 Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for today's community conversation. I'm Megan Steel on volunteer here at Sierra Club Maine. And I'm just quickly introducing things and then I'm going to turn it over to our presenters. So I just quickly want to do a few housekeeping things. We just, I know that we're all, we've all been on Zoom for over almost two years now. But we just ask that you keep your microphone on mute throughout the presentation to help with background noise. So you'll see a microphone symbol on the lower left of your screen. If the microphone symbol is craw through, you're muted. Next to that, you'll see a video camera symbol. You're welcome to be on camera or off camera, whatever you choose. We are recording this webinar. So if you wish not to be seen, feel free to turn your video off. Lastly, we invite you to put any questions in the chat. I'll be monitoring the chat. And I think our presenters and Becky will also have their eye on that. And then we'll have some time at the end of the presentation for Q&A. And then next, I just want to say that Sierra Club Maine acknowledges Indigenous land and sovereignty. So we are in the homeland of the Wabanaki, the people of the Don. We extend our respect and gratitude to the many Indigenous people and their ancestors, whose rich histories and vibrant communities include the Wabanaki, Malaseat, Micmac, Pasamaquati, and Penobscot Nations, and all of the Native communities who have lived here for thousands of generations in what is known today as Maine, New England, and the Canadian Maritimes. Sierra Club Maine is honored to collaborate with the Wabanaki as they share their stories and thanks to the Abbey Museum for their leadership and decolonization efforts in Maine. All right. So with that, I will turn it over to Becky Bartovix. Becky, you're on mute. Okay, there we go. Hi. Can you all hear me? Nope. Yes. Oh, yeah. Good. I'm really honored to have both Corey Hinton and Severine Fleming join us today. This is a really serious issue for the state of Maine and in particular, because even though our mining laws were somewhat tightened up, they are not tight enough to prevent damage to our water quality. And I think we need to really force some changes in that. But in the meantime, we have an application going on in Washington County. Severine is at the center, as is Corey. And so I'm honored to have them here. Severine is an activist I keep running into in all kinds of locations. She's very busy all over the country, as well as in Washington County. And she is an organizer in Down East Maine and has been very keenly aware of what's been going on with this silver mine proposal for Wolft and resources. It's the impact to the Penna Mokwin and Denny's watersheds is likely to be severe. And Severine will give us some information about that. Corey is a Pasamaquoddy from Sapaik and is a lawyer and is a leader of his law firm's Tribal Nations Practice Group. And I'm really looking forward to hearing about both Corey's presentation as well as Severine's on how we can move forward with this issue. And without further ado, I'm happy to introduce Severine if you're going first or Corey, I'm not sure which one of you want to go first. But thank you. We didn't set that up. Yeah. Do you want me to go first? Absolutely. Okay, I'll go first and I'll go fast. So here we are. Thank you all for being attentive to this issue that we are facing together. It's really much appreciated. It's very unpopular to confront the reality of extraction that implicates us all as users of computers and as beneficiaries of modernity to recognize that modernity is, metallurgy is mining and that it means we have to work very hard together. So this is our website where you can find information, Pembroke Clean Water. And this is our mission, which is to keep our Cobb's Cook Bay clean. How do I move my slide? Ah, I did it. So here's where we are Cobb's Cook Bay. As you can see, it's down East Main Washington County, right on the border, looking over on Canada on the traditional homelands of Pasamaquoddy peoples. And here on the left, you see the reversing falls, which is the boiling water that gives this bay its name and the 20-foot tides that we enjoy here create an extraordinary marine wealth, herring, elvers, scallops, lobster, mackerel. This is a place where one in 10 members of our community, of our in our county hold a commercial fishing license. So here really we are in a place where livelihoods are very much bound to clean water and the six rivers that flow into Cobb's Cook Bay, of course, generative of that of that livelihood for peoples' immemorial and for people still today. Not very good at moving my slides. So and you see that Cobb's Cook Bay is connected here in a view that includes also our neighbors in Canada to the Bay of Fundy, which is this deep channel. Fundy comes from Paufort in French, the deep channel between Nova Scotia and the coast of Maine, where these 60-foot tides are plunging back and forth. So this is a place where we have so much cold water coming on from the Labrador Current and this extreme amount of tides, again, that contribute to the power of this region to produce fish. Now obviously the power of this region to produce other things was tapped in 1770s. The town of Pembroke was settled and there were four dams put onto the Penamaquan River, which is the river most closely impacted by the mining activities that we are now here to confront. And interestingly, the reason I got involved in any of this was because there's a beautiful historic building right at the crown of the Crossroads Motel, where Route 1 intersects with the Penamaquan River. And that intersection of the river and the one was where the old Pembroke Ironworks was located that was capturing the power of the river and was part of this early development where there were 2,000 people in the town, sawmills, deforestation obviously, but a fishery that included shad that still includes ale lives and alvers and a new fishway that was reconstructed in 2020 means that according to the Downey Salmon Federation, we're looking at expected ill life runs in that river of 300,000 fish per year. So those ill lives are part of a community fishery. Everyone's allowed to catch bait. Everyone's allowed to dip fish and 25 per day. And they're very delicious when you smoke them. And that is a source of wonderful food that comes straight out of the mountain and straight out of this glacial aquifer covered in gravel that infiltrates so much water and the building that I bought from the town for back taxes has a well in it that does 60 gallons per minute of water. The whole watershed is just backed up against Route 1, the great pressure of this mountain full of water. And that's exactly the big mountain that a company of a Canadian junior mining company called Wolfden Resources would like to and is in the process of mining. So here you go. It's really fun to get involved in fighting mines. You get all sorts of maps. Here was the original map that we saw in the work plan of Wolfden Resources showing the place where they had purchased the mining rights from the previous mining company, who had purchased them from the previous mining company. And the owner of those rights is actually an 89 year old man who's I think in a nursing home and not very available. But he had purchased those mineral rights when the mining company was called Sinalore LLC before that it was called Denton Mines and after that it was called Golden Hope LLC. So a lot of community knowledge in this town says from experience, oh, the miners always come around when the price of metals go up and they dig around and they blow some holes up and they make some roads and they hire some people and they don't ever do anything. And so that's what is our, that's part of the mountain we have to move is the mountain of thinking nothing's going to happen. So here's the original site. As you can see the wetlands are marked in green. This area is pocked with gravel pits but also with wetlands. And as you can see there are streams flowing off of here. Oh, you can't see my mouse probably. There's four streams, Ohio Brook, Wilson Stream, Ohio Brook, Wilson Stream, Crow Brook and I'm going to move to the next slide because it might be on there. It's not, we'll get back to it. So here was the original show shape I showed you in blue and here is the new moves, the newly negotiated access. So the previous lands were mostly held by Pembroke and Timberland LLC and now there's doing exploratory drilling, mining, road building and blasting on land held by Down East Credit Union. Is that their social mission to be part of an extraction? Not sure. And then Worcester Holdings which is a wreath company that has significant holdings all over Washington County and is quite famous for putting the wreaths on the Arlington Cemetery for veterans around the country. They are well known. So this is a little bit of what Wolfton is saying to their investors and gosh, are they talking to investors? We looked up their financial records and they have spent a hundred thousand dollars in Pembroke according to their Canadian reporting on Mineral Rights Acquisition and they have gotten I think it's 9.6 percent interest over to a company called Kinross which is the fifth largest gold mining, sorry the fifth largest mining company in the world which focuses a lot on gold and Kinross was just recently in a big lawsuit against the state of Washington, not Washington DC but Washington state. It was called the Buckhorn Mine where a nine-year mining project yielded 34 tons of gold which was a value of $1.3 billion but the cleanup costs have been left to the state of Washington who is now suing and their state of Washington is suing because Kinross did not comply with the Clean Water Act which is a federal law nor did they comply with the Washington Water Pollution Control Act which is a state law. So this is the pattern of these mining companies that we're so worried about is that the contamination is left for the community to contend with at enormous cost as you know from the cleanup efforts in the Penobscot River hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on contamination you know is not much consolation to the fish who have to live there and those of us who'd like to eat the fish. So anyway this is a little bit of a background next slide. So here again as I as I mentioned you're starting to know the territory with us. Here's the Pena Macquan River that splits into right by the dam here are the gravels that are and sand that constitute this infiltration into the aquifer again carved by glaciers and then this sand and gravel was left by glaciers and that is part of why the groundwater concerns are so extreme you can see in the bottom right at an illustration this is from the groundwater I'm so sorry we have so many things to do around here. This is the Pembroke Quadrangle main geological survey oh my god I'm so bad at this here we go and here you can see how a well goes into bedrock and then there's and I just should say my degree is in biology or conservation not in geology but we have a wonderful geological firm who is helping us prepare specific risk information for the town so that everyone has access to science that is in the interest of the town and in the interest of clean water and not just the you know hoopla presented by these mining company representatives who are offering penny stocks to residents to landowners and who are very aggressive in their overtures even telling us when we when we when we met them because they wanted access to the cores that were left by the previous iteration of the mining company they left I don't know 16 tons of of these long cores that had been drilled from the mountain in previous episodes of exploration and they told us well we're going to leave it good for farming after we're done we'll we'll turn it back into a farm field and you can have young farmers on it well no thank you and we have much to learn and to and to share with townspeople who are going to have the opportunity to vote on whether we should regulate mining in our town um obviously Cobbs Cook Bay is one of the last great scallop beds in the state of Maine um and right now every morning when I look out there's 13 boats going out um and grabbing these shellfish we have clams I grow oysters and seaweed um and the the concern is that some of the closures have been already occurring here and there have been closures as well in the downspout or in the fallout in the drainage of from the similar metal mine that was our most recent and most proximate example of polymetallic mining in Maine which is in the vicinity of Blue Hill um and that mine uh is currently costing Maine taxpayers $750,000 a year in remediation now Wolfden will say that they have a way more modern way of mining than what occurred in Blue Hill um but as you can see the water is all connected and the spills underground overground affect us all and can penetrate one of these you know frankly last remaining habitat for Atlantic salmon on the entire eastern seaboard this is one of the places where um the United States has spent $30 million on updates to the culverts and to the bridges along Route 1 specifically because you have such a high return on investment in habitat that you have so much potential of this landscape to host fish river fish tom cod brook trout the Atlantic salmon the Elvers that you know you give them space and they return and so this is a place that we should not imperil with these risks our current population um is about 600 people in Pembroke uh one thing to say is you can walk right up there and you can access it yourself on foot we've done that we met the guys who are drilling um they're from Georgia they have set up a pumping station that draws water out of a wetland and draws the water up with a hose up to the drilling site where they then are drilling a shaft down into the water what comes up from the drilling shaft is um these kind of it's kind of like muck it's like a it's a drilling it's a drilling mixture and it's the rock itself and then we've got nice pictures of the cigarette butts being put out right there in the site of this core being drilled um it's pretty shocking how much they can trash the woods how quickly and now in every direction all around the mine the core site is about 430 acres but on the other side of route 214 and on the other side of the woods road extensive logging has been going on really down to trees about like that so there's a lot of clearing going on the one of the proposals that they make is for this polarization it's a technique that they use for seeing what kind of metal is down there and in order to do that magnetic tool they have to clear the forest in these linear lines in order to make their surveys of this 60 kilometer long um deposit of poly metals that they would like to mine anyway just a reminder of why this is a wonderful place to live and farm and be a young farmer there are um about five new farms that I know of um in the time since I moved here which is five years ago um and Washington County is still one of the most affordable places to you know become a young farmer and participate in a wild food ecosystem this ecosystem that is shared um by a lot of people in Washington County there's extreme amounts of natural resource based livelihood uh in the form of tipping balsam fur as I'm sure some of you know is a 25 million dollar industry in Washington County um another big industry is uh wood pulp and the expansion of the of the wood mill in on the St. Croix thanks to a Chinese company has it's been a doubling of that mill and that's the biggest employer in the county so these are this is just to clarify these are the ale wives that we're scooping up from the river and then we gut them and then we smoke them and we make fish sauce and then we also harvest um algae uh from our seafarm and oysters and vegetables and this is the beautiful bay that we are operating inside of that we want to protect for all of those who live here for ourselves and for all those in the future so here we are just to remind you connected to um Cobbscote Bay runs into Pasamaquoddy Bay runs into the Bay of Fundy runs into the Gulf of Maine we're all um a part of this aquatic connectivity funding um to help support the fish return in this region um we have a community meeting on this Sunday if you're local and you want to come we're in a wear mask and we're going to sit together in a circle it's a meeting that was requested by Dwayne Thomas who said we need to all get on the same page so if you want to get on the same page also um the school just called and said we're allowed to do it at the auditorium of the Pembroke Elementary School which is 1.2 miles away from the core of the mine um and they're concerned also about the sound that they hear from the school of blasting and the grinding of a mountain into dust that would imperil the children of our community I think that's it for me and I stick around because there's going to be lots of questions and I have I'm sure forgotten 10 of my notes that I wanted to say so ask good questions and I'm so grateful to pass the microphone to Corey. Thank you very much Severin really really nice job um I'm going to uh try to pull up my slides now um let's see I'm going to turn yours off Severin and uh pull up mine just bear with me for a moment everybody thank you for your patience can can everybody see uh this slide yes okay great thanks Severin for for kicking us off and for the introductions uh to this uh the subject matter um I'm going to be approaching this from from a slightly different perspective um I'll start with with introducing myself in past McQuaddy. Mdoloiz, Corey Hinton, Nujay Alportland, Anuda Beggs, Zibayek, Naga Balans, best good of my god, Mill. My name is Corey Hinton. I live in Portland. I am from Zibayek from the Francis family and I am past McQuaddy. I am a lawyer for the past McQuaddy tribe. I'm here today on behalf of the past McQuaddy tribe at Pleasant Point and I am a past McQuaddy citizen and I'm going to be discussing uh uh over these next few slides um a little bit of background on Wolfen and why from my perspective uh I believe that they're here in in in our homeland um and then I'm going to talk about the indigenous perspective um on on not just Big Silver the the Pembroke mine but also um Wolfen's uh other proposed mine in in what's now called Pickett Mountain um so as folks can see on this slide um I I've put down some bullets my best attempt at sort of summarizing at a at a high level why why I believe Wolfen is targeting Maine um a first and foremost Wolfen is uh it's a privately owned junior mining company as Severin said um it is a company that has obligations to uh both shareholders and to large corporate investors therefore Wolfen first and foremost is about profits and returns um it's specifically targeting Maine uh in that vein um because there is considered to be a presence of commercially valuable um polymetallic resources um namely lead zinc copper gold and silver um there are two primary projects that Wolfen is pursuing right now in Maine Pickett Mountain um which I've misspelled here um is perhaps the most notable project that folks may have read about um Wolfen's proposing to develop uh what would primarily be a zinc mine uh over approximately 6800 acres on Pickett Mountain which is in close proximity to uh to uh Mount Katahdin which is a sacred place for the Wabanaki people and the Penobscot people in particular um and this would be right near the the newly designated fairly newly designated Katahdin Woods and Waters natural monument and the mine itself would be on approximately 600 acres um Wolfen is also seeking as we've been discussing developing a mine in what's called Big Hill or now Big Silver um which is uh in the town of Pembroke in Washington County and here in particular Wolfen is looking to develop a source of uh gold and silver um one of the other reasons that at least Wolfen has said that they are looking at Maine uh in particular is that Maine has a fairly new mining law um which Wolfen believes has um really clarified how uh private enterprises can conduct mining in Maine um it's quite ironic to me that this law was intended to be um throw up some some pretty serious roadblocks to mining and yet here is a foreign company believing that this law actually makes it easier to mine in Maine than previously so uh Wolfen pretty clearly believes that that this new law provides clarity and it's provided an opportunity for exploration mining exploration and development um and uh and here's a quote that I added from Wolfen CEO Ron Little he said that this new law has revived uh interest in mining in Maine and that the law has shown that there is significant upside in this jurisdiction for its stakeholders in other words Wolfen believes this this new law shows that there's opportunity in Maine to create corporate revenues for its shareholders and the third primary reason that that Wolfen has latched on to Maine and this these are the words of Wolfen CEO they believe that there are no indigenous rights in Maine um now that's not true um and we can talk about that a little bit but I just want to draw a pretty stark contrast here between Canada where Wolfen originates from and and the United States and in Maine in particular in Canada first nations essentially have the ability to um to provide a sort of veto power over um many types of commercial developments industrial developments within their aboriginal territories and so doing the type of mining that that Wolfen is proposing here in Canada um would be um potentially met with much stiffer um opposition from first nations that have very legitimate and concrete mechanisms in Canada Canadian law to uh pose and stop mining projects. Unfortunately in Maine the state of Maine has essentially uh not essentially it has very directly oppressed and suppressed indigenous people since the state of Maine became a state um it's essentially been Maine's economic prerogative make clear to all manners of industry that you can come to Maine you can take our natural resources you can exploit them you can pollute them in the name of your own corporate profits and will help you do this by essentially marginalizing native peoples. The state of Maine as many folks know or don't know actually has some of the most negative laws with respect to tribal rights out of anywhere in the United States. Maine likes to lead by the motto of you know Maine first but when it comes to indigenous rights Maine is stand near the back of that it's been Maine's policy as I said to essentially suppress tribal rights and it has created this impression for foreign corporations like Wolfen that you can come to Maine and not have to worry about impacts of your activities on tribal populations um and my presence here and what my presentation is going to cover in the next slides should make clear that there are indigenous rights in Maine and that there are indigenous people whose voices are extremely important contrary to what the state of Maine has said for generations now. There are four federally recognized tribal nations in what is now called Maine. The Passamaquoddy tribe, the Penobscot nation, the Holton Band of Malaseet, and the Mi'kmaq nation the Mi'kmaq. There is an additional Wabanaki nation the Abanakis which is no longer present in Maine but collectively all of these nations are referred to as Wabanaki nations and in in the past have politically organized in what is referred to as the Wabanaki Confederacy. Wabanaki or Wabanakiik in our language means the place of the dawn the place where the sun rises first and our orientation on the water and looking east in particular is extraordinarily important. The Passamaquoddy tribe of which I am a citizen has two communities in the United States Pleasant Point or Zybiag and Indian Township or Madakami Cook. Zybiag which is where I am from means the place at the edge and you might be able to see on this map here although it's a little bit small if you look to the sort of middle right side of this image you'll see Pleasant Point. Indian Township would be going up Route 1 about 50 miles north of here and Pleasant Point as I said it means the place at the edge. You'll see that there is a little bit of a bridge causeway that comes off of Pleasant Point. This is a road that was built in about the the 40s or 50s or so and this road never used to be there and the causeway was constructed in in efforts to harness the tidal power that that Severin mentioned earlier but there was no causeway and so this was considered the edge and that's why Zybiag means the place at the edge. Pleasant Point is as as the crow flies about 13 13 and a half miles from the big silver location. I dropped the pin here on this map it's a rough location but just to give you a sense of the sort of rough geography of the area. One of the there are many reasons why why it's important to oppose mining efforts in places like down East Maine where there are extraordinarily valuable and precious natural resources but I'm going to spend a little bit of time here on two very specific reasons. The first and perhaps the most foremost reason for the purposes of my people and my client is safe drinking water. Safe drinking water in in this area of Maine generally comes from two sources. Folks many folks will have wells that are drawn from groundwater sources. That's the majority of the water that's used for domestic purposes and most all purposes really in this area but there are communities including Pleasant Point, Perry and Eastport which are essentially the neighbors to Pembroke that receive water from a state chartered and regulated water districts called the Passamaquoddy water district. To be really clear this water district is not owned by the Passamaquoddy tribe it does bear the tribe's name but it is an instrumentality of the state of Maine. The water supply for this water district and I'm going to just go back one slide really quickly comes from this lake you see Boyden's Lake and although you can't really see it too well if you were to zoom in you would notice that there's a little reservoir that comes out of Boyden's Lake and this reservoir supplies a municipal supply of water for these communities that I mentioned. The PWD's water supply is this reservoir that is increasingly shallow. It is I believe at its greatest depth somewhere between like 10 and 15 feet deep. It used to be somewhere like 30 feet deep and because it is shallow and because it's fed by a surface water source of lake that is pretty densely populated the water quality of the water delivered by this district is generally pretty poor. It's prone to very dramatic swings in water quality. At times of year the water can be brown it can be black it can be all shades of you know sort of like fluorescent blues and greens or yellows depending on what's going on in the system. The odor of the water fluctuates as well at times it smells like rotten eggs at times it smells like chlorine and the chlorine is a strong indicator that there's a high presence of chloroform in the water. Chloroform is a pretty nasty carcinogen that can kill you it is cancer causing and it's a byproduct of byproduct of cleaning and so essentially this water supply is quite dirty. They have to clean it with large amounts of chlorine and that produces chloroform which is a part of a group of carcinogens notice trihalomethanes. Water testing over many years has shown that this water supply is at times pretty unsafe to drink and that's in particular during the sort of high precipitation months in the spring and the summer. A little over a decade ago the Passman Quality Tribe recognizing that the water we were receiving was quite unsafe to drink received some federal funds to conduct a water quality study and to specifically look at the feasibility of replacing the inadequate water source with other potential sources and there were a whole range of alternates that were looked at. There was a look at upgrades to the existing supply you know essentially how do you clean the water better. There was a look at using tribally owned sources of water and then there was also one actually the best supply of water was identified and that's from the Penamaquan aquifer which connects to Penamaquan lake and numerous streams and waterways in the area. As that relates to this mine this aquifer the lake and all of these streams are in the immediate vicinity of the proposed drilling locations and one of the problems that we've run into in trying to assess this project is that it's not exactly clear it hasn't been until pretty recently where precisely blasting and drilling is going to be taking place so it's been a little bit hard to gauge precisely how the mine would impact water in the area but what's very clear is that there is a very high presence of water in the area both underground water that's been identified as a drinking water source and the sort of surface waterways that Severin mentioned and they are all at risk as a result of this mine being in very close proximity knowing that this mine would essentially be you know drilling deep down into the earth potentially reaching to the aquifer or being very very close to the aquifer. So the first you know major impact is really a threat to drinking water this is a region of the United States a rural area where there are very well known drinking water problems and yet here is a potential solution to that drinking water problem and here is a foreign corporation seeking to conduct mining that could quite easily impact in a very negative and potentially permanent way this drinking water supply if it were ever tapped for that purpose. There are other broader environmental quality problems that we see here and this well a lot of this will track back to what Severin had talked about before but I just wanted to take a step back and just acknowledge that this really isn't in my mind about just Pembroke. This really is about Wolfen's attempts to not just mine in Pembroke but also in Pickett Mountain and what's sort of ironic about their attempts here is that their efforts would be pretty squarely in the ancestral territory of three of the four federally recognized tribes of pain. Obviously I'm here to talk about the past Mokwati impact but the the Holted Band of Malisheeds and the Penobscots have already weighed in regarding the Pickett Mountain mine. They've highlighted the fact that the mine would essentially sit smack between the both the Penobscot River and the Mata Wampke River watersheds which are extraordinarily ecologically important watersheds that have traditionally provide sources of food and of life to the people to the animals that live in the area. The concerns of the tribes with respect to Pickett Mountain were mostly that Wolfen has not proposed or not really made clear what their plan is to remove waste from the site and so the concerns at Pickett Mountain are that the failure of Wolfen to really show a plan to to remove wastewater to deal with all of the waste that will come from this project provides a very clear and present risk to water quality and to broader environmental quality in this part of Central Maine where Pickett Mountain is located. Bringing us more locally to to pass Mokwati territory again the the concerns are similar in terms of overall drinking water quality and broader environmental concerns but the specific specific culture of the past Mokwati people and the proximity of the past Mokwati people to Big Silver makes this threat particularly potent as it relates to Big Silver. Pass Mokwati in our language we say Basketa Magadi means people who spear Pollock. Pollock is a sea-run fish, saltwater fish, and it is one of of many many forms of marine resources that the past Mokwati people traditionally relied relied upon. Eels, clams, the Owives or the herring that Severin mentioned, whale, scallops these are the foods that my ancestors relied upon to survive in certain times of year in this place that we now call Pembroke and all of these marine resources are still found to one degree or another in Copscope Bay which leads into past Mokwati Bay which it's really immediately adjacent to to my community at Zipaya and these are the foods that are both relied on for immediate sustenance in this region for not just tribal members but also you know as Severin mentioned herself and her and her friends and colleagues but also for for commercial foods and and we really believe one of our big problems with this proposal is that it really fails to account for the broader environmental impact of the mine and we can get into some of these details at a later point but Wolf's End has a habit of not providing a lot of details and we think sort of skirting the real impacts of their work and we feel that that's most dangerous in this particular region which provides food both to the citizens of this area and to and to consumers of seafood more broadly in in in the world and so here's a quote that I wanted to just share and read and this is a quote from 1887 from a gentleman named Lewis Mitchell who was a past Mokwati man who spoke to the main legislature in the 1880s and I'm just going to read this this is paraphrasing a bit but just consider today how many rich men there are in callas in st. Stephen milltown machias each east machias columbia cherryfield embrook and other lumbering towns we see a good many of them were thousands and even millions of dollars we ask ourselves how they make the most of their money answer is they make it off lumber or timber once owned by the past Mokwati we plainly see the efforts of the past Mokwati during this struggle mentioned before help gain our independence how many of their privileges have been broken how many of their lands have been taken from them by authority of the state now we say to ourselves these Indians ought to have everything they ask for they deserve assistance now this plainly shows how much worse a people of 530 souls are stripped of their whole country their privileges upon which they depend for their living all of the land they claim to own now being only 10 acres now look at this yourselves and see whether I am right or wrong if you see any insulting language in my speech I ask your pardon I don't mean to insult anybody but to simply tell you of our wrong I share this quote because this message was delivered in the 19th century to the state of Maine after the past Mokwati people had seen their lands taken their the fish that they caught no longer available due to the damning and overall environmental degradation of the of the region and here's a past Mokwati going to the state hat in hand saying please you've taken everything can't you at least try to help preserve what's left and you know I would say that at this time our region was was pretty much devastated there's been some environmental restoration their active efforts by all the tribes in the area to restore their watersheds but here we see because of companies like Wolf Den Resources that many of these lessons that Lewis Mitchell tried passing along to Maine legislators to Maine public have really not truly crept in we see Maine passing laws that it likes to trumpet as being some of the most environmentally progressive in the country well newsflash those same laws are being considered a basis to to conduct mining and these laws come on the tail end of of centuries of generations and generations of Maine really openly encouraging industrial exploitation and destruction of the environment in the name of corporate profits and so all of these lessons everything that Lewis Mitchell is talking about is 100 relevant today and I would ask everybody to really carry this message with you when you leave this presentation the end of the day what are the past Mokwati seeking what are the Wab and Aki seeking whenever we're pushing for environmental quality we're seeking to protect our ancestral homelands we're looking to protect the earth the the the plants the fish the animals that have sustained us and has sustained our people since time immemorial we're hoping that this place where we have lived since time immemorial can continue to be a safe place for future generations for our people so that we can call so they can call it home the same way that we have always called it home and really at the end of the day that's what it's about it's about fighting for for a stronger healthier environment so that all of us human plants and animal can all live in symbiosis and can all survive together in balance with one another so with that I think that Severin and I are are available to answer some questions if folks have them thank you so much thank you so much Corey and Severin I think this is an amazing thing for us to be talking about and learning about and exploring more ways to that we can you know to do everything we can to fight this so I wanted to just go back all the way up to the top of the chat really quickly I think Severin there was a question about the the meeting you mentioned on 12th and whether there would be like a remote access code I mean a link or if like if it would be virtual at all or if it's only in person there'll be plenty more meetings and we couldn't talk about that I just have to figure out if the raccoons ate the AV cord again oh no we're going to try to do it at the school this one so if you want to you can email cleanwater at greenhorns.org which is our website which is our email address pembrokecleanwater.com is the Pembroke Clean Water Committee where we are posting a lot of information and you should also look at the Friends of Cops Cook Bay which is another group that's formed to protect Cops Cook Bay and has been doing a great job canvassing in the community I think we're gonna be I will try to do it the answer your question is I will try can I bring up a couple of things that came up during chorus thing for me sure um so one thing to just say is that in the past five months all the three gas stations along route one that were previously locally owned have been bought up by shell so we all of our three local gas stations have just been purchased by shell number two I wanted to mention that there's significant conservation interests here in Cops Cook Bay who are not yet working necessarily on this mine issue because they're not sure if it is their mission yet and that we need to rally into the mission um we have nature conservancy we have down east coastal conservancy we have main coast heritage trust we have Cops Cook shores we have the moose horn wildlife refuge it's um about a quarter of washington county is under some form of conservation easement again because there's such extraordinary wildlife habitat the you know we have the highest density of bald eagles of any place in the lower united states we have manky whales we have right whales who come here we have humpback whales we have finback whales we have you know porpoises like this is a place where we make space and nature is alive and so I think there's a major work of convincing more partners in the conservation community to join in because the threat that wolfton presents is not just to our water here it's actually for opening up main and other rivers in main as well to this poisonous industry as I'm sure you know mining is the most poisonous industry in the world and um and the poisons are indelible so the article that I wanted to highlight that came out last week in the boston herald um and then it was posted all over the country um and I hope we do a rebuttal to it this week basically it was a um an article about a lithium mine in new remain which is allegedly a 1.5 billion dollar lithium deposit and the article said how is it that mains restrictive mining laws prevent this needed mineral from entering our green energy economy that's a industry line that's repeated all over the world as investment pours in to these extractive industries to try and intensify the mining uh the sites of mining and the sites um for investment to flow um and the restrictive mining laws that we have in main um will require a massive coalition in order to keep that industry from trying to open the the the law up further so I think it's a very important moment to make sure that we have a very big very strong coalition um working together I had one more thing but I better shut up I'll let Cory say something oh yeah I um I don't really have anything to add um but I'm happy to really have a few minutes left um I don't know if there are any other questions that came in from the audience that we might be able to answer um I think there's one from Nikki Sikara about um and Nikki do you want to unmute and ask your question about uh past Mokwati water district and um combined efforts with Sipak are you still there Nikki oops yeah hi sorry yeah I was just curious about um when you were talking about the past Mokwati water district and Sipak not having access to quality water if um the um the water district ever thought of considered exercising their powers of eminent domain to access better quality water and then maybe also combine that with providing um Sipak with better quality water that is a great question Nikki um I don't think and we meet with PWD on uh a semi-regular basis and I've never heard any discussion about them using their powers of eminent domain um they um and of all those alternate supplies that were identified um I think the only one that that might require that sort of use would be this Pembroke supply unless there was some sort of you know land acquisition or transfer worked out with the municipality or landowners um and so I don't think the conversation's advanced to that level um I think there's generally sort of a an aversion to um creating local rough ruffles and local politics um so like the PWD manager is um an elected official in the town of Perry and and all of the board is elected from the municipalities in the area although Pembroke is notably not a part of the district um so I think it would be possible to use powers of eminent domain we're trying to encourage um uh less sort of blunt tools um so for example we're hoping that there'll be a pretty big upgrade to the water supply um a cleaning um additive added to the process there um but you know our efforts here are not so much making this water supply in Pembroke a water supply right now it's more ensuring that the water's there forever right I mean who knows what the needs of this region will be you know maybe we can see in 10 or 20 years but how about 100 or 200 um if there's mining at any point in how in any window of time the risk that this water supply will be forever poisoned will just go up dramatically and so this isn't so much about securing a supply as it is protecting a supply um but your your point about eminent domain is a really good one um and it's one that will definitely be keeping in mind thank you so much and then I think Pam um had a question about um how someone who doesn't live in Pembroke anymore can help if anyone has lots enough we have lots of um lots of things to do we'd love more collaborators and I just want to say thank you so much to Alex who's updated the website thank you so much to Gavin who's updated the website thank you much to Colin who did videos and graphics there's been a lot of volunteerism um and trying to mobilize and um raise awareness because it's been a hard challenge getting anyone to really it's not fun to have to confront this poison and so how do we make it fun I don't know but we are we are gonna try and um we'll try with you one thing I just wanted to add is I've been speaking with a geologist down in Rockland who's been geology for 50 years he said the standards that are being used now to measure the protective um the protective measures that are being created around the the tailings and the leachate and the um um ore the spent ore and its storage which are which are under the mining law described as dry stack well that's all very well its current weather conditions but what about the weather of 100 years what about when it rains seven inches overnight what about when it rains and rains and rains and blows out all the roads um you know with climate change coming in this region like many regions experiencing unusual weather patterns um that reaction of cold wet place with the sulfur high sulfur metallic ore creates sulfuric acid and that sulfuric acid carves into the rock and it loosens heavy metals it loosens lead cadmium arsenic and those are poisons to life that persist in the environment you know one of the things we've learned about is the shellfish here are getting the settled out heavy metals from all the generating plants the the coal and industry from upper midwest and the east coast that blows down east and then deposits on our big beautiful clam flats and those metals are present in our shellfish and and they stay present so um anyway this solution to pollution is life and let's let life continue living here um in one of these places that it really can live and where I think if we're really honest I mean I talked to um Erin Bell at the plant sale in the spring and he's there you know selling all these plants for everyone's gardens I mean it's like the food security moment of the county where everyone gets their gardens every year and everybody's growing gardens and especially during COVID and he said there's probably 300 more families that he's feeding in Washington County than there were before COVID so like other places that are good habitat I think we should expect that more humans will migrate and need this water and more animals will migrate and need this water so that long-term perspective that Cory brings is thank you I just um I just received a question uh to meet directly and I want to just try to um answer it really quickly and then I have to jump off but the question was um whether there are opportunities coming to address this um with Department of Environmental Protection or in the state um and that's a perfect sort of jumping off point from here the answer is absolutely yes um there are going to be um some local efforts as Everett mentioned and folks should um please you know keep keep uh keep your eyes on your email for opportunities to sign on to petitions or letters of opposition stuff like that at the DEP um I think there's a pretty strong sense that um among some of us that have looked very hard at this that DEP is not being as stringent and in holding um Wolfton accountable for the potential impacts in other words they haven't really asked the hard questions um and there's a lot of ambiguity around what Wolfton's going to do where they're going to do it and what the impact and so I would encourage people to reach out to the Department of Environmental Protection reach out to the commissioner and let her know and let the governor know that mining by foreign corporations in Maine is not good for Maine it's bad for for all of us human and non-human and I would also say that there are going to be opportunities sort of little preview in the upcoming legislative session to support very direct ways to protect the water in Pembroke and I don't want to you know give too much on that front um but we will be sharing information in the next few weeks or month or so about how folks can directly weigh in with the legislature um in support of of policy efforts to really um strengthen Maine's mining laws and to make it much harder for anyone to mine in a way that would do harm to our precious people. Thank you. Thank you Cory um yeah there's a hand um mine it if you want to come off me and ask your question and I know we're kind of running over um so if people yeah I'm sorry I was having trouble with my assistant here of Norris so Cory what you're saying is exactly what we're encountering and fighting these industrial scale fish farms on the coast um and the issues are are broadly identical in terms of impact on water quality impact on wild fisheries impact on community and indigenous peoples rights um I'm thinking that we should cast a wide net and bring these issues together and say to the governor and the DEP you know you need to stop this you need to go back to that letter you read and read that this is the history of Maine bending over for foreign extraction and it does us no good in the near term or in the long term and it needs to stop. Amen um yeah I support that statement um and yes I do think that um that the state of Maine is a whole need to do a better job particularly when it comes into creating the impression that Maine is open for foreign business um and Maine is open for foreign businesses to destroy our home um I think that's a message that you know everyone should feel comfortable caring to the governor um don't tell or I sent you um but please feel free to uh to use your powers as uh as citizens um and as people with voices um and so with that I need to jump but um please uh do stay in touch I look forward to working with all of you. Gee while I want to chitch. Thank you Corey so much. Yeah thank you Corey and thank you Severin and Becky and everybody who's working on these issues and for this amazing presentation I think this was great and unfortunately we are out of time and I know that people would probably still have questions I know we have two questions in the chat from Sarah and Suzanne that I've written down we will get those answered offline if you have other questions that come up and want to reach out um we can get those answered as well and I will be sending them. We're happy to welcome you to come and see for yourself and walk the mine roads with us and strategize and photograph and write letters and canvas anybody who comes is welcome we have plenty of warm spots to you to sleep and good food to feed you. Yes and yeah and I will be including all of the information that um is up on the screen right now and the email address that's greenwateratgreenhorns.org so people can get in touch and stay get involved and thank you yeah thank you again to our speakers and thank you everybody who came to our community conversations and don't forget to you know keep in touch with us so you can follow the main chapter on social media and uh you can find us on line at crclub.org slash me all right have a wonderful rest of your tuesday everybody thanks everyone thanks Megan thank you