WaterLegacy
Founded: 2009
Mission: Water Legacy is a grassroots citizens’ group, with leadership in Northern Minnesota and in the Twin Cities area, formed in response to the threat of the first sulfide mine proposed in the State of Minnesota. Their goals are 1) to protect and enhance Minnesota's precious freshwater resources and 2) to ensure effective public participation in government and regulatory processes that impact the quality of fresh water and the health of communities dependent on that water.
Duluth, MN
Leadership
Board President: Diadra Decker
Counsel for WaterLegacy: Paula Maccabee, Esq., Just Change Law.
Both WaterLegacy’s Board and Advisory Committee include seasoned activists and scientific experts. Their diverse experience includes service on environmental nonprofit boards, as nonprofit spokespersons and tribal liaisons, and in business, organic farming, grassroots organizing, biology, mining regulation, wetland management, air quality, resource-protection, state agency pollution permitting and waste management, food safety, aquatic ecosystems, forestry, and wildlife.
Counsel for WaterLegacy: Paula Maccabee, Esq., Just Change Law.
Both WaterLegacy’s Board and Advisory Committee include seasoned activists and scientific experts. Their diverse experience includes service on environmental nonprofit boards, as nonprofit spokespersons and tribal liaisons, and in business, organic farming, grassroots organizing, biology, mining regulation, wetland management, air quality, resource-protection, state agency pollution permitting and waste management, food safety, aquatic ecosystems, forestry, and wildlife.
Innovative Approach
Problem
Proposed mining of nonferrous metals in northern Minnesota, including in the watershed of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, poses environmental concerns. When exposed to air, sulfuric ores and wastes leech toxic pollutants like acid and metals, which can contaminate water sources permanently. In addition, the St. Louis River watershed, largest U.S. contributor to Lake Superior, already damaged by decades of mining wastes, is impaired for mercury and has lost much of its wild rice. The big lake is important to the fishing and tourism industries and the U.S./Canada Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.
Innovation / New Solution
WaterLegacy conducts non-partisan legal and technical research about sulfide mining, engages in regulatory processes, and provides training to grass-roots activists. The organization also collaborates with and shares its work with citizens, tribes, and with other non-profits. WaterLegacy recruits citizen experts and coaches citizen participation and self-advocacy in regulatory and environmental review and permitting. The organization works with federal and state agency staff to prevent the weakening of environmental standards and to ensure that the mining industry cannot circumvent requirements of Minnesota and federal statutes and rules.Impact
WaterLegacy is one of the most vocal opponents of the proposed PolyMet copper-nickel mine in northern Minnesota. The organization submitted more than a hundred pages of detailed comments on the proposed environmental impact statement (EIS) and worked with tribal staff to publicize the fact that the U.S. EPA had given a failing grade to the PolyMet draft EIS. In addition, WaterLegacy discovered that Polymet may lack the financial resources needed to protect taxpayers from bearing environmental clean-up costs after the mine closes. WaterLegacy’s report, PolyMet & Glencore: An Overview was featured by the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune in an article that focused on the risks of copper mining.
Wild rice art in Minnesota: manhole cover
photo by Tom Magliery
WaterLegacy is also working to defend Minnesota’s water quality standard for sulfate concentrations in waters where wild rice, the state grain, is produced. Elevated sulfate levels and fluctuating water levels from mine discharges have been identified as major causes of methyl mercury contamination of fish, which along with wild rice, is an important subsistence food for native and non-native ricers, fishers, and hunters in the treaty territories of northern Minnesota. The wild rice standard has not been strictly enforced and it is currently under attack by industry in rulemaking, the Legislature, and state court. A weakened standard could pave the way for sulfide mining in the region.. For more information, see WaterLegacy’s issue brief to Preserve Wild Rice Standards.
WaterLegacy’s efforts are beginning to pay off – for the first time in Minnesota history, the permit for U.S. Steel’s Keetac mine expansion requires compliance with the wild rice water quality standard.
Natural Wild Rice Stand in Minnesota
photo by Eli Sagor
Comments
Expert Comments
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They focus on an important niche that is not as strong in the rest of the environmental community - legal advocacy and legal expertise on mining permitting issues. They also have a (small, but growing) membership in important northern communities of the state and a relationship to some of the Tribal voices in Minnesota.
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They are aggressively working to stop the development of sulfide mining in our state through legal and regulatory channels.
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WaterLegacy is a grassroots citizens’ group organized to protect and enhance Minnesota's precious freshwater resource and to ensure effective public participation in government and regulatory process that impact the quality of fresh water and the health of communities dependent on that water. They have done critical work trying to combat powerful mining interests in our state that would like to introduce sulfide-mining. Sulfide mining is the number one cause of industrial pollution on land in the United States.
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This group has been able to make a lot of noise on certain issues (especially mining) and provides a "left flank" that, in my opinion, is often helpful because it moves what is viewed as moderate in the direction of more progressive/protective. They are not known, however, to play nice with others, and divisiveness and fracture within the environmental community is easily and often exploited by our opponents. This really hampers the effectiveness of this group in reaching the overall goal of environmental protection.
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They are a very focused organization concentrating on a very timely issue. They have been able to educate many people in a short period of time.
From the Nonprofit
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Nov 03, 2011 |
WaterLegacy appreciates the honor of being selected #1 “Most Promising Minnesota Start-up Nonprofit”. Minnesota has a unique opportunity now to prevent the pervasive damage to water resources everywhere else it has been allowed. We are here to help hold the line on mining pollution of our most precious natural resource -- our Minnesota lakes, streams and groundwater, the Boundary Waters Wilderness, and Lake Superior.
As a volunteer-based organization, we apply every dollar we receive to protecting clean water. We welcome support from all who are concerned about protecting our water resources and the communities (human and ecological) sustained by clean water. |
Key Endorsements
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From Nancy Schuldt, Water Projects Coordinator
Environmental Program
Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa
“We are seriously concerned about permanent loss and degradation of trust resources within the Ceded Territory, and about significant water quality impacts as far downstream [from the PolyMet site] on the St. Louis River as the Fond du Lac Reservation.
”WaterLegacy and counsel, Paula Maccabee, are playing an important supportive role in protecting the water resources and health of the community. … She has decades of experience as an environmental lawyer, and we are glad to have this added resource for the cause of protecting clean water in Minnesota. …
“Ms. Maccabee and WaterLegacy board members have actively researched key issues related to the review and permitting of mines, both ferrous and sulfide, in northeastern Minnesota, and have engaged in letter-writing campaigns and provided detailed testimony at public hearings whenever there are opportunities to provide input to these processes. …
“They have ‘watch-dogged’ the state’s water quality standards triennial review process for any proposed changes to criteria that would protect culturally-important resources and human health. …
“Ms. Maccabee also understands environmental justice and encourages a wide range of citizens and agencies to recognize this principle. WaterLegacy has developed a track record of effective advocacy. We would like to have WaterLegacy and Paula Maccabee as partners over the long term to prevent pollution and loss of cultural resources from the PolyMet project. I am pleased to support WaterLegacy in their efforts to obtain additional financial support.”
- From Leonard Anderson, B.S in Biology and M.S in Ecology.
“I’ve been involved in supporting public participation in environmental review of the PolyMet mining project for several years, working with other citizen experts to prepare detailed comments. I have agreed to serve on WaterLegacy’s Advisory Committee because WaterLegacy has played a positive role in sharing expertise and information, while helping me, other environmentalists, and our tribal neighbors at Fond du Lac in advocating to government agencies.
“A substantial element in WaterLegacy’s contribution to the protection of water quality in my area has been the extraordinary legal talent of WaterLegacy’s lawyer, Paula Maccabee. WaterLegacy has initiated sign-on letters drafted by Paula, protected access to public participation in the decision making process and highlighted key areas where the PolyMet mining project would harm the environment. WaterLegacy and Paula played a key collaborative role in workshops I initiated to help citizens prepare substantive comments on the PolyMet project.
“Paula is able to work with experts, including former agency staff and citizen scientists to facilitate high quality comments on the PolyMet DEIS. She has supported comments from others and shared legal research as well as preparing excellent work product on mercury regulation. Capable of enormous volumes of work, Paula has become conversant with the highly technical EIS documentation and has researched regulatory requirements that apply to protect the environment.
“WaterLegacy has also been energetically supporting citizen participation around the state. Thus, I wholeheartedly support the efforts of WaterLegacy to secure funds to maintain their legal advocacy and organizing efforts.” - From Leonard Anderson, B.S in Biology and M.S in Ecology.