jsonline: Gov. Scott Walker said Friday that the door was still open for a proposed iron mine in northern Wisconsin.
In March, legislation to streamline mine permitting ...failed in the Senate. Soon afterward, Gogebic Taconite President Bill Williams said the company was leaving the state.
Big mining didn’t get their way, and they stomped off. Awww.
"They're frustrated," Walker said of the company. "But I think they're still interested.”
In a state that depends on our clean streams and lakes for
tourism, and healthy drinking water for the Midwest, Walker never saw anything wrong with the failed mining
regulation:
Walker said he believed the mine legislation failed because of recall-driven politics.
Because that's the prism through which Walker sees everything.
In an interview, Tim Sullivan, the former Bucyrus International CEO who now heads the state's business development, said he has been working to gather mining industry and conservation experts from around the world to meet and finds ways to strike a balance. By design, he said, no politicians are involved. "Politics should never trump jobs," Sullivan said. The experts will evaluate what kinds of rules and regulations are in place for mines around the world … also planned to evaluate what the rules are for mines in neighboring states.
That sounds reasonable; a whole bunch of corporate mining executives and special interest scientists getting together to save the environment:
The bill that failed, Sullivan said, placed too many environmental restrictions. "It would have made it impossible to mine," Sullivan said. "We have to come up with something that makes sense."I think I know where this is going, again.
I think Walker is trying to compensate for the damage his "Divide and conquer" remarks about unions may have caused with the Operating Engineers and Iron Workers.
ReplyDeleteTwirl a nice shiny object like the iron mine and hope they forget what he said.