Asbestos releases in Silver Bay, Minnesota
Asbestos releases in Silver Bay, Minnesota, stem from the Reserve Mining Company's operations, which began in 1947. The company was permitted to dump mining waste, specifically taconite tailings, directly into Lake Superior, a practice that continued for decades. In 1973, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) discovered high concentrations of asbestos fibers in the drinking water of Duluth, Minnesota, linked to the tailings. While the Reserve Mining Company claimed the fibers were naturally occurring, investigations suggested their waste disposal practices contaminated the lake, affecting local communities dependent on its water. Although initial public concern arose regarding potential health risks associated with ingesting asbestos, subsequent studies failed to establish a serious threat. By the mid-1970s, litigation forced Reserve to cease dumping in the lake and instead manage waste on land. Eventually, the company declared bankruptcy in 1990, but mining operations resumed with a new company utilizing the previously established tailings basin. This situation reflects ongoing tensions between industrial practices and environmental health, highlighting the complex dynamics faced by communities reliant on mining.
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Asbestos releases in Silver Bay, Minnesota
THE EVENT: The dumping of mining wastes into Lake Superior by the Reserve Mining Company
DATE: Begun in 1947
Mining wastes deposited directly into Lake Superior were found to be the source of asbestos fibers in the drinking-water supply of Duluth, Minnesota, and other nearby communities.
Taconite is a low-grade iron ore used in the making of steel products. Rocks are crushed and the ore is magnetically removed; the residual materials, or tailings, are industrial waste. In 1947 the state of Minnesota, in an attempt to revive mining in the region known as the Iron Range, granted the Reserve Mining Company of Silver Bay, Minnesota, permission to the from its taconite processing plant directly into Lake Superior. The company began depositing the tailings into a large chasm in the lake at the rate of 67,000 tons per day.
On June 14, 1973, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that high concentrations of asbestos fibers had been found in the drinking water of Duluth, Minnesota. The fibers were identified by Irving Selikoff, director of an environmental sciences laboratory in New York, as amosite, the same asbestos fibers that, when inhaled, are known to cause lung, stomach, and colon cancers after an incubation period of twenty to thirty years. Duluth’s drinking water was coming directly from Lake Superior, which was thought to have the purest lake water in the world.
State and U.S. government experts charged that the Reserve Mining Company’s tailings were the source of these fibers and that lake currents had brought them into the water supply of Duluth and surrounding communities. At the time of the EPA warning, court action was under way to force Reserve to cease dumping its into Lake Superior. Company executives protested that the fibers had come into the lake naturally from eroding rocks located in tributary streams. They also contended that the “water scare” was a ploy to influence the court’s decision.
With Reserve threatening to close down its mining operation if it were to be forced to find another dump site, Silver Bay residents, nearly all of whom owed their jobs to Reserve, strongly defended the company. Duluth’s residents, while wanting Reserve to stop its dumping, generally reacted with equanimity when confronted with the EPA report, many noting that they had been drinking Lake Superior water for more than thirty years without ill effects. As no system existed that could remove the asbestos fibers from the water, most Duluthians had no option except to continue to drink the water. Moreover, it was unclear whether ingesting the fibers might have the same effect as inhaling them.
Numerous studies were initiated by Selikoff and other scientists in 1973 to evaluate the impact of the fibers on Duluth’s population. These studies failed to confirm that the water posed any serious threat to those who drank it. By 1975 the water scare had dissipated, and soon thereafter the fibers in the water ceased to be an issue. After years of litigation, Reserve agreed to stop dumping tailings in the lake and instead dispose of them on land. The company constructed a basin about 11 kilometers (7 miles) inland from Silver Bay to contain the tailings. In 1990, Reserve announced that it was bankrupt, and the company closed. Subsequently, another mining company reopened the Silver Bay taconite plant and continued to use the tailings basin built by Reserve.
Bibliography
Bartrip, Peter. Beyond the Factory Gates: Asbestos and Health in Twentieth Century America. New York: Continuum, 2006.
Farber, Daniel A. “Economics Versus Politics.” In Eco-pragmatism: Making Sensible Environmental Decisions in an Uncertain World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
"Minnesota V. Reserve Min. Co., 419 U.S. 802 (1974)." Justia, 2024, supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/419/802/. Accessed 23 July 2024.