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	Podcast:		Local Features by WXPR
	Episode:		A Legacy Of Mine Waste: Groups Fight To Save Lake Superior Reef, Shoreline
	Category:		Government & Organizations
	Duration:		00:05:30
	Publish Date:		2020-06-04 05:36:00
	Description:		Standing at Grand Traverse Harbor on the Keweenaw Peninsula, a look right reveals picturesque yellow-sand beaches and unassuming seasonal homes. A look left includes nothing but a black shoreline on this part of the peninsula, which juts into Lake Superior in Upper Michigan. Jay Parent scooped up a handful of the pebbly black sand, which stretches out of sight on the shoreline. “It was this high stamp sand right here all the way across the harbor,” Parent says, gesturing more than head-high. Parent is a supervisor for the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE). He’s standing on an unending beach of “stamp sands,” the waste rock leftover from the historic “stamping” process to extract copper from ore. For decades in the 19 th and 20 th centuries, the Keweenaw Peninsula was home to more than 100 copper mines, and some of their copper ore went to two stamp mills, the Mohawk and Wolverine mills, in the community of Gay. Operating until 1932, the mills generated
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