Scientists for the federal government say documents that Georgia state regulators relied upon to conclude a proposed mine won't harm the nearby Okefenokee Swamp and its vast wildlife refuge are riddled with technical errors
A company's plan to mine minerals just outside the famed Okefenokee Swamp and its federally protected wildlife refuge is a big step closer to being approved by regulators in Georgia. The state's Environmental Protection Division released a draft plan Thursday for how Twin Pines Minerals would operate its proposed mine and mitigate potential impacts to the swamp.
A member of President Joe Biden's Cabinet is urging Georgia officials to deny permits for a proposed mine near the edge of the famed Okefenokee Swamp and its vast wildlife refuge. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a letter to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp that the mining project poses "unacceptable risks" to the swamp's fragile ecosystem.
A U.S. government agency is being sued over its decision to allow a proposed mine outside the vast Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge to move forward without federal permits.
The firm that wants to mine for heavy minerals near the Okefenokee Swamp scored a major victory Monday after a federal agency reversed its decision to take control of the review process away from Georgia’s environmental agency.
Conservation groups have protested the project since it was first proposed in 2019, saying it threatens to disrupt the flow of water into and out of the environmentally and culturally important swamp.
A proposal to mine for titanium dioxide near the state's Okefenokee Swamp is attracting controversy. Alabama company Twin Pines has applied for a permit to extract minerals near the freshwater wetland and wildlife refuge — the largest blackwater wetland in North America — and residents, politicians and environmental advocates are pushing back to protect the Okefenokee.
A large U.S. mining corporation pledged on Thursday it won’t be doing business — at least for the next five years — with Twin Pines Minerals, the company poised to mine just a few miles from the Okefenokee Swamp.
Twin Pines Minerals wants to start out by conducting a 740-acre mining demonstration along Trail Ridge, which is a hydrological divide between the swamp and St. Mary's River. But it has signaled it plans to grow its footprint, although the state has said expansion would require new permits.
Environmentalists hold up the controversial proposal to mine for minerals near the Okefenokee Swamp as a prime example of the lands that lost federal protection under former President Donald Trump’s administration last summer.
That rule replaced an Obama-era one that opponents criticized as government overreach and shifted the focus of the Twin Pines Minerals’ mining application from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to the Ga. Department of Natural Resources, which is now poised to decide the fate of the mining project.
The Trump administration has made sweeping cuts to environmental regulations — and now the incoming Biden administration is expected to reverse them. But those changes won’t happen overnight. GPB’s Emily Jones reports on the Georgia issues waiting in limbo while the wheels of federal government turn.
