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Every summer since our daughters were very small, they\u2019ve spent time in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, the spectacular network of pristine lakes in Northern Minnesota on the United States-Canada border. We used to take them to Camp du Nord, a family camp run by the YMCA on the edge of the Boundary Waters in Ely, Minnesota, every year. As they got older, they paddled and portaged their way through longer and longer summer trips run by the adjacent Camp Widjiwagan, culminating in a forty-day expedition through the Canadian Arctic.<\/p>\n
These experiences shaped the strong, confident, nature-loving adults they are today. Skilled outdoorswomen, they\u2019ve taken charge of our family trips to the Boundary Waters, carrying heavy gear, building fires, finding our routes. They\u2019ve seen wolves, moose, and hundreds of loons, filled their water bottles straight from crystal-clear lakes, soaked up the joy of direct, physical contact with the world. All of us treasure the time we\u2019ve spent in the Boundary Waters, as do many other people\u2014the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is the most-visited wilderness area in the entire country.<\/p>\n
So it was a gut punch to see the U.S. Senate decide by one vote to\u00a0overturn<\/a>\u00a0federal protections against toxic mining in the Superior National Forest, right on the edge of the Boundary Waters, this spring.<\/p>\n Senator Tina Smith, Democrat of Minnesota, argued forcefully, late into the night on the Senate floor, against the decision. \u201cYou may be wondering why I am standing here at nearly midnight keeping everyone up. Here\u2019s why: Because I know people in Minnesota are wondering whether anybody in this building cares about what they think,\u201d she said. J. Patrick Coolican, editor-in-chief of the\u00a0Minnesota Reformer<\/em>, stayed up to listen as Smith read the letters she\u2019d received from some of the\u00a0large majority<\/a>\u00a0of Minnesotans who oppose the Twin Metals mine, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chilean mining company Antofagasta with a record of toxic spills.<\/p>\n The proposed copper-nickel sulfide mine would, environmentalists say, inevitably leak sulfuric acid into the interconnected waterways of the region, with devastating effects.<\/p>\n Thomas Tidwell, the head of the U.S. Forest Service under President Barack Obama, wrote that acid mine drainage could cause \u201cserious and irreparable harm<\/a>\u201d to the Boundary Waters, explaining the federal government\u2019s decision to deny the leases Twin Metals sought (a decision the first Trump Administration reversed). Years later, Tidwell supported legislation to permanently protect the area,\u00a0writing<\/a>\u00a0that \u201csulfide-ore copper mining in the Boundary Waters watershed is incredibly risky,\u201d and that since his 2016 decision to deny Twin Metals leases, \u201cthe scientific record has only grown stronger.\u201d That record includes a\u00a0near-100 percent incidence<\/a>\u00a0of pipeline spills or failure to control accidental mine seepage from the top fifteen sulfide-ore copper mines in the United States.<\/p>\n In April, Republicans in the Senate\u00a0withdrew<\/a>\u00a0a Biden Administration moratorium on mining in the Boundary Waters, which was based on decades of research showing the harm mining could do to the area.<\/p>\n Still, Minnesotans have not given up. Just as they stood up to the masked federal agents who descended on Minneapolis to tear immigrant families apart, state residents are\u00a0organizing to fight<\/a>\u00a0Twin Metals as it seeks state permits to open up its toxic mine. While proponents tout the mine as a job creator (ignoring the economic costs of destroying the nation\u2019s most-visited wilderness), the Senate\u2019s action mostly benefits a foreign mining company that has a\u00a0history<\/a>\u00a0of flouting environmental regulations and creating toxic spills, and which will likely sell the copper it extracts from Minnesota\u00a0to China<\/a>.<\/p>\n Activists are pushing the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to cancel Twin Metals\u2019s state lease for the project, since\u00a036 percent<\/a>\u00a0of the ore the company plans to mine is on state land and requires state leases. The DNR has the power to cancel the lease because of a provision that allows the state to bail out if a proposed mine hasn\u2019t moved forward for thirty-five years.<\/p>\n \u201cThis issue has been around since the 1960s and 1970s,\u201d Pete Marshall of the nonprofit\u00a0Friends of the Boundary Waters<\/a>\u00a0tells me when I call him to talk about the mine and his group\u2019s efforts to stop it. Plans for the mine were dormant for decades, in part because the concentration of ore in the area was so low. But demand from China and the exhaustion of ore deposits in Chile and around the globe made it attractive again.<\/p>\n \u201cAs the years go by, the concentration of copper gets less and less,\u201d Marshall explains. \u201cWhen I was a kid growing up in Michigan\u2019s Upper Peninsula, they would pull out chunks of 40 percent copper from the ground. That has all been mined now.\u201d The ore body near the Boundary Waters is less than 1 percent copper, he says. \u201cBut that\u2019s about what most ore reserves are now.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the price has gone up, as the copper, nickel, and other metals Twin Metals hopes to pull out of the ground in Minnesota fuel the construction of phones, electric car batteries, and solar panels. The rise of the market in China makes those metals profitable.<\/p>\n Activists like Marshall have been frustrated by the DNR\u2019s reluctance to assert itself and cancel the project. \u201cOften they try to kick the can down the road and avoid decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n The same is true of the state Democratic Party, he says. \u201cThere are members who really want to stop the mine, but leadership doesn\u2019t want to take difficult political decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n Labor unions, hungry for the 700 jobs Twin Metals has promised, have supported the project\u2014even though not all those jobs will be filled by local workers. Automation and specialization have made mining less of a local job creator than it once was, since much of the work now involves technical skills in data analysis and robotics, and companies bring in their own specialists.<\/p>\n Still, the political environment that pits blue-collar workers against environmentalists is a problem for Democrats, and freighted with symbolism, even if the economic reality of the mine would be a net loss, generating a few hundred short-term jobs in exchange for the permanent destruction of the much larger tourism-based economy, not to mention threatening the largest fresh water supply in the world.<\/p>\n \u201cLabor, irony of ironies, is supporting the plan of a foreign mining conglomerate with a pretty bad labor record,\u201d Marshall says. \u201cThere are a lot of contradictions to navigate.\u201d<\/p>\n Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota,\u00a0distinguished herself<\/a>\u00a0from other Democrats running for President in 2020 by refusing to oppose the Twin Metals plan, tying her openness about the jobs it might create to her pragmatic, centrist politics and family history of mining in the Iron Range. More recently, she\u00a0joined Smith\u2019s crusade<\/a>\u00a0to protect the Boundary Waters, expressing her concerns about \u201cthis administration\u2019s disregard for science\u201d and the huge body of research showing the danger of the mine.<\/p>\n Marshall calls Klobuchar\u2019s position \u201can evolution.\u201d Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat who is leaving office and who Klobuchar hopes to replace, has also \u201cbeen unfortunately quiet about this,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Friends of the Boundary Waters is urging people to contact Walz and tell him \u201ccement your political legacy. Stand up for Minnesota,\u201d Marshall says, and to call for a hearing on the mine, its safety, and common-sense protections.<\/p>\n