To the Journal editor:

State Senator Tom Casperson’s recent statement that he would support disclosure of the financial backer of the Marquette County Road 595 lawsuit if opponents would do the same, seems to be a devious effort to obscure the real issue.

The real concern is that a single powerful resource extraction interest is providing virtually all of the estimated $500,000 funding for the lawsuit and may be behind Sen. Casperson’s efforts to push the lawsuit forward.

There are at least eight organizations plus hundreds of Upper Michigan citizens that have opposed construction of this ill-conceived road. Most organizations are local grass roots groups with shoe-string budgets.

No one that I am aware of is funding legal costs to oppose the County Road 595 lawsuit. Just who is it that Senator Casperson is asking to provide financial disclosures?

At the end of December 2014, Marquette County Road Commission Chairman David Hall said that the commission hadn’t formally discussed a lawsuit nor had it explored raising funds for legal action.

Yet, less than 30 days later the Road Commission passed a resolution to sue, complete with the selection of a large downstate law firm to represent it.

On Jan. 21, Hall said he expected the lawsuit to be filed Tuesday in the U.S District Court. Thirteen days later, Feb. 3, it was announced that the group, Stand U.P., would be formed to fund the lawsuit.

The lawsuit, it seems, was moving forward before the funding was in place, unless, of course, funding had already been secretly agreed upon by special interests with deep pockets.

If that’s true, then the actual purpose of Stand U.P. is not to fund the lawsuit, but to hide the real funding source. If there is nothing wrong with the funding source, then why try so hard to hide it?

Even in the very unlikely event that the Road Commission would prevail against the federal government, County Road 595 will almost certainly never be built, because no one could justify spending $100 million on a road that would be obsolete by the time it’s completed.

Then who would benefit from the lawsuit? Perhaps the ultimate goal of the lawsuit is to provide justification for weakening our country’s clean water protections to benefit the special interests funding the lawsuit.

I predict that the EPA will prevail in the lawsuit, and that Sen. Casperson will use the loss to attack environmental safeguards.

William Malmsten

Ishpeming