A piece of property on McFarland Lake owned by Wheaton College, located 25 miles west of Chicago, is being sought by PolyMet Mining Corporation in order to facilitate the “NorthMet” mining project it is pursuing in St. Louis County.
PolyMet has proposed construction of an open pit copper/nickel/cobalt/precious metals mine, ore processing plant, and tailings basin near Babbitt and Hoyt Lakes, and it wants to exchange 6,722 acres of land in St. Louis, Lake, and Cook counties for 6,650 acres of what is currently U.S. Forest Service land in St. Louis County. PolyMet and the Forest Service have signed an agreement to initiate this exchange.
PolyMet would want to buy the Wheaton College land for use in its trade with the Forest Service.
PolyMet has been leasing sub-surface mineral rights from the Forest Service in the area it wants to mine. Most of the 2,840 acres it proposes for the new project is under the authority of the Weeks Act, which would restrict the Forest Service from leasing it for surface mining, however.
The Forest Service has reasons for wanting to acquire the land PolyMet is proposing to exchange, and it has reasons for letting PolyMet take over the land in its proposed project area. According to a Forest Service description of the proposed mining project and land exchange, “In addition to national forest lands encompassed in the proposed NorthMet mine site, the Forest Service proposed to include an additional 3,810 acres of federal property in the land exchange as a means to avoid intermingled and inefficient ownership patterns and eliminate conflicts if minerals development were to expand in the future. Many of these federal lands are adjacent to lands extensively impacted by past and ongoing mining activities.”
The document states that the land the Forest Service would acquire consists of “forest and wetland habitat as well as some lake frontage and would potentially enhance public recreation opportunities.” It includes Hay Lake, identified as a Wild Rice Water by the Minnesota DNR, and Little Rice Lake, which is used by trumpeter swans, a threatened species in Minnesota. Several tracts include a high percentage of wetland habitat. Others would consolidate Forest Service landholdings that are now interrupted by private property.
The proposal meets four Forest Service Strategic Plan goals: 1) Provide and sustain
benefits to the American people (desired
outcome is forests with sufficient long-term
multiple socioeconomic benefits to meet the
needs of society); 2) conserve open space;
3) sustain and enhance outdoor recreation
opportunities; and 4) maintain basic management
capabilities of the Forest Service by
reducing landlines and mineral conflicts.
The exchange proposal is part of a Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement (SDEIS) prepared jointly by the Forest Service, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and is expected to be complete next summer. A final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is anticipated six to nine months after that. A draft EIS was released last November.
The SDEIS will include a revised project design, a revised description of alternatives and mitigation, and information from comments on the draft EIS. It will fulfill National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Minnesota Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) requirements.
The Forest Service is accepting comments on the proposed exchange until November 27. Theproposed land exchange is described in the “Proposed NorthMet Mining Project and Land Exchange” scoping document, available in the Land & Resources Management/Projects section of the Superior National Forest (SNF) website at: www.fs.usda.gov/goto/superior/projects.
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