copper in god’s land:
how local opposition stopped a mining goliath in Northern Wisconsin
photos and words By Julius Shieh for wisconsin watch
For Jill Hunger, the secluded beauty of Oneida County is unlike any other.
Since moving to rural Minocqua several years ago, she’s put the county’s well-preserved natural resources to good use, enjoying everything from forested camping excursions to canoeing trips down the Tomahawk River. That environment brings her more than joy. – a visit to the Northwoods, she said, can “restore your soul.”
“It’s God’s land, it really is,” Hunger said.
The region’s scenery, carved by glaciers thousands of years ago, has attracted residents and tourists alike. In the neighboring town of Lynne, the Willow Flowage, a lake designated by the DNR as an “Outstanding Resource Water,” boasts several thousand acres of freshwater.
But in recent decades, another prehistoric feature has attracted corporate mining interests. A mineral deposit containing nearly 5.61 million tons of zinc, copper, lead and gold, lying dormant beneath the eskers and wetlands of the Willow Flowage, has stoked ire between local residents and multinational corporations.
The sulfide deposit, if mined, faces a dire track record of environmental damage and local harm. Nearly every existing sulfide mine has resulted in significant water pollution due to a failure to capture and control mining waste. The Lynne site, which sits directly atop groundwater, could pose a significant threat to local drinking water in addition to endangering the adjacent Willow Flowage.
Oneida County has wavered on the topic of mining since interests first grew in the late 1980s. Local activists thought the issue was buried after voters in the majority-Republican county overwhelmingly rejected mining proposals in 2018, but by 2024, some members of the Oneida County Board began to entertain mining interests once again.
Jill Hunger, a Minocqua resident, holds up a protest sign during an Oneida County Board meeting in Rhinelander, WI on the morning of August 20, 2024, where dozens speaking in opposition to a motion that would allow the county to entertain unsolicited requests for mining.
Early on a Tuesday morning in late August, Hunger joined dozens of fellow residents at the Oneida County Courthouse in Rhinelander, a nearly forty minute drive away from the proposed mining site in Lynne, to speak out against mining.
Cars spilled out of the building’s two small parking lots, overwhelming the surrounding streets, while inside, in a wood-paneled conference room on the Courthouse’s second floor, a crowd of residents gathered for public comment at the Oneida County Board’s monthly meeting.
Scott Kirby, the first to speak against the resolution, said that he was concerned with mining’s environmental impacts, and that its reappearance in the County Board was a sign that the Board wasn’t respecting voters’ decision in the 2018 referendum vote.
“I’m just a little perplexed as to why we’re here again this morning, talking about this issue,” Kirby said. “You can’t eat your money. You can’t drink poisoned water.”
As audience members applauded Kirby’s comment, County Board Chair Scott Holewinski spoke into the microphone.
“No more clapping, booing,” Holewinski said. “That’s not allowed at a county board meeting.”
Hunger spoke against mining as well, holding up an anti-mining yard sign from 2018 as she stood to address the County Board.
“Here we are again in 2024,” she said. “The voters, the people who own that land, told you no. Why are we here?”
The town of Lynne isn’t hard to miss.
Nestled in Oneida County’s westernmost edge, the small town of 138 occupies a secluded region north of U.S. 8 where highways and street signs gradually give way to a sprawl of old-growth forestry, lakes and streams.
Karl Fate, a longtime Oneida County resident and environmental activist, said that mining in a place like Lynne wouldn’t just be a hazard – it would be nearly impossible.
Rowing through the gears on his five-speed Ford Focus, Fate completed the 40 minute drive to the Lynne site by memory, parking near an inconspicuous forested area on the shoulder of Willow Road. No paved road directly accesses the deposit site – the last leg of the trip requires a trek through an unpaved snowmobile and ATV trail, traversing across various streams and wetlands that flood seasonally.
“The Lynne deposit was discovered 34 years ago, and there has not been a mine there. It’s not a mystery why,” Fate said.
According to Fate, the infrastructure costs alone would be substantial, especially considering how little they may be used by ordinary residents. Lynne’s rural roads and unpaved paths, as they currently exist, would be unusable for industrial interests.
“You can imagine having ore trucks going back and forth on this road,” Fate said. “That’s just crazy.”
Local environmentalist Karl A. Fate leans on a cedar stake labeled "LYN 90-19" on the location of a proposed mining site in Lynne, WI on Aug. 20, 2024. The stake, one of several hundred, marks a drilling hole dug by the Noranda Corporation while conducting exploratory mining between 1990 and 1991.
Approaching the site, another problem quickly becomes apparent.
Lying just 3000 feet away from the Willow Flowage, much of the Lynne site lies level to or just inches above the area’s groundwater.
“When you’re standing out there your ankle is in the surface water, and your foot is in the groundwater,” Fate said.
According to Calvin DeWitt, an environmental studies professor at UW Madison, mining in such an area would guarantee damage to surrounding water resources.
“The threat to groundwater, the threat to drinking water, is a very serious one… mining can absolutely disrupt this entire system.” DeWitt said.
Left: A posted sign near the Willow Flowage in Lynne, WI mentions maximum daily catch limits and minimum size restrictions for fishing Muskellunge. Right: The rushing waters of the Willow Flowage, denoted as an "Outstanding Resource Water" by the DNR, crash over a rocky area in Lynne, WI under one mile away from a proposed mining site.
Early proposals to mine the Lynne site intended to construct an open-pit sulfide mine.
But sulfide mines across the country have proven to be nearly universally dangerous. In 2006, Arizona’s Sierrita Mine polluted local drinking water to a level nearly 10 times that of the EPA’s unenforced secondary maximum contaminant level guideline for sulfates, and in 2012, the state’s Morenci mine had faced fines of nearly $7 million for “Injuries to Natural Resources” due to mining activities.
These existing mines are scattered across the West and Southwest in arid, desert-like climates. But Oneida County, meanwhile, is overwhelmed with water. The county names 428 lakes within its boundaries, while an additional 701 unnamed lakes contribute to an abundant total of 1,129 lakes. Oneida’s eight rivers are joined by a dense network of streams, altogether covering 10 percent of the county’s total area.
Wetter regions, research warns, increase mining’s existing environmental threats. A 2012 report of U.S. copper porphyry mines conducted by Earthworks concluded that “mines with high acid generating potential and in close proximity to surface and groundwater are at highest risk for water quality impacts.”
The Lynne site, if mined, would meet this dangerous criteria. Nearly 80 percent of the county land originally leased to Noranda is either inundated with groundwater or lies less than two feet above it, according to a Wisconsin Watch analysis of soil survey data from the Department of Agriculture.
“It’s a foolish bargain to go for gold and lose your water,” DeWitt said.
Karl Fate steps through wetlands at the proposed Lynne mining site, sinking into ankle-height groundwater with each step. According to data from the Department of Agriculture, groundwater reaches the surface at 39.9% of the Lynne site's area, while another 38.5% of the site's area sits between 0-24 inches above the water table.
Pushing aside a shoulder-height growth of twigs and brush, Fate walked towards a steep and narrow esker at the edge of a trail running through the Lynne site. The esker, formed millions of years ago by the gravelly debris of receding glaciers, now stood as a furrowing interruption amongst the numerous ponds and streams of the surrounding wetland.
Over the crest of the esker, hidden among unkempt growths of wildflowers and reeds, stands a narrow cedar stake labeled LYN 90-19. The stake, one of 134, marks the presence of an exploratory drilling hole excavated in 1990 and 1991 by now-defunct Noranda, a Canadian mining company.
“They drilled, then they’d move over about 150 feet and drill again towards the South,” Fate said, pointing out over the boggy expanse. “It looks almost like a checkerboard when it’s all plotted out.”
Maps published by the Noranda Corporation plot exploratory drilling holes at the Lynne, WI site. Over a hundred sites across the county-owned site were drilled between 1990 and 1991.
Noranda’s death knell arrived just months later, as the company closed its offices in nearby Rhinelander and announced its plans to leave the state.
In 1993, the company officially withdrew interest in developing the site, later abandoning its drill holes in 1997 after refusing to renew the plot’s lease.
Interest in the site renewed once again when exploration and development mining company Tamerlane Ventures petitioned the County Board to open up the Lynne site to mining development in 2009.
Citing a 1987 resolution that first enabled the county to lease land to Noranda, the County Board initially moved to support mining in the wake of Tamerlane’s efforts, but public opposition soon grew. In 2012, the County Board voted through a change to zoning policies that would allow exploratory mining activity on “Forestry 1-A” zones, a significant change from previous zoning practices that had restricted mining to industrial zones. Afterwards, county residents flooded multiple board meetings until the County Board later voted against the pro-mining Resolution 59-2012, effectively ending mining plans at the time.
But after 2017’s passage of pro-mining Act 134, an effort led by then-State Senator Tom Tiffany, the County Board revived talks of mining again. Act 134, which Tiffany called “the toughest mining law in the United States,” repealed Wisconsin’s stricter “Prove it First” mining moratorium, which required mining companies to provide an example of a safely operated and closed mine that had not polluted the environment before being allowed to mine in the state.
In opposition, 10 town boards across the county signed a statement calling for a repeal of Act 134, advocating for the return of the stricter previous mining moratorium law.
A year later, in a move parroted by pro-mining board members such as Scott Holewinski who pushed Tamerlane’s efforts just a few years prior, the Oneida County Board elected to put the Lynne site’s fate to a county-wide referendum.
Eric Rempala, a member of Oneida County Clean Waters Action, recalled that the County expended significant efforts to try and win a majority pro-mining vote . The referendum question itself asked residents to consider whether or not they’d support mining if the county was “performing their due diligence,” and despite the mining site most immediately affecting Lynne, voters across the county were asked to weigh in.
“They thought they were going to win,” Rempala said
Despite this, the mining referendum was defeated soundly. Countywide, a sizable majority of 62% of voters rejected mining. In the town of Lynne, all but one registered voter cast a ballot, voting against mining by an overwhelming 88%.
Even in Lynne’s neighboring Little Rice, a town where pro-mining Tom Tiffany served as town supervisor from 2009 to 2013, over 74.8 percent of voters said no to the mining question.
But despite continued public outcry against mining, County Board members voted the next year to turn down a resolution that would ban mining on county-owned public lands, rejecting a proposal that would have reflected the anti-mining sentiment expressed by voters in 2018’s non-binding referendum.
For Rempala, this all but confirmed the County Board’s pro-mining intentions – thanks to intensive organizing, voters had triumphed against mining interests so far, but their elected representatives seemed to keep attempting to force the issue through.
“I think that’s what frustrates voters most. It’s that we said no. We want (the board) to say no,” Rempala said.
To date, Noranda’s exploratory drilling still marks the closest the Lynne site has ever been to a mine.
Beginning as early as the 1970s, Exxon and Kerr-McGee remotely conducted surveys around Lynne and the Willow Flowage, detecting the mineral deposit through water sediment samples and airborne electromagnetic surveys. Since the county-owned lands were not available for leasing at the time, neither company pursued the Lynne site further, and both eventually left Wisconsin altogether.
By 1989, Oneida County put up the land for lease, opening the door for exploratory mining. In a closed-bid auction, Noranda won the 2400 acre lease and proceeded to drill into the site’s bedrock, revealing the extent of Lynne’s 5.61 million ton mineral deposit.
Noranda submitted a mining proposal to the DNR in February of 1992, suggesting a nearly 65 acre wide open pit mine on the rural site. Tailings, the company said, would be dumped on-site in a lakebed.
But by July that same year, a DNR report of the site found numerous environmental concerns. The site’s bogs and streams, zoned at the time as a protected wetland, forbade industrial development. Noranda’s proposed lakebed tailings dump site appeared dry at some times of the year, but during Wisconsin’s rainy spring and summer, the area would surely flood.
The three-story Oneida County Courthouse stands in downtown Rhinelander, WI on the morning of August 20, 2024.
By early 2024, after several years without a passing mention at the Oneida County Board, the mining question seemed to reside firmly in the county’s past.
After abandoning its drilling holes and its lease in Lynne, Noranda was absorbed in a series of mergers and acquisitions, eventually losing its name and becoming a sliver of Swiss multinational giant Glencore in 2013, and in 2014, just a few short years after leaving Wisconsin, Tamerlane had declared bankruptcy.
Neither lasted long enough to see the repeal of the state’s toughest mining regulations or voters’ subsequent rejection of mining in the county. But unbeknownst to residents, after years of silence on the issue, mining would soon creep its way back into the County’s plans.
On June 15, a set of unexpected messages reached the email inboxes of Board Supervisor Bob Almekinder and Board Chair Scott Holewinski, later reaching County Board Vice Chair Russ Fisher as well. The board members were contacted repeatedly through a variety of methods, receiving several phone calls and certified letters.
The sender, Valhalla Metals, was interested in the Lynne Deposit.
Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, identified in the email as Chairman of Valhalla Metals, said that the company hoped to “lease the Lynn (sic) massive sulfide project to explore and potentially develop to produce critical and strategic metals.”
Valhalla Metals is what Rempala would call a “junior mining company.” Not large enough to swallow the expenses that an operating mine would entail, Valhalla instead is “engaged in the business of mineral exploration and development,” according to a statement on their website. After accessing land and mineral exploration rights, they propose these sites to larger companies who would then mine the area.
Valhalla later contacted County Board Vice Chair Russ Fisher as well. Van Nieuwenhuyse and Valhalla could not be reached for comment.
Holewinski and Fisher, however, were also engaged in a second discussion of mining the Lynne site.
According to a handwritten note acquired through public record, Holewinski recalled by memory that he had spoken with Kyle Christianson, chief lobbyist with the Wisconsin Counties Association (WCA), about mining at the Lynne deposit.
As early as June 17, Holewinski and Christianson had been in talks regarding “where Oneida County stands with (the) Lynne Deposit.” Holewinski recalled that the WCA was working with a mining company to “get the best deal” for counties.
By early July, Holewisnki and Christianson discussed organizing a time to meet with the WCA in Madison “to discuss potential mining at the Lynne deposit.” Holewinski then involved Almekinder and Fisher in plans to join the meeting.
On Aug. 12, Holewinski drove to Madison to meet with the WCA. Fisher met him here, and Almekinder did not attend the meeting. Holewinski recounted that Stephen Donohue, director of Greenlight Metals, a separate mining company, attended the meeting as well.
According to Holewinski, he and Fisher discussed the Lynne deposit and Oneida County’s mining ordinances during the meeting with Donohue, and the group also spoke about the resolution that Holewinski would later bring to the Aug. 20th County Board meeting.
Oneida County Board Chari Scott Holewinski addresses a crowd of over 50 community members during an Oneida County Board meeting in Rhinelander, WI on the morning of August 20, 2024. Dozens spoke in opposition to Resolution 75-2024, which if passed, would allow the county to entertain unsolicited requests for mining.
Resolution 75-2024, which Holewinski later claimed he wrote “with no input from anybody else,” was submitted to the Oneida County Clerk on July 24.
County residents, however, would not hear about the resolution, which proposed to allow the Board to “entertain any unsolicited inquiries for exploration, prospecting, bulk sampling and mining operations on County owned land,” until just days before the Aug. 20 meeting. News of the resolution’s appearance quickly spread to posts on Reddit and Facebook calling for residents to email and speak in opposition to mining.
By the morning of the board meeting, tensions had grown to a boiling point. Before the meeting even began, 200 emails had already been sent to the county regarding the mining resolution. Of these, 199 were in opposition to mining, and one was in favor.
Residents crowded the County Courthouse, filling every seat in the Board’s meeting room and spilling into an overflow conference room down the hallway.
Oneida County resident and Democrat candidate for Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District Kyle Kilbourn spoke as well, criticizing the Board’s attempt to bring up mining.
“In 2018, both Democrats and Republicans said no to a similar (mining) proposal,” Kilbourn said. “This resolution… puts our greatest assets at risk.”
Kilbourn, who lost a campaign against pro-mining Republican Tom Tiffany, disapproved of the resolution, warning that its passage and the introduction of mining could threaten the County’s bustling tourist economy.
“People value clean air, clean water and a healthy environment. It’s why we live in Northern Wisconsin,” Kilbourn said. “I truly hope you’ll respect the voice of the people here today.”
Lynne Town Chair Jeff Viegut also spoke against the resolution.
“Just a reminder,” Viegut said. “Back in 2018, not only did the township of Lynne not want this mine, the people of Oneida County didn’t want it.”
Celeste Hockings, Natural Resource Director for the Lac de Flambeau tribe, read a statement on behalf of tribal president John Johnson in opposition to mining plans.
“The new proposed resolution… is particularly alarming and disregards the will of the residents of Oneida County, including the Lac du Flambeau Tribe,” the statement said. “The Lac du Flambeau Tribe stands firm in opposition to exploring metallic mining prospects within Oneida County and Ceded Territory.”
A Tribal Resolution titled “Opposition to Oneida County Mining Activities” reified this position, also citing the possibility for mining to infringe upon treaty rights to hunting and fishing alongside historical concerns in the town of Lynne “related to grave sites, historic fishing activities, and past residential communities to name a few.”
But during August’s board meeting, Holewinski said that the resolution he penned was “not about approving mining. It’s (about) having a direction for somebody to go to with a committee that’s capable of researching (mining).”
“I was trying to be transparent and not make a decision on my own and let this current county board make a decision who should be in charge of these unsolicited requests,” Holewinski said.
Other members of the board, however, did not agree.
District 4 Supervisor Steven Schrier was skeptical of Holewinski’s claim of transparency.
“It appears that it took you almost two months to come to the conclusion that you needed to include others in your decision making process,” Schrier said. “You’ve already engaged in discussions with at least one mining company.”
According to Schrier, board members apart from Holewinski, Fisher and Almekinder were not made aware of the talks of mining or the resolution. “You ran it by only two other members of this body,” Schrier said. “And we’re supposed to respect this process?”
“I don’t think anyone here approved of you interacting with anyone, in any capacity, with mining interests,” Schrier said. “I think it’s highly unprofessional for all those involved.”
The Board, however, would end up siding with public opinion, voting 13-6 in opposition. Immediately afterwards, scattered sighs and applause rose throughout the audience at the meeting. With the conclusion of the vote, several dozen stood up and left.
“I’m sure Holowinski was not happy with the outcome,” Fate said.
According to Fate, the simple truth behind environmentalism’s strength in largely Republican Oneida County is that the issue became universal.
“It was never a partisan thing,” Fate said. “It’s about our water. It’s not a political party thing. Nobody wants their water messed with.”