Latest news with #BoundaryWaters
E&E News
2 days ago
- Politics
- E&E News
Minnesota Dems in hot seat over Boundary Waters mining
Environmental groups are pushing Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz and state lawmakers to put up a firewall to the Trump administration's push for mining near the state's pristine Boundary Waters. The fight over the proposed nickel and copper mine near the sprawling wilderness area could end up serving as a prime example of conservation groups seeking relief at the state level to curb Trump administration policies. But it's not a slam dunk in a state where the Democratic Party doesn't have a unified stance on mining and some lawmakers walk a fine line between supporting projects to boost the economy while also prioritizing environmental protection. Advertisement 'Most state elected officials do not want to touch this,' said Chris Knopf, executive director of Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness. 'Candidly … it's cultural, and it's about money that supports candidates.'
New York Times
06-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Americans Fought Off This Awful Idea in Trump's Bill
It's easy to become smug and believe the great outdoors exists only west of the 100th meridian. As a child growing up in Salt Lake City, I was half a day's drive from America's Red Rock Wilderness and Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands and Arches national parks. We camped in Utah's national forests — from the Wasatch Mountains to the Uintas. But my Western land bias was shattered this spring, when I made a pilgrimage to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota. Known by some as the 'People's Wilderness,' these 1.1 million acres of lakes framed by boreal forests and wetlands is a liquid landscape unlike any other, wild with wolves, lynx, loons, moose and an astonishing variety of warblers. To a desert dweller, the Boundary Waters are dizzying and blinding with a brilliance of light that I have not encountered elsewhere. When it rains, water bodies appear as a book's marbled end sheets with swirls of gunmetal gray, indigo and silver. With Becky Rom, the 76-year-old founder of Save the Boundary Waters, an environmental advocacy group, as my guide, the wild bounty offered solace to my weary soul in these wrought times. The locals' love of these lands inspired me in a way I hadn't been since my days as a young activist in the American West. What I knew then and feel more deeply now is that open lands inspire open minds. This is the open space of democracy. America's public lands are safe — for now. A provision proposed by Senator Mike Lee of Utah in the Republicans' budget reconciliation bill that would have required the Bureau of Land Management to sell as much as 1.225 million acres of public lands is dead. It died when Mr. Lee raised a white flag in defeat. It died because, in addition to Democrats, four Republican senators from Montana and Idaho refused to vote for it. It died because five Republican House representatives from Western states said it was a 'poison pill.' And it died because over 100 conservation groups and public lands advocates, as well as hunters, anglers, ranchers, recreationists and right-wing influencers said no. Mr. Lee claimed in each of his many revisions of the proposal that disposing of our public lands was a way to address the housing crisis. But that was a ruse; housing experts have said it wouldn't have made a dent in the problem. What the senator wanted was to establish a precedent — to normalize selling off our public lands to generate cash to pay for tax cuts. Open that door, and the open space of democracy closes. That is what conservation groups, such as Save the Boundary Waters and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, understand and have been fighting for decades. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
CTV News
12-06-2025
- Business
- CTV News
Trump administration moves to lift Biden-era mining restrictions near Boundary Waters in Minnesota
MINNEAPOLIS — President Donald Trump's administration is moving to lift restrictions on copper-nickel mining that the Biden administration imposed near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northeastern Minnesota. The decision, announced Wednesday by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, threw a lifeline to the proposed Twin Metals Minnesota mine near Ely. Democratic administrations have tried to kill the project because of what they called the threat of acid mine drainage into Boundary Waters, the country's most-visited federally designated wilderness area. Twin Metals is owned by Chilean mining giant Antofagasta. President Barack Obama's administration declined to renew the company's mineral rights leases in the area in 2016. The first Trump administration reinstated those leases in 2019. President Joe Biden's administration canceled the leases again in 2022 and imposed a 20-year moratorium on mining known as a 'mineral withdrawal' in a 350-square-mile (900-square-kilometer) area of the Superior National Forest upstream from the wilderness that includes the proposed underground mine site. Trump has singled out copper as a focus of his domestic minerals policy and promised during a campaign stop in St. Cloud, Minnesota, last year that he would quickly reverse the moratorium. The Boundary Waters is managed by the U.S. Forest Service, which is part of the Agriculture Department, putting it under Rollins' purview, and the leases are controlled by Burgum's Interior Department. 'After careful review, including extensive public input, the US Forest Service has enough information to know the withdrawal was never needed,' Rollins posted on X. 'We look forward to working with Sec. Burgum to pursue American Energy Dominance and reverse the costly and disastrous policies of the Biden Administration.' Twin Metals spokesperson Kathy Graul praised the Trump administration for beginning the process of reversing the Biden administration's decision, which she said was 'based on a deeply flawed assessment' that failed to consider environmental safeguards the company built into its project design. The company argues that its mine design will prevent acid discharges, and that the best way to determine whether it's safe is by allowing it to undergo a formal environmental review process, which the state canceled in 2022. 'Overturning the mineral withdrawal will allow Minnesota the opportunity to become a global leader in the much-needed domestic production of minerals under some of the most rigorous environment and labor standards in the world,' Graul said in a statement. But critics disputed her claim about public input, pointing out that the Trump administration has not conducted a formal public comment process on the policy reversal. 'The announcement by Secretaries Burgum and Rollins is shocking,' Ingrid Lyons, executive director of Save the Boundary Waters, said in a statement. 'They claim to have consulted with the people of Minnesota about the Boundary Waters when they clearly have not.' Democratic U.S. Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota scoffed at the secretary's claim about a 'careful review,' saying on X that the administration is 'using pseudoscience to justify bad actions' and predicting that the decision will be challenged in court. 'Not this mine. Not this place. The Boundary Waters are too precious,' Smith said. Republican U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, who represents northeastern Minnesota and has championed the region's iron and copper-nickel mining industries, said the Biden-era decision was a 'massive wrong' that only 'further cemented our reliance on Communist China' for critical minerals. 'As the demand for critical minerals continues to skyrocket, I look forward to seeing Minnesota's skilled miners safely deliver our vast mineral wealth to the nation using the best labor and environmental standards in the world,' Stauber said in a statement. Twin Metals is separate from two other proposed copper-nickel mines in Minnesota, the NewRange project formerly known as PolyMet, near Hoyt Lakes, which remains stalled by regulatory and court setbacks, and Talon Metals, near McGregor, which the Biden administration supported. Steve Karnowski, The Associated Press
E&E News
11-06-2025
- Business
- E&E News
Mining provision getting yanked from Republican megabill
House Republican leaders on Tuesday moved to ax a mining provision from their tax cut, energy and national security megabill because of procedural concerns. The House-passed bill would reverse Biden-era mining limits in Minnesota's Superior National Forest near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The legislation would also reinstate leases for a stalled copper and nickel mining project from the company Twin Metals, which were canceled by the Biden administration. Advertisement House Republicans are now moving to scrap the provisions without having to vote again on the 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act' before formally sending it to the Senate.
The Guardian
06-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Minnesota's boundary waters are pristine. Trump's ‘Big, Beautiful Bill' could pollute them forever
The story is co-published with Public Domain, an investigative newsroom that covers public lands, wildlife and government A little-known provision of Donald Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill' would open thousands of acres of public lands at the edge of Minnesota's Boundary Waters wilderness to a foreign-owned mining company. The move amounts to a giveaway 'in perpetuity' to a company that has lobbied in Washington for years, environmental campaigners say, potentially opening up one of the US's most famous wilderness areas to water-pollution risks. Earlier this month, conservationists cheered when Congress withdrew from the reconciliation bill several provisions that would have sold off hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land in Nevada and Utah. Those provisions had sparked fury among public land advocates and staunch opposition even from some Republicans, including the representative Ryan Zinke of Montana, who vowed to oppose the bill if the land sell-off provisions were retained. Despite that fury, a lesser-known public lands giveaway remained in the reconciliation bill. If approved as currently written, the provision could lease in perpetuity land near Minnesota's Boundary Waters wilderness, an enormous complex of pristine lakes and untrammeled forests, to Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining giant Antofagasta PLC. Becky Rom, the national chair of Save the Boundary Waters, a campaign to protect the wilderness area from mining, described the provision as 'a giveaway of critical and sensitive federal public land forever to a single mining company'. 'It is a giveaway,' Rom added. 'This is forever.' First set aside by Congress in 1964, the 1.1m-acre Boundary Waters canoe area wilderness, as it is officially known, is the only large-scale protected sub-boreal forest in the lower 48 states. Each year, some 150,000 visitors come to partake in the all-American tradition of canoe travel and enjoy a pristine landscape where wolves, moose, loons, bears and bald eagles thrive. Those who come to explore it help contribute to Minnesota's $13.5bn outdoor recreation economy. According to the US Forest Service, the landscape contains 'healthy forests with extremely high water quality'. It is 'irreplaceable'. But the boundary waters also sit atop mineral-rich lands. Antofagasta has for years sought to develop a copper and nickel mine on public land near the wilderness, amid the headwaters that feed its famous lakes. The company and its American subsidiary, Twin Metals Minnesota, came close to success during the first Trump administration, which overturned an Obama-era denial and renewed mining leases for the project. The Biden administration, recognizing the threat the proposed mine posed to the environment, subsequently rescinded those discretionary leases, arguing that they were legally deficient. The Biden administration also issued an order that prohibited mining for 20 years in the portion of the Superior national forest where Antofagasta wants to extract copper and nickel. Twin Metals Minnesota, which declined to comment for this story, filed litigation to fight the Biden policies in court. That lawsuit is ongoing. Meanwhile, the companies went to Capitol Hill in their quest to build their mine, which they say will directly employ more than 750 people and could revitalize 'the entire region'. In the last three years alone, Antofagasta and Twin Metals have poured more than $1.6m dollars into lobbying efforts in Washington DC, according to OpenSecrets. Among the lobbying shops they retained is Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, the powerful firm that was the long-time home of David Bernhardt, interior secretary during Trump's first term. Brownstein's employees and its political action committee, in turn, were together among the top 10 donors last election cycle to the campaign committee of representative Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, the powerful chair of the House natural resources committee. Last month, that lobbying apparently bore fruit. Westerman's committee unveiled its portion of the president's reconciliation bill and it contained a major win for Antofagasta and Twin Metals. The bill, which passed the House and is now being considered by the Senate, includes provisions that rescind the Biden administration's 20-year mining prohibition in the Superior national forest and grants Twin Metals 20-year mining leases to pursue its copper-nickel project on nearly 6,000 acres (2,500 hectares) of public land near the boundary waters. It also grants Twin Metals rights in perpetuity to lease renewals and it prohibits judicial review of the leases, meaning that citizens cannot sue to challenge them. Only one party retains rights to judicial review per the legislation: Twin Metals. If the federal government fails to comply with the reconciliation bill, Twin Metals can sue to enforce it. 'The reconciliation bill compels the issuance of four leases forever,' said Rom. 'To get there it, expressly overrides four federal laws, it expressly overrides BLM regulations, so all of those rules that apply to everybody else in the world, the laws, the regulations, for Antofagasta they don't apply.' 'There is a heavy hand in here,' she added. 'The heavy hand of Antofagasta.' Neither Antofagasta nor Westerman's office responded to requests for comment. Twin Metals has said its mine will provide a supply of strategic minerals that are important to national security and the emerging green energy economy. For conservationists like Rom – who grew up helping her father run an outfitting business in the Boundary Waters wilderness and has since spent decades working to protect the wilderness area – the major threat from Twin Metals' proposed mine is water pollution. That threat was described in a 2016 letter by the US Forest Service, when it initially denied its consent to the Twin Metals mine leases during the waning days of the Obama administration. There is 'inherent potential risk that development of a regionally-untested copper-nickel sulfide ore mine within the same watershed as the BWCAW might cause serious and irreplaceable harm to this unique, iconic, and irreplaceable wilderness area'. The agency's letter particularly drew attention to the risk of acid mine drainage, a potent form of water pollution that is a well-known risk of the sort of sulfide-ore mining that Twin Metals and Antofagasta wish to undertake. Any drainage from the 'mine workings and mining wastes are likely to be highly acidic', the agency said of the Twin Metals mine. Any failure to contain such waste could have 'potentially severe consequences for the BWCAW' and could 'cover a very broad region'. Twin Metals Minnesota has denied that acid mine drainage will be a potential threat, calling it a 'nonissue'. As the reconciliation bill moves through the Senate, conservationists as well as their allies in Congress are hoping it will be stripped out of the bill before it lands on Trump's desk. They argue, among other things, that the bill's Twin Metals provision may run afoul of Senate rules governing the reconciliation process, which disallows the body from including 'extraneous provisions' in budget bills. Among the opponents of the Twin Metals provision is Minnesota's junior senator, Tina Smith, though the state's congressional delegation is split on the issue. 'Senator Smith strongly opposes the reckless Republican provision in the US House-passed Big Beautiful Bill that would give a foreign conglomerate full permission to build a copper-nickel sulfide mine right on the doorstep of the Boundary Waters watershed,' wrote a spokesperson for Smith in a statement to Public Domain. 'By including this language in their massive budget bill, Republicans in Congress have made it clear they don't care about the science or the data, which shows unequivocally that this type of mining poses an unacceptable risk and stands to irreversibly pollute this pristine wilderness.'
