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A subsidiary of Twin Metals Minnesota, the company seeking to build an underground mine for copper and nickel near Ely, has submitted a plan to the state to conduct additional mineral exploration in the area just outside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. 

Franconia Minerals is proposing to conduct exploratory drilling at up to 19 sites on private and state-owned land on the north and south shores of Birch Lake, about five miles east of Babbitt.

The area is separate and just south of where Twin Metals has proposed building its underground copper-nickel mine. 

Mining companies have explored in the area off and on for about 20 years. Twin Metals, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining conglomerate Antofagasta, drilled 

 in the same general vicinity in 2023 and 2024. 

“The goal is to further develop our understanding of our mineral deposits that we have in the area that we haven't studied as extensively as some others,” said Twin Metals’ spokesperson Kathy Graul about the current proposal.

“This is just part of a long series of work that we've done to map out the different characteristics of our mineral deposits.”

Graul said the exploratory drilling will bore deep underneath Birch Lake, part of the Kawishiwi River system, which flows north into the Boundary Waters. 

“But it's targeted hundreds to thousands of feet below the surface, so there's no interactivity with the water,” Graul said. “Birch Lake itself is about 25 feet at its deepest.”

Graul stressed that the exploration work is routine, and that Twin Metals is “still a very long way away from earning permits to actually build a mine.” 

Twin Metals’ proposal to build a mine on the doorsteps of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area has been the subject of intense scrutiny and controversy for the past decade. 

Proponents have argued the mine would create hundreds of high-paying jobs and pump billions of dollars into the regional economy, while mining minerals needed to manufacture electric vehicle batteries and other clean energy technologies. They say modern mining methods can protect the environment. 

But critics contend this kind of mining is much more environmentally risky than iron ore mining, because it has the potential to create acid mine drainage and leach heavy metals into the watershed of a treasured wilderness area. They say any pollution from the mine would flow into the Boundary Waters, and could devastate the region’s outdoor recreation-based economy. 

The mine’s political prospects have seesawed back and forth in recent years. The company submitted formal plans to open a mine to state regulators in 2019. But the Biden administration 

canceled Twin Metals’ federal mineral leases

 on a huge swath of federal land south of the Boundary Waters. 

The Trump Administration has signaled several times it plans to reverse those moves, but has not done so officially yet. Minnesota 8th District Republican Congressman 

Pete Stauber has also introduced legislation

 to undo the Biden administration’s actions. 

Because the Franconia Minerals exploration plan is proposed for state and private land, it could move forward despite the federal moratorium on mining activity. 

“This exploratory drilling proposal is a precursor to copper mining underneath Birch Lake, which flows directly into the Wilderness,” said Ingrid Lyons, executive director of Save the Boundary Waters, a group fighting the mining proposal. 

“This continuation of exploratory drilling serves as an important reminder: the threat posed by copper mining in this special place is far from gone, and the entire watershed of the Boundary Waters — particularly state land — needs permanent protection from copper mining, not just federal lands.”

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has twenty days to decide on the application. 

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Dan Kraker

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Franconia Minerals, a subsidiary of the company seeking to build an underground mine for copper and nickel outside Ely, wants to drill up to 19 more exploratory holes along Birch Lake, just outside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. 

Twin Metals seeks to continue copper exploration near Boundary Waters

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