State legislators, environmental agency officials, concerned tribal leaders and high school students alike converged on the state Capitol Wednesday for the one chance to voice their opinions on the controversial mining legislation Republicans introduced last week.
The bill, pending in both the state Assembly and Senate, has been the focal point in the legislature for the past week as Democrats and Republicans have argued back and forth over the bill’s merit.
The new legislation closely resembles a mining bill proposed last year, which failed when state Sen. Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, voted with Democrats against the bill because of environmental concerns. The current bill is designed to ease the permitting process for mining companies interested in opening a mine in Wisconsin.
Republicans heavily support the new bill because of the jobs it would help create if mining operations were to begin in the state’s northern region, while Democrats have challenged the bill, concerned a mine would degrade the state’s northern land and streams. Those who showed up to speak at Wednesday’s hearing hit on these topics most heavily as they spoke for and against the proposed legislation.
The Assembly Committee on Jobs, Economy & Mining and the state Senate Committee on Workforce Development, Forestry, Mining and Revenue made up the panel for Wednesday’s hearing, which was chaired by state Rep. Mary Williams, R-Medford.
Authors of the Republican mining bill were first to speak in the hearing and faced heated questions from Democratic committee members who challenged the bill’s plans for environmental regulations and its ability to provide certainty to the permitting process.
However, the three authors who testified, Reps. Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford, and Mark Honadel, R-South Milwaukee, and state Sen. Tom Tiffany, R-Hazelhurst, each said the two main points the bill constantly hits are its environmental protection and its provision of certainty.
“We are not changing [environmental] standards,” Suder said. “Our goal is to protect the environment, but also to ensure there is a fair shot for any company to actually create these jobs.”
In addition to contesting the new bill, Democratic members of the committee challenged the constraints on questions Williams had instituted for the hearing, referring to the rule that committee members were limited to two questions and one follow-up for each person testifying.
After the legislators finished, representatives of Gogebic Taconite, the same company that had previously showed interest in mining in Wisconsin when the similar bill was proposed last session, said the company would again be interested if the new bill were passed.
After testimony from company representatives and officials from government agencies which would be directly involved in the permit approval process, most remaining speakers were northern Wisconsin citizens.
The northern citizens, a mixture of small town advocates and representatives from tribal lands, took up the majority of the 12-hour hearing and were mostly split in their opinion on the mining bill. However, tribal representatives were unified, continually challenging the bill for the expected damage to their reservation lands that would result from a mine.
Other than the tribal representatives, most other northern citizens in favor of the mine followed the trend of focusing on the jobs and economic revival the area would see if a mine were to be introduced. Those citizens opposed generally said the environmental impacts did not warrant the expected economic uplift.
The hearing was the only one scheduled for the bill, to the dismay of some Democrats who continue to support scheduling a hearing farther north.
Democrats are also expected to continue to push for the adoption of some of state Sen. Tim Cullen’s, D-Janesville, proposals for a bill that, according to Cullen, would better protect the environment while easing the permitting process. Cullen introduced the Democratic bill Tuesday and said its proposals were the result of bipartisan hearings by the Senate Select Committee on Mining to improve last year’s failed mining bill.
