Oneida County Board Chair Scott Holewinski laid out a timeline for supervisors at Tuesday’s County Board meeting of the events that lead to the mining resolution on the agenda saying he wanted to be transparent.
Holewinski says he got a voicemail, email, and letter from a mining company in June, which he never responded to. Supervisor Bob Almekinder received similar attempts to contact him, but he did not respond.
Then fellow supervisor Russ Fisher got a call from the Wisconsin Counties Association which led Holewinski to talk with them about where county stood with the Lynne Deposit.
The Lynne Deposit is primarily a zinc sulfide ore with significant lead and silver and minor amounts of gold and copper. It’s in western Oneida near the Willow Flowage.
That conversation with the WCA eventually led to Holewinski and fellow supervisor Russ Fisher meeting with the director of Green Light Metals, the head of the WCA and the WCA’s legal counsel in Madison on August 12th. Almekinder was also supposed to attend the meeting, but couldn’t due to a work conflict.
“We discussed the history of the Lynne deposit, other deposits in northern Wisconsin, our mining ordinance, and a resolution that I’m taking to the county board in August,” Holewinski told the board. “I told them I wanted to get the will of the current county board before any formal discussion about the Lynne Deposit should move forward.”
Holewinski said there was no discussion on how Green Light Metals would mine, financial/ economic impacts, or anything about their company.
Fisher confirmed to the board that they didn’t solicit or entertain any offers from the mining company during that meeting.
Holewinski said it was unclear who among supervisors or committees should be handling these kinds of unsolicited requests regarding mining in the county.
He drew up a resolution to give authority to the Forestry, Land and Outdoor Recreation Committee to “entertain any unsolicited inquiries for exploration, prospecting, bulk sampling, and mining operation on county owned land” and follow current procedures.
Supervisor Steven Schreier questioned Holewinski’s claim of transparency and was against the resolution.
“I have to be honest, I struggle with your version of what you think transparency is. It appears that it took you almost two months to come to the conclusion that you needed to include others in your decision making process, developing or creating policy after the fact, after you've already engaged in discussions with at least one mining company,” said Schreier during the meeting.
There was a county board meeting on June 18, a couple days after Holewinski got the voicemail and email from the mining company that he did not respond to. There was no county board meeting in July.
The resolution appeared to not be necessary.
According to the Forestry and Planning and Zoning Department heads, current ordinance already calls for these kinds of requests to go through the forestry committee.
The resolution was voted down 13 to 6, with two absent.
While the resolution was neither for nor against mining in the county, it did raise concerns about the future of mining, particularly at the Lynne deposit.
More than two dozen people spoke against the resolution and mining in general at the board meeting.
Many people that spoke raised environmental concerns about mining.
“It's crazy to allow these toxins from mining into our water. Isn’t PFAS enough? I mean, we've got a problem already. Why would we invite more?” said one Oneida County resident. Oneida County, in both Rhinelander and the Town of Stella, has been dealing with PFAS contamination in drinking water.
Many people were also upset mining was even being discussed after voters had previously made their stance clear.
They were referring to a 2018 advisory resolution asking Oneida County residents if they approved of mining activity in the Town of Lynne.
It failed by nearly 4,800 votes.
“The people who own that land told you no. Why are we here?” said Jill Hunger of Minocqua during public comment.
The advisory referendum was never codified into county ordinance.
