Nine Minnesota businesses and Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness got their day in court on December 20 when a federal judge in Washington D.C. heard their oral arguments challenging the legality of the May 2018 temporary reinstatement of two expired mineral leases to Twin Metals on Superior National Forest lands near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
Two of the plaintiffs are from Cook County, Sawbill Outfitters, and Hungry Jack Outfitters. They joined forces with Piragis Northwoods Company, Ely Outfitting Company, and Boundary Waters Guide Service, Wenonah Canoe, Women’s Wilderness Discovery, River Point Resort and Outfitting Company and Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness.
Twin Metals, whose parent company is Antofagasta, a Chilean company that is one of the world’s largest miners of copper, hopes to mine on 5,000 acres of public land on the Iron Range. The Chilean owned mining company plans to build a 100-acre ore-processing facility next to Birch Lake.
As planned now, the processing plant will accept approximately 20,000 tons of mineralized ore per day.
Twin Metals Minnesota (TMM) hopes to mine copper, nickel, platinum, palladium, gold and silver approximately nine miles southeast of Ely and 11 miles northeast of the city of Babbitt near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW).
What is sulfide mining?
Sulfide mining, or metallic mining as it is sometimes called, extracts metals such as copper, nickel and gold from sulfide rich ore. When the ore is exposed to air and water, sulfuric acid can be created from those ore tailings.
When leeched into nearby waterways, sulfuric acid kills fish, birds, plants, etc. and the acid mine drainage, unless cleaned up, poisons water for many hundreds of years. According to the Mining Action Group, which hails from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, “There has never been a sulfide mine that has not polluted nearby water resources.”
More than 350 businesses, sportsmen groups, and conservation groups have joined to oppose sulfide ore copper mining in the BWCAW watershed.
Leases
The U.S. Forest Service failed to renew the leases in 2016 after determining that copper mining under terms of the leases posed an unacceptable threat to causing long-term damage to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
In the lawsuit, the petitioners note, “The Boundary Waters is not only home to fish and abundant wildlife in its 1.1 million acres of interconnected waterways and boreal forests— it’s also Minnesota’s outdoor recreation destination for paddlers, hunters, anglers, canoeists, adventurers, artists, and outdoor enthusiasts from around the country.
If permitted, TMM plans to connect the mine and processing plant by tunnel and to keep half of the tailings stored underground as permanently cemented backfill in the mine. TMM has promised to store the remaining waste tailings in a lined surface tailings facility near the Peter Mitchell Mine southwest of the city of Babbitt, which is located outside of the Rainy River Watershed.
According to the June 21, 2018 filing, the lawsuit challenges the Department of the Interior ‘s decision to abandon a longstanding mineral leasing policy. That policy, which was established with strong bipartisan support, now distorts the language of the expired leases to benefit a Chilean-owned mining company with a history of pollution.
The reinstatement, which the plaintiffs argue is illegal, “also ignored the U.S. Forest Service’s decision to withhold consent to the reinstated mineral leases because of the likelihood of harm to the water quality of the Boundary Waters and the inability to mitigate Acid-Mine Drainage (AMD) in the vast interconnected rivers, lakes, and streams of the BWCAW.”
In his opinion, now-retired U.S. Forest Chief Thomas Tidwell wrote, “A regionally-untested copper nickel sulfide ore mine within the same watershed as the BWCAW might cause serious and irreparable harm to this unique, iconic, and irreplaceable wilderness area.”
Twin Metals is arguing the terms of the leases were set a long time ago. The leases were first approved in 1966 and twice after that without controversy, they say, with a “right of unlimited 10-year renewals.”
Twin Metals sued the Obama administration, stating no mining company would attempt to establish a mine if 10-year lease renewal permits weren’t granted due to the cost to prepare to mine.
U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, who is hearing the latest case, will decide within the next month on the lawsuit against Twin Metals. If Twin Metals wins, it will go ahead with obtaining further permitting for the $1.6 billion project. That permitting could take several years. A loss for Twin Metals could stop the project dead in its tracks, and that legal decision would have enormous implications for PolyMet Mining, who also wants to build a copper-nickel mine near the BWCAW.
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