Mining industry group reacts to Senate overturning ban on mining near Boundary Waters

The U.S. Senate voted 50-49 Thursday morning to overturn a 20-year ban on mining near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Minn., who represents northeastern Minnesota, introduced the legislation. Both of Minnesota's U.S. senators, Democrats Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, urged their colleagues to vote it down.

President Donald Trump is expected to sign the measure into law. Its passage is a win for the company Twin Metals, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining firm Antofagasta, which aims to open an underground copper-nickel mine just south of the boundary waters.

Friends of the Boundary Waters Executive Director Chris Knopf told MPR News that groups like his would continue to urge state lawmakers and regulators to prevent mining in the area, out of concern that it would pollute water and threaten animals and plants including wild rice. “It’s an attack on our clean water heritage and the thousands and thousands of people that earn their living from the outdoor economy here,” he said.

Julie Lucas represents Twin Metals and other companies as executive director of the industry group, MiningMinnesota. She joined MPR News guest host Kelly Gordon to talk about what this vote means for mining in the state.

This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Use the audio player above to listen to the full interview.

What is your reaction to today’s vote?

I am cautiously optimistic that we can start having conversations about what mining in the watershed would look like and what mining today means. I also just really want folks to know that we care deeply about the Boundary Waters. I live in northeastern Minnesota. I'm a water resources scientist by training, and I really want to find a way to start having those just really gnarly conversations about minerals and mining and environmental protection. I know people are really scared right now, and I just want folks to know this vote does not mean a mine opens tomorrow.

What do you say to people who worry that with so many interconnected waterways in the area, pollution seems inevitable?

It absolutely isn’t inevitable. That’s where we really need to get into the science on the deposit itself. It’s important to understand how our actual deposit was created, how our geology was created, and understand how it's different than mines out West. It's a very different geological formation, and it's not one that leads to acid-rock drainage.

I really invite people to spend time with our geologists and our engineers and our industry. We, our engineers, take oaths of protection, of public welfare in the environment, and we want to have those conversations.

What do you think this means for the mining industry in Minnesota?

We are just really lucky to have what we have here. This is a world-class deposit. We are very unique in having this copper, nickel, platinum, palladium, gold, cobalt, silver deposit that is unlike anywhere else in in the entire U.S. Today's vote, like I said, it doesn't open a mine tomorrow. It just open opens us up to doing exploration again. It's not just exploration for the minerals. This offers up exploration for the water. It gets back into doing the science of, what does the groundwater look like up in this region, what does the surface water look like? Where are the current wild rice stands?

I live in the Rainy River watershed for a reason. I love being around water, and right now I'm in Duluth, and we have Lake Superior here. Water is our identity in Minnesota, and none of us want to harm that. But we also know that we have a 100 percent clean energy goal in Minnesota, which means we're driving the demand for copper and nickel and all of these metals.

What would it take for mining to begin?

There's a lot of steps forward. They still have to get their leases back. They would still have to present what's called a mine plan of operations, and that would lay out what they see as their current plan for everything: management of waste materials, management of water, how they would actually process, their tailings facility, all of that gets mapped out. And that may be different than what they proposed back in 2019, I'm not sure. And they would submit that proposal to both the federal and the state government, and then both the federal and state government have their own environmental review processes and their own permitting.

Most of the nitty-gritty permitting stuff is handled at the state level and primarily the [Minnesota] Pollution Control Agency. So we are looking at a multi-year process of environmental review, which includes multiple public hearings, public comment periods, opportunities for the public to weigh in. It’s important for people to understand that a project gets proposed, and then, ideally, the situation is designed for us to tear it apart as citizens and as concerned organizations. A project can be adjusted, and ideally is, through environmental review.

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