Environmentalists worry that a small mining company’s lobbying push in Georgia is unduly influencing the state’s permitting process for a proposed mine that the Biden administration has said will threaten a wildlife refuge and the endangered species it protects.
The Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) on Feb. 9 published a draft permit for Twin Pines Minerals LLC’s proposed titanium dioxide and zirconium mine near Okefenokee Swamp. The draft permit is available for public comment for 60 days.
The mine is planned for a site about three miles outside the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge on a low ridge that helps to contain the Okefenokee Swamp. The Okefenokee is North America’s largest blackwater swamp and is considered one of the East Coast’s most biologically diverse wild places. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has warned that the mine would drain the swamp, and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in 2022 urged Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) to avoid permitting the mine.
The state is proceeding with permitting despite the federal government’s pleas to protect the swamp.
Bill Sapp, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, said that the state’s completion of a draft permit does not indicate that it will issue a final permit.
“It is critical that as many people as possible write in and ask questions of the EPD in this case,” Sapp said. “If it was issued in the current form, it would not protect the Okefenokee or the Saint Mary’s River from decreases in elevation of water in those water bodies.”
But Joshua Marks, a lawyer and president of Georgians for the Okefenokee, said Alabama-based Twin Pines and its executives, which have no other operations in Georgia, are large donors to Kemp and Rep. Jon Burns (R), speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, influencing the state’s permitting process and pending legislation that would block the mine.
The Okefenokee Protection Act, a bipartisan Georgia state House bill with more than 90 cosponsors, would have blocked the state from issuing a permit to Twin Pines, but the bill has died twice in committee.
The company’s “contributions to and lobbying of Governor Kemp are the only plausible explanation for why he and Georgia EPD have ignored the science,” Marks said, adding that if the state issues a final permit, “there will be immediate legal challenges in Georgia court that will highlight the myriad ways the permit violates Georgia law.”
Kemp spokesman Garrison Douglas said the permitting process is “completely independent” under state and federal regulations, and declined to comment further. Georgia EPD spokeswoman Sara Lips declined to comment about political donations and lobbying but said the agency will require Twin Pines to strictly adhere to rigorous rules and regulations.
Twin Pines president Steve Ingle declined to respond to specific questions but said in a statement that Twin Pines is pleased that EPD has issued draft permits.
The titanium dioxide found in southern Georgia is used in paint pigments and sunscreens, and has been studied for use in solar photovoltaic cells.
“The exhaustive hydrology, geology, biology, and herpetology studies, as we have said all along, have been validated,” he said. “We expect stringent government oversight of our mining-to-reclamation project which will be fully protective of the Okefenokee Wildlife Refuge and the region’s environment.”
Geoff Haskett, president of the National Wildlife Refuge Association, said the mine would damage the hydrology of the swamp and possibly dry it up to the point that the refuge’s canoe trails could become unusable.
“Even a small decline in water could lead to catastrophic wildfires in peatland systems like the Okefenokee Swamp during a drought,” Haskett said. “There are places where mining is appropriate—this is definitely not one of them.”
The Interior Department, which did not respond to a request for comment, is concerned that the mine would damage the swamp’s hydrology, harm the swamp’s ecosystem, and affect the ancestral homelands of the Muscogee Nation, Haaland wrote.
US Fish and Wildlife Service officials wrote in 2019 they were concerned that the sand removal and processing on a sandy ridge to the east of the refuge could dry up the swamp and increase wildfire frequency there.
Legal Fight
Twin Pines and its proposed mine had been embroiled in a long-running legal battle over federal Clean Water Act jurisdiction at the site.
The Army Corps of Engineers during the Trump administration determined that wetlands on the mine site weren’t considered waters of the US, or WOTUS, under the Clean Water Act, but the Corps reversed that decision when a Trump-era rule that lifted protections for many wetlands nationwide was tossed out.
The Army Corps backpedaled again in 2022 when it settled with Twin Pines without explanation, declaring again that the wetlands at the mine site aren’t federally protected waters.
The National Wildlife Refuge Association and three other groups challenged the decision in federal court but dropped the case in September. Sapp said the groups filed to dismiss the lawsuit because the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Sackett v. EPA rendered the lawsuit moot.
The ruling lifted federal protections for isolated wetlands like those found at Twin Pines’ mine site because they do not have a continuous surface connection to larger federally protected water bodies.
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