A sign urging Oneida County residents to vote no on a 2018 advisory referendum on allowing mining in the Town of Lynne. (Photo courtesy of Jill Hunger)
The Oneida County Board of Supervisors is set to consider a resolution Tuesday that would allow a board committee to hear proposals for metallic mining on county-owned property.
A county forest in the town of Lynne in northern Wisconsin, about 40 miles west of Rhinelander, contains “zinc sulfide ore with significant lead and silver and minor amounts of gold and copper,” according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR). The deposit in the town of less than 200 people was discovered in 1990, containing an estimated 5.6 million tons of recoverable metals.
The potential mining site is less than a mile from the Willow Flowage, a man-made reservoir that has been designated an “outstanding water resource” by the DNR for its high water quality and largely untouched wilderness area. Home to what the state tourism department calls one of the best places in Wisconsin to fish, the reservoir serves as a source of clean water to help dilute pollution further downstream in the Tomahawk and Wisconsin rivers.
“It restores your soul, it’s that kind of an environment,” Oneida County resident and conservation activist Jill Hunger says.
The benefits of mining have long been debated in Lynne and Oneida County, with conservationists raising water quality concerns in a “very wet” part of the state while proponents tout the possible economic windfall. The issue was raised again recently after members of the county board worked with a right-wing anti-conservation organization that has set its sights on the region.
That group, American Stewards of Liberty, is a Texas-based non-profit that has long worked to oppose conservation efforts and federal environmental rules in western states but in recent years has begun to work in Midwestern states including Wisconsin. ASL was heavily involved in influencing opposition by county officials in Forest, Langlade and Oneida counties to the establishment of the Pelican River Forest conservation easement — now the largest conservation project in state history.
During that project, county board members argued that the U.S. Forest Service could not provide funds to assist with conservation without first getting permission from local officials, a legal theory known as “coordination” that experts say holds zero real legal weight.
ASL has also influenced the direction of land use policies in the northeast corner of the state. Oneida County officials, in the midst of a rewrite of the county’s comprehensive plan, have incorporated ASL’s ideology into the document. In a proposed draft of the new plan, board members suggested loosening the limits on mining in the county.
Attempts to mine the Lynne site have been made repeatedly since the deposit’s discovery in 1990, with the topic becoming a matter of contentious local debate, with a majority of residents opposed to mining in the area while local elected officials push forward.
In 2018, voters in the county weighed in on an advisory referendum on the question. In a high turnout election in which 86% of Oneida County registered voters turned out to vote for governor (Scott Walker won the largely Republican county by more than 17%), voters also rejected the idea of mining in their community. More than 60% of Oneida County voters said they didn’t want public lands in Lynne to be leased for mining. The “no” vote won in 18 of the county’s 21 municipalities. In Lynne, which had 85 people turnout to vote in 2018, only 10 voted yes on the referendum.
Nearly a year later, a resolution was proposed at the county board to codify the results of the referendum and explicitly prohibit metallic mining activities on county-owned forest land. That resolution failed to pass in an 11-8 vote.
Now, the county says it has had two companies approach local officials inquiring about obtaining the mining rights for the property in Lynne. A resolution proposed by board chair Scott Holewinski would allow the Forestry, Land and Outdoor Recreation Committee to “entertain any unsolicited inquiries” for mining on county-owned land.
Holewinski, who did not respond to a request for comment, has been central to ASL’s efforts in Oneida County. The Wisconsin Examiner has reported that he was in contact with U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany and ASL’s executive director Margaret Byfield about opposing the Pelican River Forest project and sits on the committee re-writing the county’s comprehensive plan.
But Eric Rempala, a member of local conservation group Oneida County Clean Waters Action, says he believes the resolution is about more than ASL because “mining has long been on some of the county board members’ radar.”
Rempala has complaints about the board ignoring what voters said in 2018 and giving little notice to organize against the proposal. The current resolution was announced on Friday and placed on the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting.
“Obviously we have a big problem with them ignoring a highly participated election … saying they don’t want mining in the town of Lynne,” Rempala says. “To bring it back up on a Friday afternoon, drop it on the agenda for a Tuesday meeting — not too happy about that for sure. It’s been short notice, I know the people I associate with are not happy with it because we’ve been pushing back on mining in Oneida County for a long time due to the water-rich nature of where we live.”
Hunger says opening up the site to mining would harm the Willow reservoir and “contaminate it with sulfuric acid and other dregs from high-sulfite ore mining.” Plus, she says, outside of a few county board members most of the community — which largely depends on tourism to support the local economy — isn’t interested.
“We own that land and don’t want that,” she says. “We have a county board that licks their chops about the concept of mining and won’t let it go … We’ll potentially destroy a $200 million industry here in Oneida. There’s no reason to do it.”
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