Letter to the Editor: Conrad Letter Misleading

The Nov. 22 letter to the editor from Nathan Conrad, “executive director,” Natural Resource Development Association, is misleading. A few months ago, this person listed himself as “communications director.” His so-called “association” is listed as having only two people as associates. This man did not tell us he lives in Canada or that he is a paid lobbyist for mining. Is that ethical not to tell us that? 

In business, legal ethics require a registered agent of a business to notify people they deal with that they are a paid agent of a company. I attached a document to my correspondence showing substantiation that who I say this man is and what he does for a living is true. That document lists a small portion of the background of Mr. Conrad, who again omitted the fact that he lives in Canada and is a paid registered lobbyist for Aquila Resources. 

Mr. Conrad also does not tell us that people who work for the Michigan MDEQ found the information provided by his client – a small Canadian company that has almost no money – as being so flawed and inaccurate that the MDEQ review team was compelled to write a document titled “Findings of Fact and Conclusion of Law.” 

In this 46-page document, MDEQ writes how significant and necessary information was omitted, and pertinent information was altered in favor of a mine. The MDEQ team conclusion was to not recommend a mine.

Mr. Conrad’s article is fake news and intentionally misleading. This was done on behalf of a company that is so cowardly and desperate that it must pay people like Mr. Conrad to pretend there is actually an upside to the disaster this mine would be if allowed to go through. 

The moral of the story? Aquila is so desperate that it is paying a shill to try to bend the truth so much that the community is fooled into believing a mine would not do what a mine in Brazil just did: destroy an entire ecosystem. 

Tom Boerner

Kohler, Wisconsin