For felony theft with use of force, you can’t beat the pollution industry. And when it comes to toxic contamination of Lake Superior, government and corporate collusion, and its protectors in the court system, are like Goliaths to our David-ish environmental efforts.

Yes, you’ll look hard and long for an example of a corporate polluter who was named, indicted, prosecuted and jailed for environmental crimes. 

1974: After a year-long federal trial, Reserve Mining was found to be poisoning the Big Lake with taconite mine tailings (two tons of waste into the Lake for every ton of taconite), and was temporarily closed in 1974. Even though the chairman of the company, C. William Verity, took the stand and lied under oath -- testifying that Reserve’s waste wasn’t dangerous -- nobody went to jail. Only the presiding judge, US District Court Judge Miles Lord, was reprimanded – because he had angrily chastised the company in open court for its reckless endangerment.

1992: On June 30, a Burlington Northern freight train derailed on a bridge over the Nemadji River south of Superior. One of its tank cars full of carcinogenic benzene and toluene broke open, pouring 22,000 gallons into the river (which carried it into the Lake), hoisting a cloud of toxic fumes across Superior, Superior Bay, Park Point and up the North Shore, and sent 25 people to hospital. Local residents were ordered to evacuate, and around 50,000 did. Was Burlington Northern not a thief of clean water? Wasn’t the derailment a violent theft of the peace and justice, at least for the panicked drivers trying to flee but stuck in huge traffic jams? No person was prosecuted, indicted or even named. BN was fined $1.5 million by the EPA. With $22 billion in operating revenue, the penalty was one fourteen-thousandths (1/14,000th) of the firm’s book, what Ellen DeGeneres calls BN “change lost in the couch.”

1959 to 1962: Honeywell Corporation got the Army Corps of Engineers to haul at least 1,457 barrels of hazardous wastes -- including chromium, benzene, PCBs, arsenic, lead, acetone and cadmium -- out into the Lake and throw them in the water between Duluth and Two Harbors. If the drums didn’t sink right away, some of the “engineers” shot holes in them with rifles, rather defeating the purpose of the barrel. Up to 440 tons of this corporate/military waste is still in the lake. Most has never been located, including 496 barrels that were dumped near Knife River. Have those drums corroded away  dispersing their contents into the water  residents of all ages have had to drink, cook with and bath in for decades? No agency, group or municipality has brought charges against the parties responsible for this criminality. Meanwhile the cancer wards are humming along, a growth industry in ol’ D town.

2012: NSP/Xcel’s $40 million clean-up plan for its contaminated Superfund Site on Ashland’s Chequamegon Bay ought to raise an eyebrow. With poly-aromatic hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds, heavy metals and tar all found in ground water, soil, and lake sediments, NSP/Xcel is “treating” some underlying ground water and sinking new wells. Xcel/NSP has agreed to remove the worst of contaminated soils from the site, and from Kreher Park, and to then “treat it on-site” and then re-used it somehow. Xcel/NSP claims to have a way to “contain and stop the movement of contaminants in groundwater,” and it plans to “treat the groundwater in-place.” The bill for polishing up its turd is a coin tossed to a beggar to the $11 billion firm, hardly more than the $38 million Xcel gave to charity in 2013.

Lake Superior Defender Gets the Book Thrown

Now comes Iron County district Attorney Marty Lipske with felony charges against Katie Kloth, 26, who hasn’t got the material wealth of a dish washer. Ms. Kloth was caught on camera, along with a group of comrades, screaming threats at a group of GTac mining company prospectors last June. Ms. Kloth was filmed grabbing somebody’s camera and throwing it into the bush. She and her friends are part of a wild-eyed international campaign to protect Lake Superior from toxic mine drainage. They don’t believe GTac’s corporate assurances that permanent contamination of the Big Lake and First Nation rice beds will not inevitably result from permitting it to dig its mine and toss its mine waste into the Bad River Watershed. Considering the record of industrial pollution of L. Superior, who in their right mind would?

As mistaken as it is to try to scare insulated corporate polluters by throwing cans and shouting threats at them, the severity of Lipske’s charges against Ms. Kloth -- and the vindictiveness of his repeated refusal to consider plea agreements with lesser offenses -- are the stuff of caricature. Kloth is no shrinking violet, but neither is the former Student Body President at UW Stevens Point any danger to the public. Save that slur for Reserve Mining, Honeywell, the Army Corps, Burlington Northern and Xcel.

Mr. Lipske got his felony conviction, and in January Judge Doug Fox sentenced Kloth to 9 months in jail and 5 years of probation. She’s stuck in Hurley’s Iron County jail until October. Judge Fox’s harsh sentence is typical but his heavy handedness won’t intimidate any realists in the anti-pollution crowd. Judge Fox did get one point right at sentencing when he told Kloth, “You feel strongly about mining, but this had nothing to do about mining.”

Right judge, the DA’s over-charging and hissing venom had to do with the fact that Ms. Kloth refused to name her comrades. They were also caught on film but wore masks. Katie’s steadfast solidarity kept the prosecutor from feathering his nest with a big score and currying ever more favor with the GTac marauders. It’s not dog-eat-dog in this case, but cat-eat-bird.

The downside is that Kloth has to take the rap for the others and- because the jail’s so small and so few women are jailed -- she’s stuck doing a lot of solitary. As isolating and lonely as that can be, at least she can turn the TV off. Either that or watch another news report of corporate criminals getting off scot free.

-- John LaForge works for Nukewatch, edits its Quarterly newsletter and lives on the Plowshares Land Trust near Luck, Wisc.