Highland Reveals New Wetlands, Rerouted Streams at Copperwood Mine Site

• Controversial mine will eliminate 61 acres of existing wetlands

• State permit requires replacement with new, man-made wetlands

• Permit allows company to divert existing streams to make room for tailings basin

• Relocated streams must follow natural stream-channel design

• Initial stream relocation and wetlands mitigation work is now complete

The Copperwood mine entrance is a red dirt lane intersecting a county road about 14 road miles north of Wakefield, Michigan.

Right now, it’s easy to miss – but it won’t be if Highland Copper Co., Inc., succeeds in building a large-scale underground copper mine at this location.

Highland has been offering media representatives a guided tour of its early-stage development efforts at the mine site. I was on the Oct. 24 tour, along with a photographer from the ironwood Daily Globe. The company wanted us to see some of its early construction work – a relocated stream bed and a new, man-made wetland – to demonstrate its commitment to environmental stewardship.

Highland has a permit from the state of Michigan to construct 2.5 miles of new stream channel at the project site in the western Upper Peninsula. The new channel diverts existing streams around a 320-acre tailings basin that will be built later if the proposed mine is financed and developed. The relocated stream bed winds around the east, south and west perimeter of the proposed tailings disposal facility.

The so-called “wetlands” permit was issued under Parts 301 and 303 of the Michigan Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act. The permit requires Highland Copper to mitigate the loss of 61 acres of wetlands that have been, or will be, cleared to make way for the mine. 

First Stop: The East Stream

After a safety briefing, Highland staffers drove us through the fading but still vibrant fall colors to our first stop, at the east end of the relocated stream channel.

Here, the new watercourse meanders through a clearing that’s designed to “replicate mother nature” project director Dr. Wynand van Dyk said, incorporating tree plantings, and flood and erosion controls. 

“Each section of this is intricately engineered for everything from hydrology incorporating climate change ideas and the variability of snowfall and rainfall, as well as all the natural features and all the ecological function,” said Copperwood Project Environmental Scientist Jay Roberts.

Animals started using the new habitat as soon as it was established, Roberts said.

“Immediately, when this was created, we saw species like sandpipers. Herons use it a lot. I've seen hawks and falcons hunting here, and this is all just one year, basically, after it was created. So we're immediately seeing all these really interesting natural changes from types of species that weren't necessarily able to use the forested habitat that was here before.”

“So I'm not saying that this is better than forest, or it's a good idea to go change everything everywhere, but it's certainly not to the point where we've destroyed 60 acres of wetland that will never come back. We've recreated a lot of that habitat here.”

“Ecosystems Were Destroyed”

Intense and energetic public opposition to the proposed mine has emerged over the past couple of years. I asked representatives of two opposition groups to comment on Highland Copper’s work at the site so far, and its avowed “commitment to responsible development.”

“This is a topic that really disturbs me,” said Tom Grotewhol of Protect the Porkies in a Nov. 10 email.

“The ‘wetland mitigation’ paradigm takes zero account for the loss of life of organisms in the original wetlands. Ecosystems were destroyed, and with them, literally countless amphibians, reptiles, insects and other lifeforms.”

“Imagine if this same tactic was applied to human civilization: your historic neighborhood will be destroyed with you and your family and neighbors all in your homes – but don't worry, we'll be building some empty cookie-cutter houses a few miles away, which other humans can move into (but not you, of course – you will be dead).”

“This paradigm requires an absolute objectification of nature and an extinguishing of any empathy for other lifeforms.”

In an email response, Highland claimed that its site work created more beneficial  wetlands than it destroyed.

“Only about 7.5 acres of high-quality wetland area” were affected by the site work, company spokesperson Rachel Felice said.

“The area of high-quality wetland on site has essentially doubled” by 20 acres of newly created wetland features, much of which should meet the state’s definition of a “rare or uncommon” habitat, Felice said. “The remainder of [the] impacted acres are shrub thickets, periodically wet mixed-hardwood forest and sedge meadows that are very common across the Upper Peninsula.”

Natural Wetlands Sacrificed Prematurely?

The Copperwood sustainability project cost $15 million, according to a published report. In addition to site work, Highland has set aside 717 acres of natural wetlands as a permanent conservation area about 19 miles south of the proposed mine.

“While it is nice that the mining company is preserving existing wetlands, that along with a few smaller man-made ‘wetlands’ does not nearly make up for the fact that they have irrevocably destroyed over 60 acres of natural wetlands, forever, for a project that only might happen, over the course of a decade or two,” Jane Fitkin of Citizens for a Safe and Clean Lake Superior said in an email. 

“Destroying wetlands before it makes sense to is a form of ecological damage difficult to comprehend; it's torture to entire communities of living things on behalf of a project that might get staged there someday.”

More on that point later. For now, let’s return to the Oct. 24 guided tour.

Wetland Permit Requires Performance Monitoring

At the second stream crossing, about 1.25 miles west of the first spot we visited, van Dyk pointed out monitoring stations in the relocated stream channel that measure water levels and plant growth, as required by the state wetlands permit.

Annual monitoring reports must be filed with the Michigan Dept. of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE), he said, adding that regulators also make site visits to observe conditions first-hand.

“It's not just us saying this,” van Dyk said. “We've got EGLE coming through on a very regular basis, you know, from the wetlands and streams division, from different departments, and they're always welcome to come, and they come and do inspections — inspections on streams, inspections on the wetlands.”

Man-Made Wetland Cells Part of Mitigation Effort

The final tour stop was the Gipsy Creek (official spelling) mitigation area, where Highland Copper has created about 15 acres of new, man-made wetlands to offset impacts elsewhere on the mine site.

The Gipsy Creek mitigation area is north of the primary mining and ore processing location. It  includes both forested and emergent wetlands, in three separate cells. More than 30 native wetland sedges, grasses, rushes, and flowering plants, plus five species of trees were planted to ensure that it would develop into high quality wetland habitat, according to a corporate post on LinkedIn.

“It looks like we just kind of flattened out some ground and let some stuff grow, but it's really not at all what happened,” Roberts said. “This is all highly engineered, built very carefully.”

Responding, Grotewohl decried the loss of naturally occurring wetlands to make way for a project that still is in the planning stage.

“The truly tragic point is that 60-plus acres of wetlands have been destroyed in the name of a project which still lacks almost all of the capital required to reach construction. Highland Copper's most recent financial statement cites around $12 million in capital [now $8.9 million] for a project requiring $450 million. As [Copperwood Environmental Scientist] Jay Roberts stated in the recent PBS Media Meet interview, the company was ‘forced to destroy the wetlands’ in order to comply with permits before their expiration, despite the lack of capital and social license to move forward.”

“Thus, these wetlands—and all the life that existed in and depended upon them—have been destroyed just in case the project actually moves forward. In this case, the main qualm is not with the mining company themselves, but with a broken regulatory framework which allows real-world, irreversible destruction for the sake of purely speculative projects.”

Highland Copper is now working on late-stage mine design, refined cost modeling, and permit optimization for the Copperwood mine. The company expects a “go-no go” decision on financing and construction of the project sometime in 2026.

Part One of a three-part series. Next topic: how safe is the Copperwood tailings dam and waste disposal facility?