#boundary-waters — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #boundary-waters, aggregated by home.social.
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#Minnesota governor signs order to stop any #mining efforts in #BoundaryWaters #Wilderness
August 18, 2026
ELY, Minn. (AP) — "Minnesota Gov. #TimWalz on Tuesday suspended state work on proposed mining projects in the #BoundaryWatersCanoeArea Wilderness, four months after Congress and President Donald Trump’s administration lifted a federal ban.
"The cherished wild area stretches for about 150 miles (about 240 kilometers) in the #SuperiorNationalForest along Minnesota’s border with #Canada. Thousands of canoeists, kayakers and campers explore the wilderness each year.
" 'It’s our duty as Minnesotans to ensure the sacred place remains wild, pristine and unharmed,' Walz, a Democrat, said.
"#TwinMetalsMinnesotaLLC, a subsidiary of #Chile -based #AntofagastaMinerals, has been seeking to mine for #copper, #nickel and other precious metals in the #NationalForest since 2019. It insists it can be done so no waste rock is stored above ground, eliminating a potential source of acid.
"The canoe area lies within the national forest just downstream from the mine site, raising concerns that digging could cause pollution.
"In April, #Trump signed a resolution approved by Congress that lifts a 2023 federal moratorium on mining in the forest. He said it would create jobs and boost the #MiningIndustry.
:Walz’s order says Minnesota regulators will not participate as a cooperating agency in any federal environmental review of a nonferrous mining project in the #RainyRiver watershed, which is linked to #BoundaryWaters."
Read more:
https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-boundary-water-mining-walz-4123863c7030bbdec88a2a2aa888fd61#USPol #NoMining #ProtectTheSacred #ProtectTheForest #WaterIsLife #ForestsAreLife
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A New Report On Revolving Door Corruption that Helps Make Sense of the Latest Twin Metals Lobbying Disclosures
Lobbying activity for the Twin Metals copper and nickel mine on the edge of the Boundary Waters increased dramatically in the second quarter of 2026.
The new lobbying disclosure is here. In Q1 2026, the Bernhardt Group reported Twin Metals income of $120,000; in Q2, $220,000. Bernhardt lobbied both houses of Congress and multiple executive branch agencies on “mine leasing issues” on behalf of the Chilean company that owns Twin Metals.
I would also direct your attention to this excellent Public Citizen report by Alan Zibel and Jesse Coleman on David Bernhardt and revolving door corruption. The report was published in June, so it does not take into account the latest disclosures. But the points it makes about revolving door corruption provide important context for understanding these documents.
Since its launch just one year ago, Bernhardt’s firm has recorded $8.8 million in revenue from 53 clients in just three completed quarters of lobbying — a classic example of how Washington, D.C.’s revolving door blurs the lines between corporate interests and government. Bernhardt Group reported nearly $2.9 million in the first quarter of 2026, putting the lobbying firm on pace for $11 million in revenue this year. The “revolving door” is a system in which corporations and other wealthy interests develop close relationships with government officials through the movement of key individuals back and forth between the private and public sectors.
Zibel and Coleman also detail closed-door meetings at Interior in September and November of 2025 with Bernhardt Group lobbyist William McGrath and Twin Metals executives.
More broadly, the report makes the case that David Bernhardt is now operating as a “Shadow Secretary” of the Interior, while the actual cabinet Secretary, Doug Burgum, goes on television to defend Trump’s war in Iran, or to pretend he’s never heard of batteries, or to talk about the reflecting pool and other Trump vanity projects.
If you want to make sense of what the administration is doing on the Twin Metals front, or of the actual dirty work that’s getting done behind the scenes of the embarrassing, outrageous, and infuriating spectacle of the second Trump administration, this is a must read.
#BoundaryWaters #corruption #governmentCapture #hoarding #kleptocracy #looting #oligarchy #power #spectacle #Water -
Western Twin Cities this morning. Blech! 🤢
#MN #MNastodon #Minneapolis #StPaul #MSP #StPaul #boundarywaters #wildFires #smoke #fire
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The bad news is that a #wind direction shift and passing #cold front has allowed the #wildfire #smoke from the #BoundaryWaters region to cover nearly all of the #Northland.
Air quality readings are bad...very bad! In fact, they are the worst readings EVER recorded in #Minnesota.
This #weather concern continues the next several days. Do your best to stay safe.
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Was there when I was a kid on a family canoe trip and will get back at some point with my youngest son and my late father’s custom hand built, 18 foot long blue canoe he bought for $400 in 1969 and christened “Sacajawea;” the Milky Way over the Boundary Waters in Minnesota, July, 2026. Photo by Hayes Scriven.
#BoundaryWaters
#NorthernWayOfLife“Moments like this remind me why I always pack the camera—even when all I really want is sleep.” - Hayes Scriven
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An Extreme #Heat #Warning continues across the entire #Northland the rest of this Monday, with the southern half seeing a similar warning Tuesday.
#Fire #weather conditions remain extreme in and near the #BoundaryWaters region today and Tuesday. Red Flag Warnings are in place.
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WILDFIRE IN BOUNDARY WATERS:
The #dry conditions has led to a new #wildfire in the #BoundaryWaters area of the #Northland.
The Birch Bay Fire is 8 miles northwest of #Ely on the northwest side of Burntside Lake.
As of 6 p.m. Monday, 25 acres have burned. Evacuations are taking place.
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The Senate Vote on HJR 140 Is Not a Green Light to Mine Near the Boundary Waters, and There are Ways to Remedy the Harm Done
Two days before the Senate voted last week to overturn the 20-year Rainy River Watershed Withdrawal, I sent this letter to the Globe and Mail:
Nathan Vanderklippe’s reporting on the effort to undo the 20-year Boundary Waters mining moratorium (“In Minnesota’s wilderness, a town divided over the future of mining,” Globe and Mail 13 April 2026) lets the cheaters off the hook too easily. House Joint Resolution 140, which would overturn the 20-year Rainy River Watershed Mineral Withdrawal, represents “an outrageous abuse” of the legislative process, in the words of Congresswoman Emily Randall. Many (but perhaps not enough) US lawmakers agree. The measure recklessly hands over a cherished American wilderness to Antofagasta, a foreign mining company with a poor environmental record owned by a billionaire Trump crony; it would also foreclose scientific study of the effects of sulfide mining on the Boundary Waters. The pattern set during Trump’s first term now continues apace: capture the agencies, stifle the science, and let the mining company set the rules.
On Thursday, the cheaters got their way.
If there is one positive thing to come out of this disgraceful little episode, it’s that in the run-up to the Senate vote and in its immediate aftermath, the issue of copper and nickel mining on the edge of the Boundary Waters got some of the national attention it has long deserved.
However, much of the reporting and commentary confused, or came close to confusing, the vote to overturn the moratorium on sulfide mining with the permitting of Antofagasta’s Twin Metals project. That is still a long way off. Even careful and reliable narrators like Heather Cox Richardson said that the vote “clears the way for a subsidiary of Chilean mining giant Antofagasta to engage in copper-sulfide mining, which produces sulfuric acid, above the pristine BWCA”. It does nothing of the sort.
What this reckless vote did was change the state of play on two fronts.
First, it restored the status quo ante Biden. With the withdrawal overturned, the Bureau of Land Management can now renew Twin Metals’ Preference Rights Lease Applications and review its Mine Plan of Operations. And we can be pretty certain that these new agency reviews will be yet another exercise in foregone conclusions. The agencies will not only decide things in the company’s favor, but also aggressively move to permit the mine.
Second, passage of HJR 140 solved a problem the company was having at court. In Twin Metals v. US, the court confirmed that the Bureau of Land Management had to deny Twin Metals’ Preference Rights Lease Applications and reject its Mine Plan of Operations; due to the mineral withdrawal, the area was off limits to copper and nickel mining. Now it’s not. Though the case is currently on hold until October of 2026, it may actually be moot. Antofagasta’s lawyers were not having much success, anyway.
So the vote put things in a worrisome state, but Antofagasta still has a long way to go before it can put shovels in the ground and start shipping ore from Ely to China.
Incorrectly framing the vote as a green light to mine is not only misleading, it signals (perhaps unintentionally) that this battle is lost and it’s time to move on to the next battle – whatever that may be. I would of course urge people to stick with this battle, or at least keep tabs on it, not only for the sake of protecting the Boundary Waters wilderness, but also because (as I have tried to argue for the past several years) there is a lot to learn from this one case about the harms done to the public interest by unchecked corruption and cronyism as well as the larger authoritarian project to dismantle modern American government known as Project 2025.
This is not at all a stretch. Overturning the mineral withdrawal was an explicit goal of Project 2025. The scheme was laid out on page 523 of the playbook: the mineral withdrawal and other public land withdrawals should be abandoned “if those withdrawals have not been completed.” What Pete Stauber found – or what Antofagasta’s lobbyists no doubt found for him – was a way to claim that the mineral withdrawal had not been completed. Congress, Stauber said, had not been notified (even though he received a letter notifying him of the withdrawal and raised a ruckus when the withdrawal was announced). He used, or, as Representative Emily Randall would say, abused the Congressional Review Act to make good on that false claim.
Thursday morning’s vote did a lot of damage, but it’s hardly the end of the story. There are still chances to remedy the harm done, but it will take close scrutiny of every step that the administration makes from here on in: the attempt to renew the mineral leases, the effort to approve the Twin Metals mine plan, whatever moves are left to make in Twin Metals v. US, and so on. This is a coordinated political project with lots of moving parts. Antofagasta’s lobbyists – led by Trump’s former Secretary of the Interior, David Bernhardt – are doing most of the coordinating behind closed doors. People who care about the Boundary Waters, or good government, or who just don’t like seeing cheaters win, need to track their movements and call out the cheating at every step.
And there are positive steps that can be taken, not just at the state but also at the federal level. Just last year, for example, Senator Tina Smith introduced the Boundary Waters Wilderness Protection Act. Had it passed, it would have made the 20-year mineral withdrawal permanent. Now that act needs updating, and it should be on the legislative agenda for 2027, should the Democrats regain control of Congress or even one house of Congress. More broadly still, protections not just for the Boundary Waters but for all public lands and waters should be a feature of Project 2029, or whatever you want to call the collective effort to clean up our current mess, hold malefactors accountable, and build 21st-century government in the public interest.
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#BoundaryWaters #cheating #corruption #ethics #HJR140 #mining #power #Project2029 #Water -
Call MN DNR commissioner Sarah Strommen at 651-259-5555 and tell her to protect the BWCA by canceling Twin Metals' leases. You can also tell Tim Walz the same. #BWCA #BoundaryWaters #MN #Minnesota #ElyMN
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Call MN DNR commissioner Sarah Strommen at 651-259-5555 and tell her to protect the BWCA by canceling Twin Metals' leases. You can also tell Tim Walz the same. They both have the power to cancel these leases, especially since the company failed to meet the production and royalty requirements mandated by those contracts!
#BWCA #BoundaryWaters #MN #Minnesota #ElyMN -
So fucked up , it's a sad sad day, in a 50 to 49 vote, they just overturned the ban on mining near the boundary water, the most popular, outdoor canoeing, kayaking wilderness areas in the country. #BoundaryWaters
https://environmentamerica.org/minnesota/media-center/statement-congress-overturns-20-year-mining-ban-near-boundary-waters/ -
So fucked up , it's a sad sad day, in a 50 to 49 vote, they just overturned the ban on mining near the boundary water, the most popular, outdoor canoeing, kayaking wilderness areas in the country. #BoundaryWaters
https://environmentamerica.org/minnesota/media-center/statement-congress-overturns-20-year-mining-ban-near-boundary-waters/ -
Senators Klobuchar, Smith, & Heinrich did a great job this morning in outlining the absolute insanity in HJR140. The fact it’s a Chilean mining company should be enough to stop this in its tracks... much less the unethical (first) use of a CRA like this, the fact the minerals will go to China, and the fact this is the freaking Boundary Waters for crying out loud. Truly pathetic. I'm not a fan of the “what goes around come around” stuff, but dang. #boundarywaters #minnesota
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The Senate is to vote on HJ Resolution 140 - tomorrow (Thursday). Call your Senators & urge them to vote NO. The switchboard # is 202-224-3121.
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Please contact your U.S. Senators (you have two) and urge them to reject HR-140, an awful bill that allows foreign mining companies to drill and mine near the pristine - and public - Minnesota Boundary Waters.
They vote today.
Call 202-224-3121.
#BWCA #BoundaryWaters #ElyMN -
8 P.M. #RADAR UPDATE:
#Showers continue to move through the #Northland, but only those north of Highway 2 are reaching the ground.
It is breezy around the #BoundaryWaters/Ely area. A #Snow #Squall Warning is in effect for Highway 1 and local roads for reduced #visibility.
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"Opening the area to mining 'removes the American public from public land decision making,' as hundreds of thousands of Americans have made it clear they overwhelmingly want the BWCAW protected forever."
#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #nature #environment #ClimateChange #capitalism #BoundaryWaters #Minnesota
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"Antofagasta wants to build a copper-nickel mine just outside the BWCAW on national forest land. ...
The Roosevelts noted that the proposed mining is 'the opposite of America First.' 'The mining company in question is foreign owned, will use Chinese state-owned smelters, and will then sell the extracted metals on the open market.'”
#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #nature #environment #ClimateChange #capitalism #BoundaryWaters #Minnesota
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"On February 6, four direct descendants of President Theodore Roosevelt wrote to United States senators to ask them to vote against a measure that opens up the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) in Minnesota to the Chilean mining giant Antofagasta Plc and its subsidiary Twin Metals Minnesota."
~ Heather Cox Richardson
#Trump #fascism #authoritarianism #nature #environment #ClimateChange #capitalism #BoundaryWaters #Minnesota
/1https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-22-2026
