MILEPOST 7 was installed at Joseph Nease Gallery in summer 2023

Outside of Silver Bay, Minnesota and not far from Lake Superior is a hidden taconite tailings pond called MILEPOST 7. Over three square miles in size and soon potentially expanding, Milepost 7 began housing waste for Reserve Mining's taconite operations on the shores of Lake Superior in 1980. Before building the tailings pond, Reserve Mining (now Northshore Mining) had been disposing taconite processing waste into Lake Superior - one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world - for decades, polluting the drinking water of the people who make their homes in the Twin Ports of Duluth and Superior and along the north shore of of the lake.

Although functioning and monitored inlands tailing ponds are safer than dumping waste tailings into fresh water supplies, the increasingly covert nature of mining practices is cause for concern. The Minnesota DNR has never required Northshore to obtain a dam safety permit for the Milepost 7 dams (source here). How much of our regional environment are we blocked from accessing? What exists in these hidden places, places hidden both physically and informationally? Considering the potential danger of these controlled and concealed areas, how can we have a symbiotic and holistic relationship with our surrounding environment?

Read more about Milepost 7 here

Composition, video, and recording / Sara Pajunen
Audio from Inland Steel Tailings Basin (47.596689914769534, -92.45682683325963)