Duluth News Tribune: Sound sulfate
science a must in mining debate

 

Last update: March 23, 2011 - 1:43 PM

 

Duluth News Tribune EditorialNow wait
just one wild rice-processin' minute.If
there's no science behind the state's present
limit on allowable sulfate levels in wild rice
waters, as Rep. Tom Rukavina, DFL-Pike
Township, keeps insisting, how can there be
science to justify increasing the limit five-
fold, as Rukavina has proposed?Or 25-fold,
as a bill being debated this week in St. Paul
would do?Likewise, how can environmental
groups argue so passionately for keeping the
limit where it's at without knowing for certain
-- based on science, scientific research or
other hard data -- how much sulfate is too
much for Minnesota's wild rice waters?If
anything, anecdotal evidence suggests the
current limit isn't strict enough as wild rice
stands have diminished over the years. But
maybe it isn't the sulfate levels that are to
blame.The reality is we don't know. Not for
certain.That's why a determination has to be
made, an unchallengeable, once-and-for-all
ruling by scientists and experts, a decision
cemented in more than observational data
gathered more than a half century ago by the
state Department of Natural Resources,
which is about all the current limit seems to 

 

be based on.At stake is Northeastern
Minnesota's ever-critical mining industry,
including copper-nickel mining.