Effects of Copper Mining and a Search for Alternatives with Sue Okerstrom

"Protecting Northeastern Minnesota: Iron Taconite Mining Impacts, Copper Sulfide Mining Threats, and Sustainable Alternatives"

Part 1 The current state with Taconite Iron mining (magnetite Fe3O4 ) - The sulfate effluent from the waste rock in tailings ponds runs into the BWCA, Voyager National Park, and Lake Superior watersheds and to the oceans beyond. This part includes water testing from Northern Lakes Scientific Advisory Panel (NLSAP), our grass roots scientist group. Our data is used in the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) data base and has proved impairment of lakes.

Part 2 The difference between Iron Oxide vs Copper & Nickel Sulfide Mining - which is significantly more dangerous as it is not an oxide but a sulfide ore when exposed to water from the water table. The water must be treated and pumped out during the brief 10-20 years of mining and must be treated for thousands of years after the mining ends, as Polymet had acknowledged they would do when the mine was proposed. The mining would be on federal land flowing into pristine waters as noted in part 1.

Part 3 Reclaiming Critical Metals from Electronic Waste (e-waste) and other sources. Sue will discuss alternate ways to fulfill the need for copper via reclaiming it from electronic waste or polluted areas by various methods including possible use of biomimicry.

Sue Okerstrom is a scientist and biomimicry researcher in Minnesota. Having grown up in a mining family, she worked in the iron mines so she could earn her BS in Environmental Studies. She is now the founder of Lichen Labs with an MS in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Minnesota and an MS in Biomimicry from Arizona State.

Sue has been gathering data with other scientists that predicts serious contamination from a PolyMet copper sulfide mine that has been proposed for Minnesota. The Land of A Thousand Lakes unfortunately will easily distribute this contamination thoughout the water table, into the Great Lakes and the St Louis River. The effects would be long term and devastating.

However, research in biomimicry and reclaimation present new possibilities for gathering copper. Sue will discuss potential methods, learned from and in collaboration with plants, to extract copper from water as well as methods for reclamation of used copper.

We encourage any researchers, environmentalists, journalists, community members, representatives, fishers, hunters, hikers, birders, or even industrialists to attend and learn more about this new research.