The hassle to cease a dragline mining mission on the delicate fringes of the Okefenokee Nationwide Wildlife Refuge and its namesake blackwater swamp is simply over 5 years previous, and Alabama-based Twin Pines Minerals LLC already has draft mining permits in hand. Regardless of current efforts from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to exert management over regional groundwater rights and to increase the boundaries of the refuge, the Georgia Environmental Safety Division may conceivably subject closing mining permits at any time.
Twin Pines needs to mine for titanium dioxide and zirconium within the “heavy sands” of Path Ridge, and, as a way to get on the minerals, it needs to strip the land naked after which pull a dragline by the sand at a depth of fifty ft, which, in response to the Georgia Conservancy, is under the degrees of the Okefenokee despair. The hassle will take away practically 1.5 million gallons of water a day from the Floridan Aquifer, largely as byproduct, as shallow groundwater should be consistently pumped out to ensure that the corporate to take away and course of the sand.
Twin Pines maintains that its analysis and monitoring during the last six years present that its exercise is not going to adversely impression the swamp or its water ranges. Primarily, the corporate plans to dig up the highest 50 ft of sand on the mining website, take away the minerals it seeks, after which change the sand, abandoning a reclaimed mine website. The corporate even says it’s going to plant timber or seedlings on that reclaimed land. Beforehand, a lot of the land the corporate intends to mine was used for timber manufacturing.
Of be aware, the primary part of the proposed mine could be dubbed a “demonstration” mine on a 582-acre parcel. The corporate owns 8,000 acres on the sides of the refuge with one nook of the property coming inside 400 ft of the refuge itself. The precise mine website is simply three miles from the sting of the refuge.
Why may mining be problematic?
Two million years in the past, Path Ridge was a barrier island within the sea. The ridge marks the southeastern fringe of the swamp and serves as a pure dam to include the waters within the swamp and shield its biodiversity. The Okefenokee is a big pure rain barrel, fed by groundwater and by precipitation inside its basin. When it’s full, the swamp spills over into two iconic American rivers: the St. Marys, which flows to the Atlantic Ocean; and the storied Suwannee, that flows southwest by Florida to the Gulf of Mexico.
Whereas there’s little concern that Twin Pines’ mining exercise may really drain the swamp, scientists and hydrologists from scores of universities across the Southeast do fear that the preliminary mining effort may make drought circumstances extra widespread and decrease water ranges in each the swamp and within the St. Marys River. The swamp is house to a whole bunch of species of vegetation and wildlife, together with some uncommon specimens just like the red-cockaded woodpecker, the wooden stork and the docile jap Indigo snake, the biggest snake native to North America. Underneath the water, the swamp is house to distinctive fish that deal with the excessive acidity of the swamp’s tannic waters. Panfish like flyers and warmouth are present in Okefenokee, in addition to long-nose gar, chain pickerel and the bowfin, which has impressed a cult following of fly fishers who ply the swamp’s darkish waters in the hunt for this prehistoric air-breather.
The river, as biologists are discovering, is nonetheless house to uncommon Atlantic and shortnose sturgeon. Atlantic sturgeon have been as soon as believed to be extinct within the drainage. Formally, the St. Marys marks the southernmost level on the map for the critically endangered fish, and each water high quality and amount are of the utmost significance to the fish and its little-understood spawning regime.
Within the swamp, decrease water ranges imply exposing extra of the Okefenokee’s peatlands. The underside of the swamp, for a number of ft down, consists nearly solely of peat. Peat is extremely flammable — it’s a precursor to coal — and exposing it to air may cause it to dry out and turn out to be a really actual hearth hazard. In 2017, the West Mims hearth within the swamp burned nearly 153,000 acres of peatlands, long-leaf pine and cypress forests, and took greater than three months to place out.
In brief, the Okefenokee is a fragile and largely intact ecosystem that depends upon the swamp’s hydrology to perform.
Why is the Okefenokee so particular?
The Okefenokee Nationwide Wildlife Refuge encompasses practically 700 sq. miles in southern Georgia and a small slice of northern Florida. Contained throughout the refuge is the Okefenokee Wilderness Space, which, at practically 354,000 acres, is the biggest federally designated wilderness east of the Mississippi River. It’s additionally the biggest blackwater swamp in North America — its darkish waters are attributable to tannins within the decaying plant materials that the water drains by earlier than settling within the swamp.
Inside the Okefenokee, there’s crucial habitat for quite a lot of uncommon and endangered vegetation and animals, as properly a number of the finest habitat left within the South for American alligators, river otters, black bears, white-tailed deer, wild turkeys and a bunch of reptiles, amphibians and birds, each migratory and resident.
In quiet circles, in order to not be overheard, there are rumors that Florida panthers have discovered their means north into the refuge from the close by Osceola Wildlife Administration space and the Osceola Nationwide Forest in north Florida. Whether or not or not the protected cats have crossed into the refuge, there are long-standing efforts to reintroduce them there — they’re native to the swamp, but it surely’s been a full century because the final one was documented there. A Florida panther was killed in Troup County, Ga., in 2008 — Troup County is situated alongside the Alabama border in west-central Georgia, proof that the massive cats can disperse and pioneer again into their former habitat. The final recorded panther was killed within the Okefenokee in 1925, when efforts to empty the swamp and harvest its cypress forests have been nonetheless afoot. Simply over a decade later, in 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, by govt order, completely protected the swamp.
In all, about half-a-million guests come to the refuge every year to absorb the beautiful swamp surroundings that features huge swampy prairies and dense, moss-draped cypress forests. There’s no place else fairly prefer it North America, which is why it’s now a candidate as a World Heritage Web site underneath the United Nations Academic, Scientific and Cultural Group (UNESCO), which might put it on the identical listing as locations just like the Nice Wall of China, the Grand Canyon and the Galapagos Islands.
The Crimson Cockated Woodpecker (picture: USFWS / cc2.0).
Mining, WOTUS and politics
Mining across the swamp shouldn’t be exceptional — there are a number of mining operations — together with dragline operations — in each north Florida and south Georgia. However Twin Pines’ mine permits are for Path Ridge which serves to include the swamp. In actual fact, the refuge’s new USFWS-initiated boundaries would come with the ridge the place Twin Pines needs to scalp the land to get on the titanium dioxide and zirconium.
The corporate first utilized for each state and federal mining permits alongside Path Ridge in July 2019. These first allow purposes requested for permission to fill in nearly 600 acres of wetlands and 4,500 ft of ephemeral streams. It didn’t take lengthy for environmentalists to catch wind of the allow purposes, and simply over per week after the allow purposes have been filed, the Southern Environmental Regulation Heart organized a small band of conservation teams to look at the permits. The teams included the Georgia Wildlife Federation, the Georgia River Community and One Hundred Miles, a coastal conservation group that bought concerned because of the potential impacts a mine may have on the St. Marys River.
On July 12, 2019, the U.S. Military Corps of Engineers began a three-month public remark course of on the Twin Pines utility that was submitted, on the time, underneath the necessities of the Clear Water Act — particularly the Waters of the U.S. rule that was put in place within the 2000s after the Supreme Courtroom dominated that the Clear Water Act’s steering on growth in headwater streams and amongst seasonal or ephemeral streams was too ambiguous. Throughout that public remark interval, 20,000 individuals chimed in opposing the mining utility. Over the subsequent couple of years, the Corps’ utility course of spurred allow updates and new rounds of public feedback (44,000 individuals from all 50 states chimed in throughout a 2020 public remark interval after a brand new utility from Twin Pines). Then, in April 2020, the primary Trump administration’s EPA and the Corps revealed a politically directed rollback of the protections supplied to headwaters and wetlands by WOTUS. This rule eliminated the protections of wetlands and ephemeral streams included in Twin Pines’ proposed mining parcel.
WOTUS, typically simply known as the “Clear Water Rule” was a political soccer for a technology of politicians, till it lastly cratered due to a Supreme Courtroom resolution in Might of 2023 (Sackett v. the EPA). This definitively allowed Twin Pines to maneuver forward with its mining plans with out a federal allow, as Sackett basically codified the elimination of federal oversight from headwater streams and wetlands. Because of this the allowing course of is now within the arms of the Georgia Environmental Safety Division, a a lot smaller company that lacks the assets of the Corps or the federal EPA.
That doesn’t imply the feds butted out. Removed from it. U.S. Secretary of the Inside Deb Haaland, after seeing the writing on the wall as WOTUS started to crumble, despatched a letter to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp in November 2022, asking the governor to direct the state company to scrap the mining course of. She cited the science and the very actual considerations from hydrologists, biologists and others from Southern academia, noting that the proposed mine’s location had the potential to do actual hurt to the refuge.
“The Division has a profound curiosity in defending the well being and integrity of the swamp ecosystem,” Haaland wrote. “Dwelling to the refuge, it’s a distinctive wetland ecosystem in contrast to another present in North America and is among the world’s most hydrologically intact freshwater ecosystems.” She additionally famous that the refuge has important cultural significance to the Indigenous Muscogee (Creek) tribe, and that it comprises numerous Native American artifacts, burial mounds and different culturally important areas.
“The Division will train its personal authorities to guard the swamp ecosystem and can proceed to induce our State and Federal companions to take steps underneath their very own authorities to do the identical,” she concluded. “The swamp ecosystem is a treasure for the individuals of Georgia, our Nation, and the world.”
Regardless of quite a few pleas to Kemp from personal people, conservation teams, newspaper editorial boards and the like, to guard the Okefenokee, the governor opted to not take a place on the mine, however to, as a substitute, let the allowing course of play out.
Conservation pursuits gel and wade into the problem
It took a while, however a small core group of conservation organizations that began following the allowing course of in 2019 has now grown right into a coalition of environmental and conservation pursuits with a mixed membership of greater than 5 million individuals. But it surely’s the eleventh hour, which doesn’t essentially sign impending defeat for conservationists. Numerous conservation victories in current American historical past happened within the eleventh hour, from the safety of the Headwaters Forest Reserve in California in 1999 to the Bristol Bay Safety Act in 2024.
In actual fact, a current weblog put up on the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership web site equated the plight of the Okefenokee Swamp to that of Alaska’s Bristol Bay and Minnesota’s Boundary Waters as one other nice American panorama that all the time appears to be within the industrial growth crosshairs. And, just like the battles to guard these iconic landscapes, it’s going to take a united entrance to beat steep political tailwinds on the backs of Twin Pines and its scientifically panned mining plan.
If you happen to ask the SELC, that unity exists.
“All people appears to agree that this can be a unhealthy thought,” stated Megan Huynh, an legal professional and the chief of SELC’s Wetlands and Coasts program. “We’re in a time the place individuals are fiercely divided about nearly every thing … besides this.
“It’s simply mind-blowing that we’d put a spot just like the Okefenokee Swamp in danger for the income of a mining operation on Path Ridge.”
What’s subsequent?
In its official response to overwhelming public opposition (greater than 100,000 public feedback with the overwhelming majority in opposition) to the Twin Pines’ mining utility that was revised in early 2023, the Georgia Environmental Safety Division had this to say:
“As a regulatory company, EPD has the duty to observe the statutory and regulatory necessities of the Georgia Floor Mining Act and Guidelines for Floor Mining in figuring out if a floor mining allow shall be issued. If an utility meets the necessities of the Georgia Floor Mining Act and Guidelines for Floor Mining, a allow is issued.”
In different phrases, “Guidelines are guidelines, and it doesn’t matter what the individuals say.”
It wasn’t a shock, then, when GEPD issued draft mining permits to Twin Pines in February 2024. The division may conceivably subject closing mining permits to Twin Pines at any time — practically a 12 months has handed because the draft permits have been issued on Feb. 9, 2024.
There are a number of choices for these curious about stopping the mining earlier than it begins. First, and most clearly, the USFWS, underneath its new proposed boundaries of the refuge, may purchase the land owned by Twin Pines, if the corporate have been to turn out to be a prepared vendor (one of many stipulations of the brand new boundaries). In different phrases, the federal government may pay the corporate to not dragline Path Ridge and threaten the ecological integrity of the swamp. The asking worth would possibly seemingly be pearl-clutching, as Twin Pines would seemingly ask for a return on its present investments within the land and the mine planning, in addition to on any future earnings the mining would possibly produce.
Second, could be a fast rush to court docket for an injunction on mining the ridge. The idea for such an injunction may embody avoiding an incursion on water rights owned by the USFWS, defending the navigability of the St. Marys River ought to water ranges drop, and stopping potential impacts on the Floridian Aquifer which is the supply of ingesting water for hundreds of thousands of individuals throughout Florida and southern Georgia. The courts may additionally file an injunction drawing on a number of Endangered Species Act triggers, starting from potential impacts on every thing from gopher tortoises and indigo snakes to whooping cranes and wooden storks.
Third, a legislative answer may throw a wrench in Twin Pines’ mining engine. In 2024, the Okefenokee Safety Act within the Georgia statehouse had the assist of greater than half of the state’s Common Meeting, however the invoice couldn’t clear committee. The invoice would have prohibited Georgia EPD from issuing any permits to mine close to the Okefenokee Nationwide Wildlife Refuge. A second invoice that might have put a three-year moratorium on mining permits within the basin failed on the final day of the 2024 session. Given the broad public opposition to a mine on the sting of the swamp, this feature might be viable.
However, in response to Huynh, if and when the EDP points closing permits to Twin Pines, and the permits issued look something just like the draft permits issued final 12 months, the court docket possibility is the probably.
“We’ve been following the method by Open Information Act requests because the draft permits have been issued, and from what we’ve seen, our considerations are as sturdy as ever,” she stated. “If these considerations aren’t addressed, I anticipate they’ll be challenged in court docket.”
During the last 12 months, SELC and its burgeoning conservation coalition have polled the individuals of Georgia, and the outcomes is likely to be essentially the most heartening consequence to emerge from this sophisticated morass of drag traces, flammable peat and sand slurries.
“From our polling, 90 % of Georgians wish to shield the swamp,” Huynh stated. “And 81 % of Republicans polled in Georgia wish to shield the swamp. This isn’t a partisan subject. The individuals of Georgia don’t need this.”
That should rely for one thing.
