Tag Archives: transparency

Another FOIA Lawsuit? I’m Not Sure

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The latest from the Department of State on my outstanding FOIA requests. I’ve written back asking for clarification on an incorrect case control number used here and in previous correspondence.

Way back in October of 2018, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the US Department of State concerning an April 2017 meeting at the US embassy in Chile between Ivan Arriagada, CEO of Antofagasta plc, and Carol Z. Perez, who was then US ambassador to Chile. About a month later, I followed up with a second request for embassy communications regarding Trump’s nomination of Andrew Gellert to be ambassador to Chile.

These documents could help highlight the use of the US embassy in Santiago as a business backchannel for Antofagasta’s Twin Metals project in northeastern Minnesota, and perhaps shed some light on the Trump administration’s (botched) effort to appoint a close Kushner family business associate to be Perez’s successor. With Kushner’s $2 billion deal with the Saudis and the financing of the 666 Fifth Avenue deal under scrutiny, these records might also shed some light on the grey area where Kushner operated, mixing financial and other emoluments with Trump administration policy.

Over four years later, those FOIA requests are still outstanding. After a long delay, several blown deadlines, a denial of my request for expedited processing, then a denial of my appeal of that decision, the Department of State now tells me that I should expect a response to the October 2018 request by November 20, 2023. The November 2018 request is now expected to be completed by May 31, 2024. State complains of a FOIA backlog and setbacks due to the COIVD-19 pandemic, but it’s hard to square those complaints with any reasonable interpretation of the FOIA statute, which stipulates that records will be made “promptly available.” And, of course, these soft deadlines are likely to change again.

A lot has changed in the years since I made these two requests, and with the Republicans now taking the gavel in the House, a lot more changes are coming. The Biden administration restored the status quo ante when it issued a legal opinion saying that Antofagasta’s mineral leases near the Boundary Waters had been improperly renewed; the Forest Service completed the withdrawal study that Sonny Perdue, Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture, abruptly canceled due to political pressure; and the Bureau of Land Management proceeded with the Rainy River Withdrawal.

As Antofagasta and its Twin Metals subsidiary contest these actions in a yet another lawsuit against the federal government, the mining company has stepped up lobbying efforts.

Republicans now say the administration’s actions leave the US vulnerable and over-reliant on supply chains controlled by China. They say the Twin Metals project and other sulfide mining projects in the Lake Superior region will provide American jobs and help prevent human rights abuses abroad.

It’s clear the Twin Metals project will remain a national political flash point in the 118th Congress and in the 2024 election. But so much has changed over the past few years that it’s hard to say whether the records I’m asking for will be of anything more than limited historical interest. What might they contribute to the larger story I am trying to bring into focus, or the current public debate?

That’s weighing on my decision whether to write another complaint, pay the $400 filing fee, and try to force the State Department’s hand. Any case filed in US District Court now would probably take at least until summer or fall to produce responsive records, at which point the State Department promises, sort of, to have its act together. Or they could just put me off again.

Some Misgivings about the End of Section 206

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2023 could see the end of Section 206, the New York LLC publication requirement. I have supported its repeal ever since I first came up against it, and I still support it, despite some misgivings. The legislation currently on the table does little to quell them.

Currently, New York Limited Liability Company law requires newly formed LLCs and LLPs to publish a notice for six successive weeks in two newspapers designated by the county clerk, “one newspaper to be printed weekly and one newspaper to be printed daily.” At the end of that period, founders have 120 days to file an affidavit of publication (and pay a $50 filing fee). Costs can run into the thousands of dollars, since local newspapers where the notices are printed — and they must be printed — effectively have a monopoly.

This part of the 1994 LLC law reads like an artifact from a bygone, pre-internet era, and it no doubt helped prop up struggling local newspapers financially even as the internet hastened their demise. It has also given rise to a professional services cottage industry.

Legislation to repeal Section 206 has been making its way at a slow crawl through the New York Senate and the Assembly since 2008. It was last referred to the Committee on Corporations, Authorities, and Commissions in January, 2022. In March of this year, the New York Bar Association came out in support of repeal. In November, the bill’s sponsors, Liz Kreuger in the Senate and Rebecca Seawright in the Assembly, both won re-election. So prospects for a repeal in the next legislative session look favorable.

The proposed amendments would not only repeal the publication requirement, but also establish something called the Department of State modernization fund. Notices would be published in an online database maintained by the Department of State; associated filing fees would go toward “the modernization and security of the Department of State’s public-facing website, and for developing alternatives to physical publication of documents.” The bill’s sponsors say it will “remove onerous and unnecessary requirements on LLCs and partnerships forming in New York state” and that online filings “will improve a citizen’s access to this information.”

The Bar Association rightly observes that LLC and LLP filing notices running in local newspapers are generally ignored. Publication costs are high; the current requirement “serves no legitimate business or economic purpose,” they write; and it creates an unjustifiable disparity, since New York corporations are not subject to the same requirement as LLCs. These are all good points, as almost anyone who has contended with the publication requirement will tell you, and 97 percent of the lawyers surveyed by the Bar Association agree.

In addition, eliminating the publication requirement will benefit the State of New York in several ways. It will likely increase business activity in New York, which will benefit the Department of State’s revenues. More companies forming and locating within the State would similarly benefit New York’s economy. As a result, this bill will likely lead to higher employment and greater tax revenue in New York. More companies with offices in New York will employ more New Yorkers, resulting in increased tax revenue to the State.

Here is where my misgivings start to kick in. It’s hard to say how “likely” any of this really is. The publication requirement is an inconvenience and a burden, but how many companies have really been deterred from forming and locating in New York because of it? When it comes to choosing between New York and Delaware, how much does Section 206 factor into the decision? Delaware LLCs and LLPs that do business in New York still have to register to do business here, pay an annual filing fee, and comply with New York tax laws. Could the repeal make New York the new Delaware? Unlikely: Delaware will still enjoy institutional advantages (namely, the Court of Chancery) and a reputation, deserved or not, as the best place to form a business and raise capital.

Maybe Delaware sets the bar too high. Will the repeal significantly increase business activity and contribute to higher employment and greater tax revenues? Look at the trend line on this US Census Bureau graph. Is the repeal of Section 206 the thing to keep it moving north? Will the upward trend accelerate once the legislation passes?

Time will tell, and some measure of skepticism seems warranted. What’s more, the repeal could have adverse consequences as well as benefits. What happens to the small, local print publications that have been practically subsidized since 1994 by LLC listings? Those local newspapers may not matter so much in New York City, where we have several daily newspapers (but I’m not sure that argument can stand much scrutiny), and protecting New York City publishers’ Section 206 interests may be outweighed by the economic benefits anticipated from the repeal. But what about in more rural counties?

Do printed daily and weekly newspapers still serve rural, or, for that matter, urban communities in other ways? Let me overdramatize just to drive the point home:

No surprise that local print publications failed to catch this brazen fraud.* It’s the rare local newspaper that can support investigative journalism or take on a newly elected member of Congress; and a Section 206 zombie newspaper probably isn’t going to be up to the job anyway. Subsidizing publishers on the back of new businesses, which is essentially what 206 does, is not the same thing as supporting local journalism. Still, it would be good to know or at least see some public discussion of what these print publications contribute to their communities before they try to set up entirely online or just fail; it would be even better to see some legislative efforts to keep local journalism alive. The LLC publication requirement cottage industry will likely disappear, too. I have more trouble shedding a tear for its demise.

Another set of questions concerns the modernization fund, its reach and its governance.

The legislation places the fund under the custody of the State Comptroller and specifies that “on the warrant of the State Comptroller” the moneys in the fund will be paid to cover modernization and security upgrades to the DOS website and development of digital alternatives to the current publication system. Moneys in this fund are “to be kept separately and not to be commingled with other moneys” in the Comptroller’s custody.

But what falls under the fuzzy heading of “modernization”? What does the firewall between modernization and other Department of State projects look like, and how will it be maintained by successive Comptrollers? Is modernization a project without end, lasting as long as the filing fees keep adding to the coffers? At bottom, my concern is that the modernization fund could, over time, turn into a consulting industry slush fund.

If it becomes law in the next legislative session, the repeal of Section 206 could do all that it promises to do: relieve founders and partnerships of a costly, bothersome requirement, improve public access to corporate records, and even deliver some limited economic benefits. It could also undermine or fail to serve the public interest in other, unanticipated ways.

*Update, 23 December: It turns out a local newspaper, The North Shore Leader, was wise to Santos’ fraud months ago. And the Leader is among the newspapers designated for publication of legal notices by the Nassau County Clerk.

This Twitter thread is also worth reading:

How did the DFC Handle Human Rights Concerns about Alto Maipo? A FOIA Request

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An aerial view of the Alto Maipo Hydroelectric Project

Before the Trump years, few Americans had heard of Chilean mining giant Antofagasta plc or the powerful Luksic family who control it. Today, Antofagasta’s controversial plan to mine copper and nickel on the edge of the Boundary Waters and the scandals associated with it are not exactly common knowledge, but at least better known. Congressional hearings, activism, and investigative reporting helped bring the previous administration’s reckless, clumsy, and corrupt handling of Antofagasta’s permits into focus. (Maybe some of the records I obtained through the Freedom of Information Act helped, too.) But despite steps taken by the Biden administration to set right some of what the Trump administration did wrong in this case, the Antofagasta file is far from closed. The lobbying for reversals and permits continues apace* and important aspects of the story are still obscure.

A FOIA request I made on June 3, 2021 promises to shed some light on one aspect of the story, maybe nothing more than a minor detail, involving the Development Finance Corporation. The first set of records arrived last Friday. Nothing much so far, just some innocuous looking office email correspondence, but I’ve posted the records on documentcloud and will continue to put them up as they arrive. Here, I just want to set these records in context.

The story takes us back to 2013, the first year of Obama’s second term. That’s when Twin Metals Minnesota filed its mineral lease renewal application at the center of the current Boundary Waters controversy, and it’s also when the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, or OPIC, made a $250 million investment in the Alto Maipo Hydroelectric Project in Chile. At the time, the Luksic Group, owners of Antofagasta plc, held a 40 percent share in the mega-project.

This looks like nothing more than a coincidence. Antofagasta would not formally acquire Twin Metals until 2015; and the company would decide to get out of Alto Maipo in 2016 (though it took until 2020 to divest fully from the project). At most, the OPIC deal might have helped persuade Antofagasta that the Obama administration would look favorably on its North American plans.

In 2018, the Development Finance Corporation, or DFC, took over the OPIC portfolio of projects, investments that aim to alleviate poverty, combat corruption, and promote sustainable as well as low-carbon and no-carbon development. DFC also shares OPIC’s stated commitment to “respect the environment, human rights, and workers rights.” Its Environmental and Social Policy and Procedures document, produced in July 2020, shows remarkably little sign of the crude transactionalism that dominated foreign affairs, including foreign aid and investment, during the Trump administration.

Just one month later, on August 18, 2020, DFC’s statements of principle would be put to the test. The DFC was informed of serious human rights challenges at Alto Maipo Hydroelectric Project. Five UN Special Rapporteurs on Human Rights sent a five page letter to Adam Boehler, Jared Kushner’s friend and college roommate and the Trump-appointed CEO of the Development Finance Corporation, warning of possible human rights violations at Alto Maipo.

The letter is included as an Annex in written comments for the June 9, 2021 meeting of the DFC.

The UN Rapporteurs express concern that the Alto Maipo project hoards water for mining interests, hurts local communities, and is proceeding without adequate concern for human rights and the environment. The letter says the mega-project would reduce “the availability of water for human consumption and domestic use, in contexts already characterized by climate change and water scarcity.” The shortages could also affect subsistence agriculture, “resulting in violations of the right to food and other rights related to the right to an adequate standard of living.” The project appears to be proceeding without participation of the affected communities and with significant damage to biodiversity and the environment, and “multiple human rights violations” are likely to result.

Unable to find Boehler’s response to these claims, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request for “all DFC communications regarding the 18 August 2020 letter from UN Special Rapporteurs to DFC CEO Adam Boehler regarding the Alto Maipo Hydroelectric Project in Chile, including any and all communications to or from Mr. Boehler about the topic.” The few records included in the first FOIA production do not include anything from Boehler; they are a small set of emails to and from Catherine Andrade, DFC Corporate Secretary, in preparation for the June 9, 2021 DFC Board Public Hearing.

Alto Maipo was on the agenda for the day, as it was again at this year’s meeting. Groups that have monitored human rights and environmental issues around Alto Maipo were slated to participate: Juan Pablo Orrego, president of the organization Ecosistemas, and Carla Garcia Zendejas from the Center for International Environmental Law were among the presenters. Observers included representatives of BNP Paribas, Oxfam, US Small Business Administration, Accountability Council, and the Wildlife Conservation Society.

All indications are that this was a meeting Boehler’s DFC wasn’t especially eager to have. In April 2020, the DFC declared itself exempt from the Sunshine Act, which requires federal agencies to open meetings for public observation.

In response, the Center for Biological Diversity and other plaintiffs sued:

They say the rule change means that [DFC] no longer faces any obligation to provide communities with information that could later impact their environments and livelihoods.

The Center for International Environmental Law, a co-plaintiff on the suit, spent years working with communities affected by the Alto Maipo Hydroelectric Project, which Chilean activists argue would threaten the drinking supply of more than 6 million people in the Santiago Metropolitan Region. The OPIC granted $250 million in funding to the project in 2013.

“For many years, we worked to hold OPIC…accountable,” Carla Garcia Zendejas, the organization’s director of people, land and resources, said in an email, “ensuring that communities affected by the institution were able to secure access to information regarding the institution’s decision-making processes and to utilize the accountability mechanism when adversely affected….

Garcia Zendejas emphasized that the DFC’s new exemption “had very practical implications for communities on the ground who are seeking information about the projects that could upend their lives.”

Bill Snape, Senior Counsel of the Center for Biological Diversity, added that he could see little reason for the agency to try to exempt itself from the Sunshine Act, “unless you have things to hide.” The plaintiffs did not prevail, however, and in February of this year, Judge Christopher Cooper granted DFC’s motion to dismiss, writing that the Sunshine Act does not apply to the DFC. For now, at least, FOIA does.

* I looked at Q2 2022 lobbying for the Twin Metals project here:

Boundary Waters FOIA on Fox 9 “Investigators”

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In this July 29th Fox 9 “Investigators” segment about sulfide mining near the Boundary Waters, I make a brief appearance at around the 7:30 mark.

Read more about the Boundary Waters reversal here.

David Bernhardt’s Briefings on the Boundary Waters Reversal

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bernhardttwinmetals4oct2017.pngIt appears the FOIA department of the Solicitor’s Office at the Department of Interior has gone quiet on me, and has made it a practice if not a policy no longer to reply to emails or return phone calls about the status of my outstanding FOIA request. I should not like to think that they are giving me the cold shoulder because I published the first two batches of documents they produced, or that they are deliberately withholding or delaying the release of more documents. But with each passing day it’s getting harder to avoid a conclusion along those lines.

While trying to figure out if I’ve constructively exhausted administrative remedies pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(6)(C)(i), which would give me grounds for a legal complaint, I thought I would look at the calendar entries recently posted online by the Department of the Interior for David Bernhardt, and see what I could learn about the role he played in the Boundary Waters reversal.

Before his nomination to be Secretary of the Interior (which the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee just advanced), Bernhardt served as Deputy Secretary of the Interior under Ryan Zinke. Before that, he was the head of the energy, environment and resources division at the lobbying firm Brownstein, Hyatt, et al; he represented many oil, gas and mining companies, and it remains unclear whether, or to what extent, he has severed ties with former private sector clients.

Bernhardt has balked at the requirement that he keep an official calendar, which would at least allow the American public to see who he’s been meeting with. The closest we have are typed agendas or “daily cards,” which list appointments and calls. The agenda items offer little detail, rarely specifying the subject of a meeting. This looks like more than just laziness or negligence. Bernhardt seems to believe the rules do not or should not apply to him, and he appears to be contemptuous of administrative process, norms, and law.

Much the same can be said for the PDF of Bernhardt’s calendar entries the Department of Interior released. There was no attempt to fill or even call out gaps in the record. Pages and entries are out of chronological order, November mixed with September, 2017 with 2018. Adding to the confusion, the PDF is not searchable; it is simply an image of the daily cards. Fortunately, my friend Michael Miles was able to perform a little software magic, and — voila! — we now have a searchable version of the 439 pages of daily cards that Interior produced. It’s online here.

We knew before this that Bernhardt was scheduled to be briefed on the Twin Metals matter sometime in August of 2017. As the timeline indicates, on Sunday, August 6th, Associate Solicitor Karen Hawbecker forwarded a briefing paper to her colleague Jack Haugrud “about the Twin Metals litigation in preparation for a briefing with David Bernhardt.” This was probably some version of the one page briefing that Kathleen Benedetto had prepared for Ryan Zinke back in April of 2017, and which had been adapted and forwarded to the US Embassy in Santiago, Chile at around the same time, in preparation for meetings with Antofagasta’s CEO, Ivan Arriagada. Bernhardt’s briefing would have reflected the progress that the Solicitor’s office had made since that time on the effort to reverse Solicitor Tompkins’ 2016 M-Opinion, following Seth Waxman’s blueprint.

It’s difficult to say whether this August briefing ever took place. Bernhardt’s daily cards show a meeting with Kathleen Benedetto on August 28th, 2017; and Benedetto at the time was carrying the Twin Metals brief. So perhaps that’s it. The daily cards also help us establish a little context for Bernhardt’s August briefing. We can see from his calendar that Bernhardt was in constant and regular contact with Michael J. Catanzaro, who was Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Energy and Environmental Policy before leaving in April, 2018. Bernahrdt and Catanzaro have a weekly call; sometimes they have lunch together. No surprise, as the two men come from the same world of lobbying for oil, gas, and mining interests; but what’s interesting about their regular contact is that it establishes a clear line of communication between the White House, or the Executive Office of the President, where Catanzaro served, and the highest levels of the Department of the Interior.

The revolving door puts one powerful lobbyist in the White House and another at Interior, and the two of them get together regularly, no doubt to discuss a shared agenda.

About a week before Bernhardt met with Benedetto, on August 22nd, 2017, Catanzaro meets to discuss the “Minnesota Project” with Principal Deputy Solicitor Daniel Jorjani. Joining them to discuss the reversal is Stephen Vaden, an attorney from USDA. Two days after that, August 24th*, Bernhardt along with other high level Department of Interior officials hosts the CEO Critical Minerals Roundtable, with the CEOs of 16 mining companies. I’m unable to determine who those 16 CEOs were, but minutes from the annual meeting of the Women’s Mining Coalition on September 1, 2017, tell us that Pershing Gold was among the invitees, and the focus of the roundtable was “how to remove barriers to critical minerals, concerted focus at high level to improve permitting conditions.” Was anyone there to talk about removing barriers to mine the Duluth Complex? The CEO of Twin Metals? Polymet? Antofagasta? Glencore? I’ll do a little more poking around to see if I can find out who the CEO attendees were, and if I can’t come up with anything, I suppose I’ll have to file yet another FOIA request.**

Among the documents already produced by Interior, the earliest reference I’ve found to the Twin Metals matter is a February 2, 2017 Information/Briefing Memorandum [page 4390] prepared by Kristin Ball, Acting Director of the Bureau of Land Management, for Katherine MacGregor, who at that time was Assistant Secretary of Land and Minerals Management. (Michael Nedd’s February 7th, 2017 email has been superseded in this regard; and it makes sense that the initiative appears to have come from MacGregor, not from Nedd. The timeline now reflects MacGregor’s role as prime mover.) In her memo, Ball notes that in the Superior National Forest area proposed for withdrawal, there are deposits of “Copper, nickel, palladium, platinum, gold, and silver” and adds, “Deposits contain critical minerals, due to technological applications.” This early memo establishes a theme that will run through Bernhardt’s arrival at Interior and culminate in the December 19, 2017 release of a new list of critical minerals by the United States Geological Service. That comes just three days before the Jorjani M-Opinion is made public. As I noted in an earlier post, emails show political appointee Gary Lawkowski recommending the Office of the Solicitor spin its December 22nd release with talking points about critical minerals.

Bernhardt was next briefed on the Boundary Waters reversal on October 4, 2017.*** His daily cards show the meeting at 11AM on that day. It was timely. Just one day before, Bernhardt spoke with Representative Tom Emmer, the Minnesota Republican who, along with Rick Nolan and Arizona’s Paul Gosar, has been working steadily to open the Duluth Complex to mining. This phone call now appears on the Twin Metals timeline. What Emmer and Bernhardt discussed is not specified. Gareth Rees was in the meeting, but the 10:30AM call with Emmer does not appear on his calendar [page 192], which on that day starts at 1PM. Curious that he should have omitted or forgotten to note this call with a member of Congress and the Deputy Secretary.

In any case, Bernhardt comes off that call with Emmer on Tuesday and into his Wednesday briefing equipped with three background documents: the widely circulated one page briefing and scenarios papers prepared back in April, and a July 24 BLM paper on the withdrawal. Correspondence shows that Bernhardt asks to see the 1966 and 2004 leases, along with the M-Opinion prepared by Solicitor Tompkins. It’s clear from Karen Hawbecker’s response that the focus of the discussion at this juncture are the renewal terms in the 1966 leases. Hawbecker directs him to them: Section 5, page 8.

HawbeckertoBernhardt4Oct17

Why this focus? Section 5 will be critical to a legal argument Jorjani ultimately makes in his memo, which is that according to the 1966 leases, production — actually getting a mining operation up and running — is not a precondition for renewal: “the commencement of production is…not a condition precedent to the right to a renewal.” This is another argument Jorjani borrows from Antofagasta’s lawyer Seth Waxman; and for Waxman, reading a production requirement into the 1966 leases counts as one of the “overarching errors” in Solicitor Tompkin’s M-Opinion. “Section 5 instead creates a production incentive” (cf. Jorjani page 6). As Representative Alan Lowenthal pointed out in a congressional hearing back in March, this argument may be ingenious, but it flies directly in the face of a 1966 BLM press release specifying a production requirement for renewal.

Regardless, by autumn of 2017, David Bernhardt had been briefed on the Waxman-Jorjani legal strategy. He had coordinated with Catanzaro and the White House and with Republican political operatives. He had hosted mining company CEOs behind closed doors to discuss the disposition of America’s public lands. He was fully on board.

*Bernhardt’s daily cards date this roundtable August 23rd, 2017. But Katharine MacGregor’s calendar (page 24) shows the event on the 24th, and a walk through or rehearsal of the event on the 23rd. I am inclined to trust MacGregor’s calendar over Bernhardt’s sloppily compiled cards. It is entered correctly on another Bernhardt calendar for August, 2017. Why the discrepancy?

**UPDATE, September 5, 2019: Though I have not yet received a response to my April FOIA requests regarding the CEO Critical Minerals Roundtable, another request has turned up a list of attendees. Lydia Dennett’s excellent investigation of the CEO Roundtable for the Project on Government Oversight drew my attention to it. Here is the list of attendees, as of August 18, 2017:
CriticalMineralsRoundtable20190827
***UPDATE, April 21, 2020. Those first items on Bernhardt’s October 4, 2017 calendar — departure for Trump Hotel, remarks at NMA Board of Directors Meeting — are the subject of an October 5, 2017 report in the Washington Post. On the same day he received his scheduled briefing, Bernhardt opened the National Mining Association Board of Directors meeting at Trump International Hotel. After suing under FOIA, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington obtained a copy of Bernhardt’s remarks. He praised the Trump Hotel, promised that he and Zinke would be “relentless in trying to minimize regulatory and permitting uncertainty,” and criticized “proposed withdrawals” by the Obama administration: “nothing short of uninformed, arbitrary, and frankly senseless. They might have made great press, but to do so they had to ignore the facts of their own experts in the record.” According to the Post report, “Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross headlined a general session,” and “in the afternoon, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta spoke with NMA members during a lunch.” CREW notes that Energy Secretary Rick Perry attended as well. A footnote in Andrea Bernstein’s American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power pointed me to the article.

Update, 11 May 2020. Today in response to a FOIA request filed on April 15, 2019, I received a list of the Interior Department attendees at the August 2017 CEO Critical Minerals Roundtable. (The names of corporate attendees had already been released; see the Sept. 5 update to this post.)

2017CEOCriticalMineralsRoundT
Note especially the participation of Murray Hitzman, who would resign in protest along with Larry Meinert after Ryan Zinke pressured them to share sensitive information about energy potential within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska prior to official publication. Hitzman is the distinguished scientist at the Roundtable. His resignation serves as a reminder of just how politicized and how disrespectful of scientific authority Interior has become under the current administration.

Update 18 May 2020. The indefatigable Jimmy Tobias has obtained yet another list of CEO attendees at the Critical Minerals Roundtable. This adds a few new names to the list: Niocorp Developments; Doyon, Ltd; and Rare Earth Resources. Tobias Critical Minerals

Read other posts about the Boundary Waters reversal here. 

Three Questions for the Michigan DEQ on the Back Forty Project

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Earlier this month, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality announced its intention to permit the Back Forty Project, an open-pit gold and zinc sulfide ore mine that Aquila Resources, a Canadian company, plans to develop near the headwaters of the Menominee River. In response to the MDEQ’s request for public comment by November 3rd, I’ve submitted these three questions. I’m posting them here so that others might consider them in the run up to the public meeting with the MDEQ in Stephenson, Michigan on October 6th.

  1. In determining that the Back Forty Project application meets the requirements for approval under Part 632, did MDEQ take into account the cumulative effects of sulfide mining throughout the Lake Superior watershed? We know that the Back Forty project poses a significant risk to the Menominee River all by itself. With the mine in close proximity to the river, a flood, berm collapse, subsidence or a slide could destroy the Menominee River; to answer these serious concerns by asking the company to add a “synthetic, manmade liner under their waste/tailing rock facility,” as the DEQ has proposed, is to trivialize them. Other development that the mine will inevitably bring, including haul routes, power lines, lights, fueling stations, exhaust and machine noise, will leave a large industrial footprint and disturb the Menominee River and its environs in countless ways. At the same time, this mine will heighten the risk, in the long term, of large-scale environmental destruction posed by the resurgence of sulfide mining not just in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, but in Minnesota and Canada as well — all around the lake and throughout the Lake Superior watershed. Has the DEQ completed or participated with neighboring state agencies and tribal authorities in a scientific study of the cumulative impacts of sulfide mining around Lake Superior? Has the DEQ issued guidance on how cumulative environmental effects should factor into its decision-making process for permitting new mines in Michigan?

  2. Has MDEQ made any determination about the human rights implications of its decision to allow the Back Forty project to go forward? Human rights are not outside the DEQ’s bailiwick, no matter how hard it may try to exempt itself. Witness Flint. In the present case, the DEQ’s oversight is inextricably bound up with the state’s obligation to protect human rights abuses by third parties. Aquila’s Back Forty project is sure to disturb, and likely to desecrate, lands traditionally belonging to the Menominee and still held sacred by them; and making provisions for archaeological recovery and preservation of mounds and other sacred sites does not adequately address the basic human rights issues involved here. The headwaters of the Menominee River are central to the tribe’s creation story, marking the place where the Menominee people originated. Their very name derives from manoomin, or wild rice, which will not survive changes in sulfate levels or degradation of overall water quality. As tribal member Guy Reiter has said, “It’s no different than if an open-pit sulfide mine was put in Bethlehem for the Christians.” Seen from this perspective, the Back Forty is not only an affront to Menominee history; it also puts the cultural survival of the Menominee people at risk. How will the DEQ factor such human rights considerations into its decision-making process?

  3. What has the DEQ done to restore trust in its authority, and reassure the Menominee and people living downstream from the Back Forty project in Michigan and Wisconsin that it will exercise appropriate care? The Flint water crisis cast a long shadow, and reinforced the perception that “politics and poverty are big factors” in DEQ decision making. “The same attitude of disregard for citizens and the environment has repeated itself in DEQ decisions across our state for well over a decade,” said Marquette attorney Michelle Halley after news of the Flint water crisis broke; controversy over the renewed Groundwater Discharge Permit issued by MDEQ at Eagle Mine and legitimate concerns about lax oversight at Eagle East help make her case. Like all government agencies, the Michigan DEQ should operate in sunlight. Already, however, troubling questions have been raised about the transparency of the Back Forty permitting process. For example, Al Gedicks, Executive Secretary of the Wisconsin Resources Protection Council, asks why the DEQ appears to be in a “rush” to grant the Back Forty permit. So as things now stand, the DEQ enjoys de jure authority in Michigan under Part 632, but it is unclear whether the DEQ still enjoys de facto authority, which could only derive from demonstrations of regulatory competence. How does MDEQ intend to quell public concern that it is compromised or incompetent, and reassure the public that it is a responsible steward?

A Letter to Karen Maidlow, Michigan DNR

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Karen Maidlow, Property Analyst, Minerals Management
Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR)
P.O. Box 30452
Lansing, MI 48909

Dear Karen Maidlow,

This letter is with regard to land owned by the State of Michigan on the Yellow Dog Plains and next to the Yellow Dog River in Michigamme Township, Marquette County (40 acres, NE1/4 SE1/4, Sec.13, T50N, R29W).

As you know, in a 2003 review, this 40-acre parcel was designated “non-development” by former Fisheries Chief Kelley Smith. Fisheries biologist George Madison, who works out of the Baraga office of the DNR, reversed Smith only this year. It is unclear why, and I urge you to look thoroughly into the matter as part of your review and clarify for the public whether and on what grounds the DNR thinks Fisheries’ reversal of its position on this parcel should stand.

Madison himself says that he was unable to tell why Smith had placed the non-development restriction on the parcel in the first place.

For some reason Kelley Smith (former Fisheries Chief) had placed a non-development restriction recommendation on this parcel during an 8-21-2003 review. Indeed while there is no water or aquatic resources on this parcel, with care and respect for the 2003 review I carried Mr.Smith’s recommendations forward in case there was an element of uniqueness to this parcel that we are not aware of.

For this 8-12-2014 review, I have changed Fisheries Division’s recommendation to “development” with no restrictions.

What reason did Kelley Smith have for restricting development on the parcel? Madison cannot say, and in May of this year Forestry Supervisor Jeff Stampfly admitted he, too, was “at a loss” when it came to accounting for Smith’s review. But then they both recommend its reversal.  Both Stampfly and Madison seem to suggest that Smith was simply mistaken, or at least they see his 2003 review as problematic. What exactly did Smith say? Isn’t it possible that Smith discerned some “element of uniqueness” here that Madison and Stampfly are unable to appreciate? The prudent thing would be to find out.

To that end, the DNR should publish Smith’s August 2003 review — undertaken before the mining boom had really gotten underway — and take what Smith says there under advisement. To help clarify things, Smith himself (now in retirement) should be interviewed about the parcel and what, if anything, makes it unique or deserving of non-development status, and his statement entered into the public record. If Smith and Madison still disagree on the status of this parcel, then that disagreement should be aired publicly and accounted for in whatever report you file. The public deserves this measure of transparency.

For his part, Madison could state more clearly why he reversed Smith in this 2014 review and did not do so previously. Why proceed with “care and respect” for Smith’s review, then suddenly change course after Lundin Mining shows interest in the parcel? Madison seems to be arguing in his comment that Fisheries should place no restrictions on the parcel because he can identify “no water or aquatic resources” directly on the parcel; this seems to be Stampfly’s position as well. But the Yellow Dog River is only a few hundred feet away from the boundary of the proposed site. Maybe, for Smith, that proximity was enough.

As Smith may have known, there are a number of ways in which industrial development on this parcel might seriously compromise the Yellow Dog River. Groundwater flow in the glacial aquifer underlying the Yellow Dog Plains would make it difficult to limit water contamination from drilling to the parcel itself. Even a well-run drilling operation will see lapses: Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve has “photo documentation of ripped sump pit liners, drill bit wash basins that are overflowing, and broken fences” from the exploratory drilling done for the Eagle Mine. Exploratory drilling is also bound to require some roadwork and other infrastructure build-up on the Yellow Dog Plains, and it will increase traffic to and from the parcel. That, too, puts the Yellow Dog River at risk.

YellowDogRupture

Roadside mitigation efforts in October of this year. The Eagle Mine haul route has already put the Yellow Dog watershed at risk and contaminated the Salmon Trout River.

As you are no doubt aware, just this past summer, a road crew working on the Eagle Mine haul route ruptured a perched groundwater seep, dumping sediment and releasing turbid water into the Salmon Trout River, in violation of the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act. Mining’s risks never end at the mine’s gate.

In closing, I urge you to take your time looking into the confusion over Smith’s 2003 review and all other questions and comments you receive regarding this parcel. One newspaper account I read has you saying that you intend to finish your analysis by January, having received written comments from the public only a month before that. Wouldn’t it be better to allow time for follow-up interviews or requests for further information? I trust that you and the DNR do not want to give the impression that this request for public comment is merely pro forma, and want to do the right thing by the public you serve.

Sincerely,

Louis V. Galdieri

Dennett on Sunlight

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Here’s my transcript of what I consider one of the more striking moments in the conversation with Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett moderated by Alex de Waal at the “Unlearning Violence” conference held at Tufts’ Fletcher School in February. (A video of the discussion in its entirety follows.) Daniel Dennett is speaking:

Something’s happened, which is absolutely unprecedented in the history of civilization, which is a major — I think a major change. And yes it’s the internet and electronic communication. But what it has done, it has rendered the epistemological atmosphere in which we live transparent in a way it never was before.

There’s a lovely book — speculative book by Andrew Parker, a zoologist in Oxford, who [in In The Blink Of An Eye: How Vision Sparked The Big Bang Of Evolution], argues, very plausibly, that the cause of the great Cambrian explosion, this huge outpouring of new life, that the trigger for that was the transparency, the sudden, relatively sudden growing transparency of the oceans and the air, making sunlight available and making vision possible for the first time. And it was the immediate evolution of eyes which changed everything, because now predator could see prey, prey could see predator, and if you didn’t have eyes you were sunk. And this set off a five million year arms race of sort of guerilla warfare enhancements, defense and offense, and that’s what created all the remarkably different body types and behavioral types and defense types that mark this great explosion.

Well, he may or may not be right about that, I — I — it’s one of those evolutionary ideas that I am very fond of but I haven’t committed to it because it hasn’t been shown yet. But it’s a plausible and pretty well researched theory. Whether he’s right or wrong, I think something exactly like that has happened now.

All the institutions in human culture, not just religions but armies, governments, banks, relig- uh, corporations, clubs — they have all evolved in a relatively murky epistemological atmosphere where people could be relatively ignorant of things at a distance around the world and even about a lot of their own, the features of their own organizations. And organizations evolved to exploit that ignorance, cause it was — you could rely on it. That ignorance is evaporating at a colossal rate, and we see it, we see it in Edward Snowden. We see it where the security experts are now saying there’s no such thing as a firewall, um, because people, you have to rely on people’s fidelity, because people’s fidelity is infinitely malleable by memes, by all of the information that is floating around in the internet.

Religions: what this new transparency does is, it renders knowledge not just widespread but mutual: it’s not just that everybody knows that p, it’s that everybody knows that everybody knows that p.

Fifty years ago, I’m sure, there were millions of Catholics that knew of a priest who had molested some boys. Millions of them. But nobody knew there were millions of them. Now, millions of Catholics know that millions of Catholics know. And that changes everything. Now, you have a Bishop giving a press conference where he makes a big point of saying you’ll note how I never, whenever there’s a young boy around I’ll always have my hands in front of me. Can you imagine a bishop of the church saying anything like that fifty years ago?

This is an awkward and gauche and ineffective response to the new transparency. Well I think that in itself is going to force every institution in the world to evolve very quickly or go extinct.

And what that does for violence is — it’s not clear. In some ways it may be a great diminution in violence; on the other hand it may unleash forces that we don’t even imagine yet, and make new inroads into violence more likely.

The Limits of Corporate Benevolence, from Mongolia to Michigan

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The phrase “human rights” is nowhere to be found in the Oyu Tolgoi Investment Agreement, a document [pdf] that will play a critical role in guiding Mongolia’s development over the next decade. The Agreement sets the terms for the $6.2 billion investment in the Oyu Tolgoi gold and copper mining project, which promises to account for no less than one-third of Mongolia’s GDP by the year 2020. Rio Tinto has a 66 percent stake in the project through its subsidiary, Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd; the Mongolian government owns the rest.

Along with the serious environmental concerns cited by the United States when it abstained, in February of this year, from a World Bank investment scheme in Oyu Tolgoi, there are a host of human rights issues to address — from migrancy to land seizures, rights to the scarce water resources of the Gobi desert region, conditions in Ulaanbaatar’s Ger camps, and the survival of Mongolia’s herder communities. (The Bank Information Center provides an overview of these concerns, here and here.) The Investment Agreement briefly addresses some of these points, but it resorts, in all instances, to what I would call the language of corporate benevolence.

So the Investor agrees to abide by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (a voluntary agreement to publish payments made by the Oyu Tolgoi mine to the government); in another place (section 4.13; but cf. also section 4.6) the Investor consents to “build and maintain productive working relationships, based on principles of transparency, accountability, accuracy, trust, respect and mutual interests, with non-governmental organizations, civic groups, civil councils and other stakeholders.” Beyond this, there is not much else to guide or govern the company’s conduct vis a vis civil society and its responsibility to respect human rights.

Given the high stakes, the scale of Oyu Tolgoi and the involvement of the World Bank and IFC in the project, it is surprising the Agreement does not explicitly incorporate — or reference — the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Instead of creating binding agreements or even practical mechanisms to ensure that Oyu Tolgoi and the government of Mongolia meet their respective human rights obligations as the economy accelerates and the social terrain continues to shift, the Investment Agreement relies on the language of corporate social responsibility to smooth things over.

Part of the trouble with CSR isn’t just that it tends to replace binding agreements and articulated responsibilities with vague sentiments, the language of corporate benevolence, and promises of sustainability and shared prosperity. That’s bound to happen when social responsibility meets public relations. A bigger problem is that the commitments companies voluntarily make to contribute to economic development and social progress — and to respect human rights — will last only as long as the business requires them.

For an example of how abruptly a company can ditch stakeholder communities, what happened in Michigan yesterday with another Rio Tinto project may turn out to be more instructive than what’s happening right now in Mongolia. In the face of serious environmental and human rights challenges to its Eagle Mine project over the last several years, Rio Tinto all along touted its good corporate citizenship, promising to “leave more wood on the woodpile” and to take an active hand in the long term, “sustainable development” of the Upper Peninsula. That is just part of “The Way We Work,” as the title of a Rio Tinto CSR publication would have it — or at least it was the Way We Worked. Yesterday, the company announced that it had sold the Eagle Mine project to Toronto-based Lundin Mining for the tidy sum of $325 million cash — part of CEO Sam Walsh’s strategy to divest from “non-core” assets and protect the single-A credit rating the company currently enjoys. A community of stakeholders whose future Rio Tinto promised to make happy, bright and prosperous became, overnight, a disposable asset.

The Social Costs of the Hardware Revolution – A Postscript

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For now, this can be only a short postscript to what I had to say earlier today about the CNN Money article by John Hagel and John Seely-Brown on “the hardware revolution.” It has to do with a question that occurred to me as I read, and to which I don’t yet have anything like an adequate answer. That will take some research. But I at least want to articulate the question.

Startups and smaller companies can now play in the hardware space in part because the barriers to entry have been lowered, Hagel and Seely-Brown observe. There are a number of factors at work here. New and cheaper technologies from 3D printers to more user-friendly software put the design and manufacture of hardware within reach of smaller companies. And “a new class of factories” will produce the smaller orders that new entrants and entrepreneurs typically require:

New infrastructural elements have also helped new hardware products move from the hobbyist’s basement to the startup garage. Before, to get a contract manufacturer’s attention, you had to commit to producing high volumes (say 50,000 or more units). But a new class of factories — mostly in China and Mexico — will manufacture batches as small as 5,000 units. By filling low-volume orders, these factories have filled an important structural hole in the market: They allow entrepreneurs to launch new products for small consumer groups with little investment.

My question is whether conditions and, for that matter, sourcing practices in this new class of factories, and the more fluid hardware market they serve, are not going to be terribly difficult to monitor. We’ve seen how challenging it is even to ensure fair labor practices in large-scale manufacturing facilities in China used by major global technology brands; now, as smaller-scale manufacturing facilities proliferate and Mexico becomes a technology “quicksourcing” destination for American companies, the problem will no doubt be aggravated.

The reasons for this are probably obvious. I would frame the issue in a few ways. First, how much visibility do these smaller players actually have into their supply chains? Second, how much leverage do they actually have with their manufacturers, since they are only placing small orders, and, depending on their success, may or may not be repeat customers? Third, there’s a question about whether these small businesses — the small hardware startups placing orders and, for that matter, the manufacturing facilities taking them — have the capacity to take on the human rights challenges that seem inevitably to accompany outsourcing.

In other words, the social costs of the hardware revolution deserve some careful consideration.