Human beings are 60 percent water. We are walking, talking, upright columns of water. Almost 100,000 miles of interconnected vessels, arteries, and capillaries run on water in our bodies.
You are what you drink. Like in the human body, water flows in systems in the natural world, too. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and Superior National Forest hold 20 percent of the fresh water in the National Forest System. Preserving fresh water must have value beyond commercial profit.
Copper-nickel mining in sulfide rock is not like Minnesota's mines of the past. Exposed sulfide rock can poison clean water. Water in nature is interconnected above the ground, in the air, and below the soil in the water cycles of rain, surface water, and groundwater. Everything is connected, just like in your body.
Ten percent of the planet Earth's fresh surface water is in Lake Superior. The grumble, grind, and hauling of mine work makes mine dust; combined with rain, this could make sulfuric acid. Northwest winds could scatter mining pollution over Lake Superior. Sulfuric acid water dissolves fish and frog eggs. It rots wild rice. It kills trees. Sulfur in the air stinks like rotten eggs (think Yellowstone).
Rivers, streams and groundwater all drink from the sky and feed each other in ways we cannot see. Boom and bust paychecks entice miners to work toxic copper-nickel mines. Worldwide, every copper-nickel mine has been plagued with pollution.
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Promises and projections made by corporations with dollar signs in their eyes should not be believed or built on.
Sixty percent of each of ourselves say we do not need water-polluting mines; 60 percent of us say, "Give me a drink of cool, clean, northern Minnesota freshwater."
Lynn Watson
Duluth
