Maine DEP posts mining rules' draft on its website
The Maine Department of Environmental Protection has posted on its website a 78-page draft of new rules that would overhaul the state’s 20-year-old mining regulations. The posting is intended to give stakeholders time to review the proposal – which potentially could impact the proposed development of a copper-zinc mine on Aroostook County’s Bald Mountain – prior to a public hearing the Board of Environmental Protection plans to hold this fall.
The date for that hearing has not been set.
The final rules would then go to the State House for a vote when lawmakers reconvene early next year for the second session of the 126th Legislature. Enactment faces a statutory deadline of July 1, 2014.
According to a release posted on the DEP’s website, the updated regulations “will put in place a framework for the recovery of minerals in a responsible, respectful way that keeps Maine’s air, land and water clean. Among the areas to be addressed are ground and surface water protection, the management of waste rock and the inclusion of financial assurance mechanisms that will guarantee any proposed mining operation provides financially for adequate long-term closure and remediation.”
The draft of the new rules was prepared by North Jackson Co., an environmental science and engineering firm based in Michigan, which subcontracted with the Maine-based S.W. Cole Engineering Inc. to provide geotechnical engineering consulting services.
The Portland Press Herald reported today that at least two environmental groups – the Natural Resources Council of Maine and Restore: The North Woods – have concerns the proposed rules would gut the state’s current mining regulations. "I think we are headed in a direction that makes safe mining in Maine much less likely," the NRCM’s Nick Bennett told the paper. "The draft rules ... are being changed to make life easier for the mining industry – pure and simple."
Last December, the NRCM on its website criticized the selection of North Jackson, citing that company's long-standing links to large-scale mining operations.
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