Spirited Testimony Expected At Mining Hearing

Spirited testimony is expected at a public hearing today (Thursday) on a Republican bill to end Wisconsin’s mining moratorium. The Senate’s mining panel will hold the proceeding at the high school in Ladysmith — where the state’s last sulfide mine closed in 1997. The moratorium was adopted in ’98, forcing companies to prove that they ran non polluting mines for at least a decade before they can operate in Wisconsin. One of the bill’s co sponsors, Assembly Republican Rob Hutton of Brookfield, says he does not want to bypass anything — but he wants to make a 4-5 year permit process easier to start. Hutton and Senate sponsor Tom Tiffany say it could also bring much needed jobs to the north, but Kerry Schuman of the League of Conservation Voters views the bill with alarm as he calls sulfide mining the most “toxic industry in America.”