyd responded that based on the company’s certifications, the state was giving the go ahead to begin work on the mine.

Mine opponents argue that Kennecott’s design modification — covering their discharge pipes with Styrofoam rather than a man-made mound of soil — does not change the fact that the company will be releasing 500,000 gallons of treated wastewater into the soil and and ultimately the drinking water.

They say that nothing in Kennecott’s design alteration changes the fact that EPA is responsible for regulating the mine discharge under the Safe Drinking Water Act, and they’ve urged the agency to insist that the company obtain a permit.

EPA spokeswoman Karen Thompson said Wednesday that the agency has not yet reached a decision on the matter.

MDNRE spokesman Bob McMann said that the state only requires the company to certify that it has all the necessary permits before beginning work on the site.

“If that turns out to be wrong (in other words, if EPA were to come back and decide they DID need a permit from them), that would put them in violation of their agreement with us which could result in penalties against them,” McCann said via email.

“Kennecott’s work on public land right now is illegal activity,” local activist Teresa Bertossi said in an e-mailed statement. “I don’t know what we’ve come to when a citizen can sit on a tree stump, with her dog next to her, and get arrested for being on public property while Kennecott blatantly breaks the law. Do foreign-owned companies now decide what we can do on our own land in the Upper Peninsula?”

I want to focus on a particular issue arising out of the "religious significance” issue: “The state determined that because Eagle Rock was not a building it was not subject to protections as a place of religious worship.” To do that, I’m simply going to provide some excerpts from an essay I had our Argumentative Writing Class (225) read in 2008.

If Nature Had Rights

What would people need to give up?

by Cormac Cullinan

“’SO WHAT WOULD A RADICALLY DIFFERENT law-driven consciousness look like?’ The question was posed over three decades ago by a University of Southern California law professor as his lecture drew to a close. “One in which Nature had rights,” he continued. “Yes, rivers, lakes, trees. . . . How could such a posture in law affect a community’s view of itself?” Professor Christopher Stone may as well have announced that he was an alien life form. Rivers and trees are objects, not subjects, in the eyes of the law and are by definition incapable of holding rights. His speculations created an uproar.”

“Stone stepped away from that lecture a little dazed by the response from the class but determined to back up his argument. He realized that for nature to have rights the law would have to be changed so that, first, a suit could be brought in the name of an aspect of nature, such as a river; second, a polluter could be held liable for harming a river; and third, judgments could be made that would benefit a river.”

"Stone’s seminal ‘Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects’ (‘Trees’) argues that courts should grant legal standing to guardians to represent the rights of nature, in much the same way as guardians are appointed to represent the rights of infants. In order to do so, the law would have to recognize that nature was not just a conglomeration of objects that could be owned, but was a subject that itself had legal rights and the standing to be represented in the courts to enforce those rights.”

“Throughout legal history, as he pointed out, each extension of legal rights had previously been unthinkable. The emancipation of slaves and the extension of civil rights to African Americans, women, and children were once rejected as absurd or dangerous by authorities. The Founding Fathers, after all, were hardly conscious of the hypocrisy inherent in proclaiming the inalienable rights of all men while simultaneously denying basic rights to children, women, and to African and Native Americans.”

“In the eyes of American law today, most of the community of life on Earth remains mere property, natural “resources” to be exploited, bought, and sold just as slaves were. This means that environmentalists are seldom seen as activists fighting to uphold fundamental rights, but rather as criminals who infringe upon the property rights of others. It also means that actions that damage the ecosystems and the natural processes on which life depends, such as Earth’s climate, are poorly regulated. Climate change is an obvious and dramatic symptom of the failure of human government to regulate human behavior in a manner that takes account of the fact that human welfare is directly dependent on the health of our planet and cannot be achieved at its expense.”

Best - Randy