The Apple called Sulfide Ore


In a contentious situation it is sometimes helpful to put oneself in the other’s shoes…look at the matter from your opponents’ perspective. Let’s do so.

The State of Michigan offered Industry the “opportunity” or “right”(1) to purchase a lease in order to search for “valuable” minerals. With this “lease” was implied the right to potentially “extract” and thereby purchase (possess) those minerals should they find them. Industry goes ahead and purchases the leases and the state uses (spends) the proceeds to buy lands and other things of its choosing.

Well, lo and behold, industry finally discovers something to mine after years of testing and exploration. Now it actually wants to mine that “something” --- to actually outright do it.

All of a sudden the State sees or realizes that it does not have laws to regulate how industry is to mine that “something”.

It’s rather like selling rights to a potential apple sitting on a sumptuous table on the mistaken assumption that the buyer will never demand the ultimate right to eat it. Therefore no provision was made for the situation of consumption. Oh sure, the buyer may look at his apple on the table, but cannot move it or touch it or eat it. But, maybe he may touch(2) it, but surely he may not move it, and definitely not eat it.

Well, the purchase of a apple makes no sense to industry unless they can actually eat the apple should it be possible. They think that when you buy something you have the right to take it away and do what you want with it, especially a nice juicy apple. (Slave Story)

Should the seller try to prevent this eating because of a short-sighted lack of rules governing the messy eating process or whatever, it is called a “taking” and industry must be compensated(3) . And this compensation may involve a lot of money. Such is the perspective of the mining industry as far as sulfide ore (the apple) is concerned.

One might ask, why would the State sell something without having a plan to deal with an outcome they well knew could come to pass? You see, it’s been known by some for a long time that sulfide minerals are in the Upper Peninsula. Why would the State put itself in this financial trap? Didn’t it know what it was doing? Was the Sate just stupid? Was it unaware? Well, it sold the apple, does it have to take the consequences(4)? Maybe it was all a set-up.

The State falls back on “damage control.” State, Industry, and Environmentalists decide to write a law in order to “control” the eating of the apple, ie., the mining effort. Now, remember this is because the State is supposedly back-pedaling and trying to save face because it sold something with no law to control it (5). Sort of like allowing the possibility of a huge fire with no provisions for a fire department.


So now you see the perspective of the State --- which is the core of the blessed problem and a big Big mess (6).

Continuing: let’s ignore whether the State does or does not have the right to sell the apple. Let’s just blindly accept that the State has already done so, and observe instead how it behaves regarding its supposed ownership rights and responsibilities over this resource.

Let’s take a glass of liquid and place it right next to the apple on the table and sell both at the same time(7). We’ll assume that the State in its wisdom actually intended to sell the liquid and the apple simultaneously(8). But further, let’s be clear about this liquid—it’s not a harmless glass of water(9). . It’s a glass of sulfuric acid, also known as battery acid.

The deal is whoever buys the apple also has to take responsibility and possession of the glass of acid. This may be in their lease and all and every ramification of it. This is really logical from the perspective that the juicy apple on the Yellow Dog Plains is surrounded by water…… which is ground water and rain water, which turns into battery acid (in time (10) )“in all cases” (so far).

One might now think that the apple sold by the State might not be such a good deal because the battery acid comes along with the sale --- and such a conclusion, by most forms of reasoning--- makes sense.

Next, picture me setting here, walking away with my apple, eating it, with battery acid in my back pocket. But it’s funny; I cannot put the battery acid I just purchased in my back pocket---it eats away the paper sack or cheap (11) container I just put it in. It becomes an issue of where to put it. Plus, I couldn’t even get it all in my container, because I couldn’t possibly handle the volume of it. So, I left it, yet I was supposed to take it. But truly, what happens to the acid is: I end up spilling a lot of it all over that sumptuous table. You may as well imagine that sumptuous table is the Yellow Dog Plains, including people, plants and animals, and fresh clean pure water.

An example is:
If a person were to truly throw battery acid on a crowd of people the police would arrest that person, and the people would sue him for the rest of his life, and take everything he had, and some of their lives would be partially destroyed and the acid-thrower would go to jail. Some victims would have blisters, some might get blinded. I suppose it depends on how much damage was done. The acid–thrower’s reputation would be finished, at any rate. Who in their right mind would do this.

Yet Industry will do this the equivalent of this when the battery acid ends up damaging the sumptuous table known as the Yellow Dog Plains, as well as other places.

Well, I’m not through with this analogy. I am about to get to my point.

Let’s say I did indeed throw battery acid on a crowd. Wouldn’t you think the people in the front would take the brunt of the throw… of acid. 10 or 20 people blind and blistered and lives destroyed. They might not be dead, but they are pretty bad off. The rest of the crowd are fine.

And the rest of that crowd VOTES (as in a democracy) and they say --- we have to sacrifice a few lives in order for the greater good of the whole. So, since you are not hit with the acid, you are OK, and since the majority of you are OK, we’ll let this continue, because we voted…remember. …. We live in a society that uses metals, and we need economic prosperity so we just have to sacrifice a little.

Actually, essentially this is what Lyn Boyde, spokeswoman for Governor Granham expressed to me at the rules meeting. The people of Michigan want this, she says.

I say they do not. The State however, does appear to want it.




1. Lease rights. This considers its own perspective only, historically. This is very complex and the DEQ ignores other perspectives. The ignoring bothers me too.
2. There are issues with exploration and what “testing” does to the environment. MUCC presented a paper to address this issue but it was outright rejected.
3. Taking, compensation, Sleeping Bear Dunes, stroy according to legislator 80 million.
4. Rather be sued by environmentalists then Industry.
5. Some say CCI was the cause of no law, being curious
6. Here this mess looms as to whether the State even has or had the right to sell the apple.. But rest assured --- it is a mess, and a very valid concept. It has to do with abandonment, court cases old and new, and situations that are ignored, especially during rules meetings, etc. (a man tried to bring it up but Hal and company did not want to talk about it)
7. (we had it bad enough why add water)
8. (this was talked about at rules meeting in a strange way)
9. but it could set a precedent for water being sold from the Great Lakes)
10. it would be fun to discuss studies of what rates others have turned into pollution and have research reported to this rules group. Yet they just pass on to another subject. Here the concept is lack of experts.
11. Cheap. This is one of the big issues. Industry just does not want to spend money, just enough to get by.