EDITOR’S NOTE — August 27, 2026
This article contained an error in its central figure. The correction is set out here in full. The finding it replaces is stronger, not weaker.
The article treated the $6,479,089 surety disclosed in Highland Copper’s audited financial statements as financial assurance against closure and reclamation, and framed the story as a shortfall between that amount and a closure estimate of roughly $37 million. That was wrong.
In a records response on August 24, Melanie Humphrey, a mining specialist with the Geologic Resources Management Division of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, confirmed that the $6,479,089 consists of two surety bonds covering early site works. It is not closure assurance and was never intended to be.
The corrected picture is this. Special Condition N.1 of Nonferrous Metallic Mineral Mining Permit MP 01 2012 sets the closure and reclamation estimate for Copperwood at $37,960,000 — a figure this article previously reported as approximately $37 million on the authority of a law review article, and which is now confirmed directly from the state’s permit record. EGLE’s Geologic Resources Management Division has not received financial assurance in that amount. Because posting that assurance is a condition of the permit taking effect, the mining permit has been issued but is not yet effective.
The article asked whether the bond was large enough. The correct question is narrower: the closure bond has not been posted at all.
The reporters to whom the earlier version was sent were notified of this correction directly. The original text below is unaltered.
This article was originally published on August 14, 2026, under the title “Copperwood Mine: The $31 Million Hole in the Cleanup Fund.” The headline has been changed to reflect the corrected finding; the subtraction it described was based on the error corrected above.
— Don Dey, Editor
____________________________________________________________________________
In 2012, the State of Michigan put a price on cleaning up the Copperwood Mine.
Not the cost of building it. The cost of undoing it — tearing down the buildings, breaking out the concrete, capping the waste pond, flooding and sealing the tunnels, pumping contaminated water for years afterward, and watching the site for two decades after that. The cost the state would have to pay a contractor to do all of it, if the company that dug the hole couldn’t or wouldn’t.
number is written into the mining permit, exact to the dollar:
$37,960,000. (1)
Here is what the State of Michigan actually holds against it today:
$6,479,089. (2)
About seventeen cents on the dollar. And the $37,960,000 is a 2012 price — the permit says so in its own words, “as of the date this permit was issued.” (1) Anyone who has paid for a roof, a well, or a stretch of driveway since 2012 knows what has happened to that kind of money in fourteen years.
Let me say plainly what I am not claiming
I am not saying this mine will fail. I am not saying anyone has broken a law. I am not against copper, or jobs, or Wakefield finally getting a break. Highland Copper has done real work on that site already — roughly 18 acres of new wetland and some 20,000 native trees and plants, planted before a single ton of ore has been mined. (3) That deserves saying out loud.
This isn’t an argument about fish or vents or viewsheds. Other people are having that argument and they don’t need my help. This is an argument about arithmetic, and it’s aimed as much at people who want this mine as at people who don’t.
Because if the mine works, none of this money is ever spent. The bond gets released bit by bit as the company cleans up behind itself, and everybody goes home. This money only ever gets spent one way: the company stops, and the rest of us are holding the bag.
That’s what a cleanup bond is. It isn’t a fee. It isn’t a tax. It’s the insurance policy the public holds in case the whole thing goes sideways. Nobody buys insurance expecting the house to burn.
What the money has to cover
The permit spells it out. The fund must be enough to cover what it costs the state “to administer, and to hire a third party to implement” the reclamation — including cleaning up any contamination of the air, surface water, or groundwater that breaks the permit’s rules. (4)
Hire a third party. That phrase is the whole thing. It assumes the company isn’t there.
And the job is long. Under the permit, contaminated water gets pumped out of the tailings facility to a treatment plant for at least five years after mining stops. (5) The site gets monitored for twenty years after the state signs off on reclamation. (6) Somebody pays for those decades. The bond is the answer to who.
The number was supposed to be updated. I can’t find the updates.
The state knew a 2012 estimate wouldn’t hold. So the permit requires the company to file a fresh reclamation cost estimate with the state’s Upper Peninsula District Geologist on or before March 15 of every third year after the permit was issued. (7) A separate condition requires the company to periodically update the amount of financial assurance itself. (8)
On that schedule, updates were due in 2015, 2018, 2021, and 2024.
I have not been able to find them in the public file. I am asking the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy for them, and I will publish what comes back. If they exist and show a higher number, that’s important. If they exist and show the same number, that’s important too. If they don’t exist, that is the most important answer of the three.
What’s actually on deposit
The $6,479,089 is a surety bond — an insurance product, not cash in a vault. Highland Copper put up $2,267,680 behind it, about 35 percent. (2)
The paperwork was couriered to Lansing in July 2023 and accepted in about four business days. (9)
The amount also goes down as well as up. In late 2025, Highland got $240,188 back from that deposit as some site work was finished. (10)
And in the company’s own audited books, the amount formally set aside for reclamation is smaller still: $1,722,673, with the payments imagined 16 to 35 years in the future. (11)
One honest caveat: whether that $6.48 million is the mining permit’s financial assurance at a partial amount, or money posted under separate wetland and stream permits for early site work, isn’t clear from the public file. I am asking. I’ll publish whatever comes back.
A quarter of it never has to be money
This is the part I’d underline if I could underline one thing.
Michigan’s rules say that real financial instruments — a bond, a letter of credit, a trust, something the state can actually cash — have to cover at least 75 percent of the required amount.
The other 25 percent can be satisfied by something the rules call a “statement of financial responsibility.” (12)
That is a document. It is the company saying, on paper, that it is good for the money.
On a $37.96 million requirement, roughly $9.5 million can lawfully be a promise instead of a fund. Which raises a question worth asking out loud: whose promise, and backed by what?
Who gets paid first if it all goes wrong
Here’s the part that took me longest to understand, so let me put it the way I’d explain it across a kitchen table.
Imagine a man who owes the township money for a cleanup. Before that bill ever came due, he had already mortgaged his house and signed over everything he owns to a bank. When he goes under, the bank is first in line. The township gets whatever is left, which is usually nothing.
That’s roughly the position Michigan is in.
The permit is held by Copperwood Resources Inc., a Michigan company. It’s owned, through a chain, by Highland Copper Company — a small firm in Vancouver, traded on a junior stock exchange, that has never operated a mine and has no revenue. (13)
A Toronto financing company called Osisko already holds a mortgage on the Copperwood property, plus a claim on essentially everything Highland owns — including the shares of Copperwood Resources Inc. itself. (14) Not the copper. The company.
Highland is also working to turn a federal Export-Import Bank letter of interest, up to $250 million, into a construction loan. (15) That’s not signed yet. If it is signed, that lender gets secured too.
So if Highland fails, one and likely two sophisticated creditors stand ahead of the State of Michigan — holding claims on the very property and the very company that owe the cleanup. Michigan’s claim beyond the bond would be unsecured. Which is a formal way of saying: at the back of the line.
One more thing about “fully permitted”
Highland describes Copperwood as fully permitted. It’s worth knowing what’s still outstanding.
The tailings disposal facility — the dammed impoundment that would hold the mine’s waste for good — does not yet have its final dam safety permit. What exists is a preliminary approval, a “permit in concept,” extended more than once. (16) The mining permit itself bars construction of that facility until the state approves the final plans and specifications. (17)
That’s not a scandal. Projects get permitted in stages. But “fully permitted” and “the waste dam still needs its permit” are both being said about the same project, and only one of them is on a state document.
Three questions for the state
I am sending these to the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy today. I will publish the answers here, whatever they say — including any that show I’ve gotten something wrong.
Have the reclamation cost estimate updates required by Permit Condition F.6 been filed for 2015, 2018, 2021, and 2024 — and what is the department’s current closure cost estimate in today’s dollars?
Does the department intend to accept a statement of financial responsibility for any portion of Copperwood’s financial assurance, and if so, from which entity and on what financial statements?
What conditions remain outstanding before Mining Permit MP 01 2012 becomes effective?
If this mine is as solid as the people building it believe, then posting a full bond costs the company very little and costs the rest of us nothing. If the company can’t post a full bond, that tells you something too.
“Make them post a real bond” is not anti-mining. It’s anti-getting-stiffed.
A note on how this was written
I want to be straight with you about what this is and what it isn’t.
I am one person in Gogebic County working from public records. I am not a newsroom. There is no fact-checking desk behind me, no lawyer reading this before it posts, no editor telling me to hold it another week.
Everything above is written in good faith from documents anyone can pull up: the mining permit the State of Michigan issued in 2012, Michigan’s administrative rules, the state’s own mining permit files, and Highland Copper’s audited financial statements filed with securities regulators. Every number is footnoted to its source so you don’t have to take my word for any of it. Where I wasn’t sure, I said so in the text rather than smoothing it over.
I have questions out to the state that are not yet answered. Ordinarily I’d wait. I’m not waiting, because decisions about this project are being made right now — by regulators, by lawmakers, by the company’s board, and by people in this county who deserve to be asking about the money while it still matters. Publishing after the decisions are made is a different job than the one I’m trying to do.
So: this is my best effort with what I could gather as of publication. If the state’s answers change any of it, I will say so plainly, here, and I will not quietly edit the original. If you find an error, write to me and I’ll correct it and credit you.
That’s the deal.
The Lake Superior Register is written in Gogebic County, Michigan. Corrections welcome and will be published.
Sources
Nonferrous Metallic Mineral Mining Permit No. MP 01 2012, Special Permit Conditions, § N.1: “The total financial assurance estimated for the Copperwood Mine for reclamation costs at the closure stage of production is determined to be $37,960,000 as of the date this permit was issued.” Permit issued April 30, 2012, by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (now EGLE) to Orvana Resources US Corp; the subsidiary was later acquired by Highland Copper and renamed Copperwood Resources Inc.
Highland Copper Company Inc., Consolidated Financial Statements for the years ended June 30, 2025 and 2024: surety bond secured July 2023 as financial assurance for the Copperwood Project, valued at $6,479,089, with a cash deposit of $2,267,680 representing 35 percent. Available at highlandcopper.com, investor filings.
Highland Copper press release, January 27, 2026: 2025 concurrent reclamation, including approximately 18 acres of compensating wetlands and approximately 20,000 native trees and plants.
Mining Permit MP 01 2012, § N.1; Mich. Admin. Code R. 425.301(2). The rule requires the estimate to include, at minimum, reclamation; remediation of permit-violating contamination; administrative oversight; reasonable contingencies; and other necessary environmental protection measures.
Mining Permit MP 01 2012, Special Permit Conditions, § O.9.
Mining Permit MP 01 2012, Special Permit Conditions, § K.30: post-closure monitoring period of 20 years following completion and approval of reclamation.
Mining Permit MP 01 2012, General Permit Conditions, § F.6.
Mining Permit MP 01 2012, Special Permit Conditions, § N.2.
EGLE MiEnviro Portal, Copperwood site file (registration P0304): correspondence regarding financial assurance document shipment, July 26 – August 2, 2023.
Highland Copper Company Inc., Condensed Interim Consolidated Financial Statements for the periods ended December 31, 2025.
Highland Copper Company Inc., annual financial statements (June 30, 2025): asset retirement obligation, undiscounted cash flow of $1,722,673 for early-works reclamation and monitoring wells, payments modeled in years 16, 17, and 35 from construction start.
Mich. Admin. Code R. 425.301(3). In deciding how much of the balance may be met by a statement of financial responsibility, the department considers the operator’s ability to pay for potential remediation costs, whether it carries pollution or environmental liability insurance, and whether it holds third-party certification of an environmental management system.
Highland Copper Company Inc. trades on the TSX Venture Exchange (HI) and OTCQB (HDRSF), headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. Company filings at highlandcopper.com.
Highland Copper Company Inc., annual financial statements (June 30, 2024 and 2025), Osisko royalty notes: mortgage on the Copperwood property and general security agreement over company assets, including a pledge of the shares of Copperwood Resources Inc.
Highland Copper press release, September 2025: non-binding Letter of Interest from the Export-Import Bank of the United States for potential debt financing of up to US$250 million.
Part 315 dam safety permit status for the Copperwood tailings disposal facility, EGLE permit file. This is the one item in this article I am reporting from my own review of the state’s file rather than from a document I can link directly. I am asking EGLE to confirm the current status and will publish the answer.
Mining Permit MP 01 2012, Special Permit Conditions, § F.1: construction of the tailings disposal facility shall not begin until the permittee demonstrates the design is consistent with Rule 425.409 and receives approval of plans and specifications from the department.