Trump’s drive to boost domestic mining stokes long-running debate near BWCA
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A light snow falls at Cast Outdoor Adventures as David Hicks introduces his dogs to customers visiting from the Twin Cities. They’re here to experience the pristine wilderness of northern Minnesota in a way like no other: on a dogsled.
Hicks shows a lot of love for the dogs as he introduces them. They happily wag, sniff and beg for scratches as they encircle Hicks and his customers. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness generally does not allow motorized vehicles, so these dogs can run and work without the concern of encountering a snowmobile.
This experience of being cut off from the modernized world is one of the things that’s attracted outdoor enthusiasts to the more than one million remote acres of forest in the Superior National Forest for decades.
And it’s that same escape that has also made the notion of expanded mining on the doorstep of the wilderness so worrisome to environmental groups, who say the area deserves all the protection it can get.
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But some of President Donald Trump’s early actions back in office would rescind “undue burdens” on U.S. mines.
In an address to Congress on Tuesday, Trump hinted another big move on mining was coming soon.
“I will also take historic action to dramatically expand production of critical minerals and rare earths here in the USA," Trump said in the speech.
It has brought attention back to a long-running mining debate near the BWCA.
“If you were a fan of the former administration, now you’re not going to be a fan of this administration or vice versa,” Hicks said. “It just pits everybody against each other.”
He laments how people just dig their heels in and make it political.
“I’m not a pro-miner and I’m not an anti-miner,” Hicks said. “I’m a pro realist and as long as I have a cell phone and drive a new car… I know that those strategic minerals have to come from somewhere.”
Conflicting bills
Former President Barack Obama imposed a mining moratorium around the BWCA and then Trump reversed it during his first term. Former President Joe Biden reinstated it.
At a July rally in St. Cloud, Trump made a promise in the state while campaigning for his old job last year: “We will end that ban in about, what do you think, 10 minutes? I would say 10 to 15 minutes. Right, Pete?”
Trump was referring to Republican U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, who represents northeastern Minnesota in Congress. Stauber reintroduced legislation this year to overturn the 20-year mining ban.
“It’s a working industrial forest where timber foresting and mining are desired conditions,” Stauber said recently to MPR News.
His bill would also return federal mineral leases to Twin Metals Minnesota, a company that wants to build an underground mine for copper and nickel.
Twin Metals is owned by the Chilean mining conglomerate Antofagasta.
New mines have taken more urgency in recent years, to help build electric vehicles, solar panels and other technologies needed to power a carbon-free energy transition.
This kind of mining would be new to Minnesota, and some worry about the risks of pollution near the prized watershed.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum has introduced her own bill that would permanently prevent sulfide-ore copper mining in the headwaters.
McCollum knows her bill, which would not limit taconite or iron-ore mining, faces long odds.
“I’m in the minority now so I know I’m not going to be able to get the law passed and signed into a way that would protect these very precious waters,” McCollum said.
A community divide
The issue divides the community in Ely.
“Mining creates and builds communities,” Ely City Council member Angela Campbell said. “Tourism is a fabulous resource for the community, but it’s not enough.”
Others in the area who rely on tourism, like Penny Jeffers, are concerned.
“I feel sick about it,” said Jeffers, who works for Voyageur Outward Bound School. “I would certainly be very excited about something happening at the state level that the state got behind because I feel like we would have more control.”
Efforts to erect new barriers to mining near the Boundary Waters seem just as unlikely at the state level as McCollum thinks her prospects are in Washington.
The battle is sure to keep playing out in court as the mining companies and groups opposed to expansions tangle over permits.
‘Protect the wilderness’
Minnesota lawmakers cool to new northern mining projects understand that federal actions could invigorate mineral extraction. But some state lawmakers are working to advance possible protection efforts before mining sets in.
Twin Metals, which is pushing for a new mine, says it can sustainably develop minerals that can be used in clean-energy technology.
Rep. Alex Falconer, DFL-Eden Prairie, wants to prevent this kind of mining on state lands in the wilderness watershed. He introduced a bill to prevent the Department of Natural Resources from permitting mines within the Rainy River watershed of the Boundary Waters.
“Even if the federal government were to green light a mine, there still has to be state permits that have to be granted,” Falconer said. “This would just protect the wilderness.”
Falconer has a long history with the Save the Boundary Waters campaign, an offshoot of the Ely-based Northeastern Minnesotans For Wilderness.
“Any effort to ban mining in northeast Minnesota runs contrary to our state’s goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050,” said Twin Metals spokesperson Kathy Graul. “This area contains the world’s largest known undeveloped deposit of copper, nickel, cobalt and other critical minerals that are essential for building clean energy technologies.”
The prospects of passage are dim given the Legislature’s political layout where bipartisan buy-in is essential this year.
Rep. Roger Skraba, R-Ely, sees the intervention as unnecessary.
“The other side would make you believe that there’s mining in the Boundary Waters, which there’s not. And no one is asking for it,” Skraba said. “The mining outside the Boundary Waters is outside the mining protection area.”
Skraba, the former Ely mayor, says those explanations don’t satisfy those resistant to mining: “Still not good enough. They don’t want anything anywhere."
There are other more widespread efforts in the Legislature meant to prevent new mining.
“We have a record of glad handing and a sort of good old boy network doing favors for each other in rooms,” said Sen. Jen McEwen, DFL-Duluth. “That has to stop like we have to get really serious about protecting our water, especially now.”
McEwen’s “prove it first” bill would require independent scientific proof that a copper-sulfide mine has operated in the US for at least 10 years without causing pollution before a permit is issued.
Supporters know they don’t have the votes to win passage right now. They don’t have all Democrats on their side, let alone Republicans who would rally behind it.
Sen. Grant Hauschild, DFL-Hermantown, said it’s not something he backs.
“My position has always been the same. When I was a candidate, under the Biden administration and now under the Trump administration,” Hauschild said. “I do not believe it’s a good policy to have blanket moratoriums on mining policy.”
Testing the waters
On a recent unseasonably warm February day outside Ely, Lisa Pugh glided across Fall Lake on a pair of cross-country skis.
Pugh is with Save the Boundary Waters.
She and her colleague, Corrine Garber, are bound for a spot on this lake that is one of the entry points to the Boundary Waters. They’ve been monitoring sulfate levels in the water weekly.
This spot is miles downstream from both a closed open iron mine pit and a one that’s still operating and they’ve found elevated sulfate levels here.
Pugh noted that this is when things are going well.
“The mine that’s operating right now isn’t having a spill. They’re not having some kind of catastrophe,” Pugh said. “This is just ordinary operations. It’s a tiny fraction of land in the watershed up here, and we see degradation.”
The environmental group feels confident the data presents a clear understanding of existing conditions and plans to continue its work no matter what happens with the state or federal mining bills.
New chapter
For now, though, there’s anticipation — for better or worse — about what’s in store.
Trump’s executive orders could be followed by congressional action. Stauber hopes to get his bill passed as soon as possible, whether that’s on its own or as part of another bill that the Republican-led Congress considers.
“All options are going to be on the table to allow domestic mining in this country,” he said.
Even if his bill becomes law, the Twin Metals copper-nickel mine could take years to come to fruition. There is a proposed NewRange Copper Nickel mine elsewhere on the Iron Range that is further along but still hung up by permitting hurdles and litigation.
The ventures that have been the talk of the region for so long will be for much longer.
And for Hicks, that means treading carefully when talking with people in town or the out-of-town customers who come for that dog-sledding experience. He tells his customers that the dogs are like family.
“If you love those dogs, you’ll protect them. If you love your resource, you’ll protect it. And it’ll change the way that you consume,” Hicks said, adding, “At the end of the day, whether we’re dog sledding or we’re fishing or we’re buying a new cell phone or a new car or building a new house, or whatever it is we’re justifying the consumption for whatever reasons.”