MARTY FITTANTE, CEO of Invest UP, testifies before the Michigan House Appropriations Committee. (Kyle Davidson/Michigan Advance)

Members of the House Appropriations Committee faced an uproar Wednesday after voting to approve subsidies for a bundle of projects, including a controversial mining project in the Upper Peninsula.

Alongside funding for the University of Michigan and Los Alamos National Laboratory to construct high-performance computing facilities in Ypsilanti, updates and enhancements for a heavy-duty truck plant in Redford and funding for Dow Chemical to redo its Michigan Operations Industrial Park and Auburn Operations facilities, the Committee approved $50 million in funding for the Copperwood Mine in Gogebic County.

The Michigan Strategic Fund Board approved the funds to construct the Copperwood Mine in March, despite pushback from environmental advocates who raised concerns about environmental contamination from the mine’s exhaust and acid tailings, as well as the integrity of the dam holding the mine’s tailings.

While opponents of the project celebrated as the state budget passed without funding for the project, the funding is back up for consideration in committee.

Under the proposal, Copperwood Resources Inc. — a subsidiary of the Canadian-owned mining company Highland Copper — would construct a mine in Wakefield and Ironwood townships, including tunneling underneath the westernmost portion of the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. The project is expected to generate $425 million in total capital investment and create 380 jobs.

However opponents warn that the mine’s tailings basin, which would collect waste leftover from the mining process, sits on topography sloping toward Lake Superior. Should the dam fail, the lake would be contaminated by heavy metals in the mine’s tailings.

Protect the Porkies, a campaign opposing the project, also warned of acid mine drainage resulting from sulfide tailings combining with water and air to create sulfuric acid, which would lead to heavy metals leaching into the environment.

Additionally, the mine would sit on land ceded in the 1842 Treaty of La Pointe, with any contamination threatening Anishinaabe treaty rights to hunt, fish and gather in ceded territory.

Five days before the committee meeting, Protect the Porkies delivered a petition with 250,000 signatures and a letter in opposition to the project signed by more than 60 organizations to the governor’s office and members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committee.

Alongside threats to Indigenous sovereignty and natural resources, the campaign also highlighted the threats the mine would pose to outdoor recreation, with travel website Travel Lens rating the Porcupine Mountains as the most beautiful state park in the nation, and the park containing the largest old-growth, hardwood-hemlock forest in the Great Lakes region.

The campaign also warned that the mine would sit adjacent to the North Country Trail, the longest trail in the National Trails System.

While the committee limited testimony on the proposal citing time restraints, multiple speakers opposed the project, including Nichole Keway Biber, a tribal citizen of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians who serves on the Anishinaabek Caucus.

“There’s a lot of history of toxic sites, Superfund sites, brownfield sites, from a destructive, extractive look at how we interact with this world and with our natural spaces. A lot of talk about jobs. There’s a lot of work to be done cleaning up those sites that already exist. We don’t need to add additional, especially in a place like the Porcupine Mountains,” Keway Biber said.

Marty Fittante, the CEO of Invest UP, a regional economic organization based in the Upper Peninsula, offered the final piece of testimony prior to votes on the fund transfers arguing that supporters of the mine also love the Upper Peninsula like those testifying in opposition.

“Unfortunately, there’s too many people, they can no longer call it home because we don’t have opportunities,” Fittante said.

Fittante later noted that Invest UP had polled on the project for the past three years and found overwhelming support among local residents ranging from 77 to 89% consistently supporting the mine.

Ahead of the final vote on the four fund transfers, Rep. Bill G. Schuette, R-Midland, made a motion to have each transfer considered separately. However, the motion was ultimately unsuccessful with eight members supporting, 20 in opposition and one member passing on their vote.

Transfers for all four projects were approved with 17 members in favor, nine opposed and three passing on their vote, with committee attendees promptly responding with chants of “shame” as the meeting concluded.

State Rep. Jason Morgan, D-Ann Arbor, one of the votes against advancing the subsidies, said it was “ridiculous” to combine all the projects into one package.

“The entire reason we have legislative oversight through the appropriations committee is so that each project can be considered individually on the merits of that project, and to force a vote on the entire package is a disservice to our constituents,” Morgan said.

While Morgan was supportive of the other projects considered for funding transfers, he said he could not support the Copperwood Mine project.

“I remember the days when, you know, mining operations would bring investments to our communities and make commitments to put money into the community, as opposed to us paying them to come here,” Morgan said.

While Morgan did not believe the Copperwood Mine funding would have passed if it had been separated out from the other projects, he shared his hope that the Senate would follow “a more transparent and accountable process for decision making than we have done here” when considering the final approval of these fund transfers.

Keway Biber shared similar frustrations with the decision not to hold separate votes on the project.

“They could have been decided on individually, but they didn’t take that opportunity to at least say no to putting the Porcupine Mountains at risk and ignoring all those clear voices saying, ‘We do not want this,'” Keway Biber said.

“A lot of people I was talking to today, this was a lot of their first time coming to this building, engaging in this way, getting involved, and what they just witnessed was that their legislators can be bullied into voting for something their constituents do not want,” she said.

When asked for comment, Highland Copper sent this statement:

“Highland Copper is very pleased with the successful vote at the House Appropriations Committee. Highland continues to believe that when mining is done right, the creation of jobs does not need to be at the expense of the environment. We acknowledge this obligation to all local communities and stakeholders, including those who oppose the project. The Copperwood project has been designed responsibly, in line with Michigan’s stringent mining regulation which requires significant environmental controls and mitigations. We believe Copperwood can bring a needed economic boost to the Western U.P., support domestic supply of copper, and be respectful of the region’s natural beauty.”

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