Twenty years after first proposed, NewRange still vying to build Minnesota’s first copper mine
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In early 2005, when PolyMet Mining first submitted its plans to the state to build what would be Minnesota’s first mine for copper and nickel, company officials were optimistic it could be built quickly.
“This we hope will be reality in a three to five year period,” PolyMet’s Warren Hudelson told MPR News in 2004.
Now, 20 years later, the controversial mine in northeast Minnesota still hasn’t opened. It hasn’t even begun construction, because three key permits it needs to advance — approvals state and federal agencies granted more than five years ago — have since been revoked or suspended.
That’s led opponents of the project, who argue the project could likely result in toxic water pollution in a watershed that flows into Lake Superior, to say that the mine, as currently proposed, is dead.
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“It’s had multiple fatal wounds from the courts,” said Kathryn Hoffman, CEO of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, one of several organizations and tribes opposed to the project.
“At this point, it’s a zombie. And the only entity really that hasn't acknowledged that it's dead in its current form is PolyMet itself.”
Just don’t tell that to employees of NewRange Copper Nickel, as the project is now called. Last week workers there wrapped up what’s likely one of the largest salvage operations in state history, in preparation, they hope, to soon open a new mine.
Inside a cavernous, quarter-mile long building the size of seven football fields, where iron ore was once crushed and concentrated at the former LTV Steel operation outside Hoyt Lakes, crews removed more than 30,000 tons of steel for scrap, and enough concrete to fill nearly 20 Olympic sized swimming pools.
The $20 million project is the latest sign of renewed optimism and momentum for NewRange, since it was formed in a joint venture early last year between PolyMet, a subsidiary of the Swiss conglomerate Glencore, and the Canadian mining firm Teck.
“The joint venture breathed new life into the project,” said Senior Mechanical Engineer Mike Glissman. He is one of roughly 50 employees working on the project now, about double from last year.
“It brought the expertise and funding from two world class companies, and has allowed us to advance it.”
Those large companies infused $170 million in new money into the project, bringing total spending on the mine proposal — everything from acquisition of the LTV Steel property, wages and consulting, environmental review and permitting work, engineering and feasibility studies, and property maintenance — to nearly $1 billion.
The hope is to transform this facility and give it a second life. Instead of making taconite pellets out of iron ore, as has been done in the region for well over a century, it would process copper, nickel and smaller amounts of precious metals such as platinum and gold.
When PolyMet was first proposed, advocates including former state legislator Tom Rukavina would often brandish cell phones above their heads while speaking in favor of it, proclaiming that the metals to be mined were critical to power the mobile devices people relied on.
Now, proponents often invoke the need for these metals to build solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicle batteries.
“A highlight of this project has always been taking an impacted area, a former mine site, and making something of it,” said NewRange director of external affairs Colin Marsh. “To produce the critical minerals that we all need for the clean energy transition and the electrification of much of our economy."
Successful suits
Five years ago the project seemed poised to become the state's first copper-nickel mine, after state and federal officials granted NewRange the permits it needed to move forward with construction.
But since then one of those permits has been yanked, and two others are in limbo, following successful lawsuits by environmental groups and the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. Those have ping-ponged back and forth between the courts, often resulting in permits getting sent back to agencies for additional work.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources alone has now spent $6 million on legal costs defending project permits.
Environmental groups stress mining for copper and nickel is very different from mining for iron ore, something that's been done in the region for well over a century.
They often call it sulfide mining, because the metals NewRange seeks to dig out of the ground are bound up in ore containing sulfides, which when exposed to air and water can create sulfuric acid.
As a result there's a much greater risk for toxic pollution seeping into groundwater and surrounding streams, which, in the case of NewRange, flow into the St. Louis River and eventually Lake Superior.
“This is an extremely toxic industry, and the place where the environment is most vulnerable is in a water-rich environment” such as in northeast Minnesota, said Paula Maccabee, advocacy director and counsel for the environmental group Water Legacy.
And because NewRange is the first in line of several companies looking to build a mine of this type in the state, critics say it’s crucial it’s held to a high standard, because it's the first time the state's laws governing this kind of mining have been applied.
“And so how strictly we're going to interpret those laws, whether they will be used to protect the environment, are all questions that we're answering for the first time here in Minnesota,” explained Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy’s Hoffman.
The answers to those questions will help govern other mining proposals, including Talon Metals, and Twin Metals, a contentious project near Ely, on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
Environmental groups that sue over project approvals such as this often lose legal challenges because courts tend to grant a lot of deference to state agency expertise, especially concerning highly technical mine approvals.
“To win this many legal challenges in a single project like this is pretty unusual, and to be honest, I would not have predicted it six years ago,” said Hoffman.
“I think that this is one of the very few times when the playing field was leveled just enough for the underdog to stop a very big and dangerous project,” added Maccabee. “But I want people to understand this is not the rule. This is an exception.”
NewRange’s Marsh says despite the legal setbacks, the company is moving forward.
“We're not looking back at the 20 years. We’re excited about the next couple of years and what we can do with this project. That’s our main story. And so we’re awfully, awfully excited about resubmitting permits and getting this project up and running soon.”
The last two decades have been frustrating for the people on the Iron Range who believe the copper-nickel mining industry could provide a giant economic lift to the region, and play a role in meeting domestic demand for important minerals.
“I won’t lie, it’s been pretty heartbreaking,” said Julie Lucas, executive director of the industry group MiningMinnesota.
“It’s been very challenging to watch the world build out clean energy, and to know we could have been a part of that,” she said.
Lucas and others on the Iron Range believe it’s not a matter of if but when the project is built. The metals are part of the Duluth Complex, believed to be one of the largest untapped deposits of these kinds of metals worldwide.
Retiring State Rep. Dave Lislegard, DFL-Aurora, used to work at the LTV mine before it closed. He’s proud of how iron mined from the Range has powered the country’s growth. He believes the region could play a similar role moving forward.
“Just like we were so instrumental in winning two World Wars, we can be instrumental in this transition to a clean energy economy,” he said.
One wild card is what impact, if any, the incoming Trump administration could have on the project.
“I’m deathly concerned,” said Nancy Schuldt, water projects coordinator for the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, which has developed its own water quality standards that are stricter than the state’s.
Schuldt said the Band’s concerns that the project as currently designed would violate its standards were ignored during Trump’s first administration. Only after the Band sued did the U.S. Army Corps revoke the project’s federal wetlands permit, following a recommendation from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
“If I've learned nothing else over the last 20 years of reviewing mining projects and their impacts to tribal and trust resources, I have learned how political the regulatory environment is, and I have seen massive swings in policy and enforcement under different administrations,” said Schuldt.
Mine studies
Earlier this summer NewRange announced it was taking a fresh look at several aspects of its mine plan, including two areas that have been heavily scrutinized in the courts — how the company plans to store its massive mound of waste tailings, which cover a four-square mile area, and how it plans to treat contaminated water it captures escaping the mine site.
The company is now considering a different tailings dam design, and also the possibility of storing mine waste in nearby abandoned iron ore pits.
The company announced the studies in an August press release, although the company had signaled to area tribes earlier in the year that it was considering changes to the project.
NewRange President Tannice McCoy said the decision to look at other options was made after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers revoked the project’s wetlands permit last year. “That decision was made, and so we took the step back to look at alternatives,” McCoy said.
NewRange’s Marsh acknowledged there is new global expertise that has developed in the 20 years since the project has been under review.
“So there could be opportunities, and so we’re very serious about looking into those,” Marsh said.
Environmental groups contend the company is trying to salvage a project the courts have already rejected, and argue NewRange should instead withdraw its permit applications and start anew.
Meanwhile the Minnesota DNR has placed a stay on its consideration of the company’s key Permit to Mine, which was sent back to the agency for a contested case hearing on an aspect of its tailings waste storage plan.
McCoy said she expects that NewRange will have identified a path forward after June 2025.
If it makes changes to its mine plan, it will have to go through additional environmental review and permitting — which could add several more years to what’s already been nearly a 20-year long process.
