#boundary-waters — Public Fediverse posts

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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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

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

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.

#BoundaryWaters

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.

#wxtooter #weather #wx #MNwx #WIwx #UPwx

"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
/2

"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
/2

"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
/1

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-22-2026

Antofagasta’s Lobbyists Deliver “An Outrageous Abuse” of the Congressional Review Act

It’s a little hard to sit through the video of yesterday’s Rules Committee hearing on House Joint Resolution 140, but it’s worth it just to see Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez coax Pete Stauber to acknowledge that any copper Antofagasta pulls out of the ground in northern Minnesota is going to end up “on a boat, in China.” So I excerpted that moment, above. Stauber can keep smiling along with Leger Fernandez, because he has already built a “strong coalition,” as one Republican member says, and his testimony here is mostly kabuki theater (and not very good theater at that). Among Republicans, at least, the backroom deal is done. That doesn’t mean the resolution will gain majorities in both houses of Congress within the next sixty days, but it is going to take popular outcry, firm resolve, and coordination to defeat it – which is hard to muster, given everything else that’s going on right now.* 

The most compelling arguments against Stauber’s resolution have less to do with mining or protecting the Boundary Waters specifically than with legislative process and the role of science in setting policy and guiding agency actions generally. The 20-year mineral withdrawal was grounded in science (despite Stauber’s bad faith complaints about something Deb Haaland once said), and more importantly the withdrawal allows for further scientific study of the effects of mining on the Rainy River watershed. Stauber relies on a sole, quasi-scientific opinion from the 1970s and pushes a resolution that would block any future withdrawal, no matter what current and future scientific study might show. “We don’t accept any new science” is how Representative Emily Randall rightly characterizes this position. 

Never again can we learn from…new science. Never again will we learn how we might preserve and protect this place further. Never can we say, it turns out…the pollution was terrible, let’s do something different. The way this resolution is written doesn’t allow us.

But “science is not static,” as Representative Mary Scanlon puts it; “if we were to approve this resolution…it blocks any future administration from taking action with respect to this property” or “address the harm” that mining in the watershed is going to cause. 

If the resolution passes in both houses, the Congressional Review Act bars any future administration from reinstating the withdrawal without new legislation. The big question hanging over all this is whether the Congressional Review Act even covers this Public Land Order. Lately, Republicans have been relying on opinions issued by the General Accounting Office that say Public Land Orders count as “rules” (usually because of their economic impact) and can therefore be undone by congressional review. As Randall puts it, “this congress, the Trump administration, and Republican members of Congress have been using the CRA to overturn public land protections that have never before been considered rules by any administration.”

This is exactly what Stauber is trying to do: convert the mineral withdrawal to a rule, or at least treat it as a rule. Reading from his prepared script, Stauber argues that the mineral withdrawal “is exactly the kind of action Congress intended to review [with] the CRA” because “the withdrawal substantially affects private companies and local economies by foreclosing leasing opportunities qualifying as substantive rule under the Administrative Procedure Act and the CRA.” This is a stretch, or, as Randall says, an abuse – an “outrageous abuse” – of legislative process and of the Congressional Review Act. The GAO has never declared this Public Land Order a rule, and, what’s more, Congress was notified of the withdrawal three years ago, as the Federal Land Policy and Management Act requires. Randall even waves around the letter Stauber was sent in 2023.

It’s also curious, she continues, that Stauber and others were not making noise about the Congressional Review Act back then, and they haven’t until now. What changed? Randall points out that the Chilean owners of Twin Metals “have spent half a million dollars in lobbying this past year”; and with the latest lobbying disclosure by The Bernhardt Group showing revenues of $110,000 for Q4 2025, it’s pretty clear that “this backdoor, after-the-fact attempt to undo a public land order cannot withstand any scrutiny,” as she says.

House Joint Resolution 140 is a plan cooked up on K Street, for a foreign mining company, and by a lobbying firm led by Trump’s former Secretary of the Interior.  Stauber is their errand boy.

*Postscript: Today, just after I published this, the House voted to provide for consideration of the joint resolution. The vote was 213-210, with 5 Republicans and 3 Democrats not voting. Later in the day, the House passed the resolution, 214-208, with one Republican (Don Bacon of Nebraska) voting against and one Democrat (Jared Golden of Maine) voting for the resolution. Four Republicans and five Democrats did not vote.

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Are you a US Citizen? This is a call to action to protect the Boundary Waters area in northern Minnesota. Today (1/21/26) the house puts up a vote to bypass the protections that this area has so that a chilean billionaire can mine and destroy the surrounding area and its pristine fresh waters.

Call!

#boundarywaters #environment #freshwater #CallYourRep #StopluksicNow #Minnesota

https://www.savetheboundarywaters.org/click-call-us-house

There is an unprecedented attempt to use a law called the Congressional Review Act to undo the Boundary Waters copper mining ban, which could trigger a fast-track vote in the U.S. Congress.

Make calls to your U.S. Congresspeople.
#BWCA #BoundaryWaters
https://www.savetheboundarywaters.org/click-call-us-house

If We’re Talking about the Violent Occupation and Colonization of Minnesota, Let’s Also Talk about the Play for Minnesota’s Critical Minerals

The ever-prolific docket watcher and political commentator Marcy Wheeler put up a video the other day where, in her words, she “laid out how Trump’s invasion of Venezuela is like his invasion of Minnesota: Tribute and obeisance.” I have been wanting to draw and explore that same analogy, but I am reluctant to paint with the broad brush Wheeler uses here. I do, however, think there’s a way to make the analogy she draws between Venezuela and Minnesota a little more compelling.

Wheeler’s general point is that the “model” of power in both Venezuela and Minnesota is the same: “extract tribute, subjugate the population… and impose your rules on how to govern.” Or, as she puts it near the end of the video,

It is the same model: Stephen Miller is trying to colonize Minnesota, he is trying to colonize Venezuela, he has no fucking interest in bringing benefits to the citizens of either one. He wants extraction and he wants obeisance.

The neo-colonial project, in this view, is to invade, conquer, subdue, and plunder. This is inflammatory language but I have no trouble applying it to Venezuela, where Trump has declared himself “acting President of Venezuela” and in that capacity (it appears) will now control an offshore, Qatar-based fund for Venezuela’s oil proceeds. So what about Minnesota? What form might the “tribute” demanded in Minnesota take?

Wheeler doesn’t say (though she uses the word “extraction”), and I haven’t seen other commentators spell out what form it will take. So for what it’s worth I am going to offer this: it’s important to understand that Trump and those in his circle regard Minnesota not only as a hotbed of Somali daycare fraud, a stronghold of illegal immigration, and the home of whistle-blowing paid agitators and domestic terrorists, but also as a resource play. A critical minerals bonanza.

(As anyone who reads this blog knows, this is a theme I’ve been chasing since Trump was first elected, and Jared and Ivanka moved into the five-million-dollar mansion purchased for them by a Chilean billionaire with a controversial plan to mine copper and nickel in northern Minnesota, on the edge of the Boundary Waters.)

Just last week, when news of Renee Good’s murder broke, there was another Minnesota story in the news that helps illustrate what I’m talking about. You can read it as a story about a cynical abuse of the Congressional Review Act, but it’s also about the convergence of a foreign mining company’s US political project with the Project 2025 authoritarian takeover of the US government.

Once it became clear that there was no lawful path forward for the Twin Metals project, that convergence was bound to happen. The mining company’s case in US District Court had been dismissed (though it is still on appeal at the DC Circuit), their lease applications had been denied, their mining plan of operations was rejected, and the Biden administration had put a 20-year moratorium on copper and nickel mining in the Rainy River watershed. The only way forward for Chilean mining giant Antofagasta was political, as I put it at the time. The company could count on a Trump victory in 2024, on corruption, and on the Project 2025 plan to weaken and hobble the administrative state.

Now that bet is starting to pay off, as the latest chapter in this story shows. Just after the new year, on January 6, this entry was made in the Congressional Record:

Project 2025 specified that the 20-year mineral withdrawal of the Rainy River watershed should be “[abandoned]” if it had “not been completed.” In 2023, that read like a throwaway line. The mineral withdrawal had been announced in January of that year, and it seemed all but certain that the withdrawal would be completed by the end of Biden’s term.

Now, Republicans claim, the Biden administration failed to take one small, final step.

The Biden White House published notice of the withdrawal in the Federal Register, but not in the Congressional Record, as required by law [or not, see the postcript below*]. With this letter, Trump’s Department of the Interior is correcting that oversight. But of course it’s a bad faith gesture. The notice creates an opportunity for the House of Representatives to review and for the Republican majority to reject the mineral withdrawal, as this Reuters article explains. The same notice was sent to Vice President Vance, as head of the Republican-controlled Senate. Opponents of the withdrawal will now have 60 days to muster simple majorities in both houses.

Though it may look like a bureaucratic fix to cure a deficiency, the letter is clearly part of a coordinated effort to advance Antofagasta’s Twin Metals project. It’s a clever ploy, designed to give corruption the appearance of legitimacy. Start with the office issuing the letter, the Office of the Secretariat and Regulatory Affairs (OES) in the Department of the Interior. OES serves as “the primary point of contact” with the White House Office of Management and Budget, and communicates and works regularly with OMB to “ensure” that regulations and policies “comply with…OMB requirements.” That is the principal and legitimate channel of communication for this kind of letter.

However, anyone paying attention for the last year or so knows that OMB is now a fully captured office, under the direction of Russell Vought, one of the architects of Project 2025. At every turn, Vought has directed OMB to dismantle and hamstring federal agencies and undo rules unfavorable to private industry. OMB is most likely the office that ordered this OES review, and the “White House Office” where the Bernhardt Group, according to its most recent disclosure, has been lobbying for the Twin Metals mine. (Next week, we’ll see if Q4 25 lobbying disclosures offer any more clarity on this point.**) Along with OES, OMB, and Antofagasta’s lobbying firm, Rep. Pete Stauber was also in the loop. Or at least he wasted no time doing his part. Less than a week after the letter from OES appeared in the Congressional Record, Stauber introduced a joint resolution of “Congressional disapproval” of the withdrawal.

Communications among these groups would make a particularly ripe target for a FOIA request, and help establish who did exactly what in this latest scheme. At the same time, I doubt that document production would help us make any meaningful connection between what’s going down in Minneapolis right now and these behind-closed-door maneuvers on behalf of a foreign mining company. That’s not really the point, anyway. I am not trying to suggest that extracting the treasures of the Duluth Complex is the main motive for the federal occupation of Minnesota, or that the violent brownshirt tactics we’re seeing on the streets of Minneapolis are primarily intended to pave the way for extractive industry up north. What I am suggesting is that we should look for places where these two Trumpist efforts might come together: the federal occupation of Minnesota and the push to plunder Minnesota’s mineral resources. That’s the intersection where the case for colonialism or analogies with Venezuela or Greenland will gain real traction.

With Trump now threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act, there are already some worrying signs that the authoritarian takeover of Minnesota could extend beyond subjugation of Minneapolis to demand tribute from the Iron Range. The ICE surge is already providing Stauber, Tom Emmer, and other Minnesota Republicans with an opportunity to attack Twin Cities leadership and widen existing north-south, rural-urban political divides. With his cronies on the House Natural Resources Committee, Stauber has tried to drag environmental groups before Congress on the pretext that they colluded with the Biden administration on the Rainy River withdrawal, and he has made McCarthyite threats about their non-profit status. ICE kidnappings and detention of Oglala Lakota and raids on the Little Earth housing complex suggest that blind racism and utter disregard for tribal sovereignty could (once again) enable extractive industry in the north. And from everything we’ve seen, it’s clear this lawless administration will not hesitate to label environmental defenders and water protectors — or anyone who stands in the way of their booty — domestic terrorists, and deal with them accordingly.

*Postscript Longtime Boundary Waters champion and lawyer Rebecca Rom writes to say the law does not require publication in the Congressional Record:

The issue isn’t the Congressional Record (the claimed technicality) but rather the application of the Congressional Review Act for Interior Dept. Public Land Orders. 

The Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) governs federal land withdrawals and requires thorough and timely notice to Congress upon the signing of a Public Land Order for a withdrawal. The Interior Department has followed the FLPMA Section 204 notice provisions to Congress for nearly 50 years (since 1976), through Republican and Democrat administrations. This is the pattern and practice of FLPMA notice compliance by the Interior Department.

This did not change with the enactment of the Congressional Review Act in 1996, which applies to notice of rules (not orders) to Congress in a process that is nearly identical to FLPMA.

In the past 25 years, there have been 28 withdrawals. Interior has not sent any of these withdrawals (those that were over 5,000 acres) to Congress pursuant to the Congressional Review Act. All notices that have been to Congress have been FLPMA notices.

The Interior Department delivered FLPMA notices to Congress, as required by law, on Jan. 26, 2023, when Public Land Order 7917 was signed. All members of the MN Congressional delegation received a letter of notice, including Congressman Stauber. The decision was published in the Federal Register, as required.

Any claim by Congressman Stauber of a violation of the Congressional Review Act is wrong. Any claim by Congressman Stauber that Congress did not receive notice of PLO 7917 is wrong; it received the legally required notice under FLPMA.

**Update 23 Jan 26: A little more clarity. The most recent disclosure by the Bernhardt Group corrects “White House Office” to “Executive Office of the President (EOP)” — which is where OMB is housed. It also shows the Bernhardt Group lobbying for Twin Metals at USDA. I found it curious that the Department of Agriculture was not among the agencies listed on the Q3 disclosure form.

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The Center for Biological Diversity Claps Back at House Republicans

With blatant disregard for First Amendment protections, Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee are now conducting sham investigations into civil society groups that “oppose mining in Northern Minnesota and otherwise negatively influence America’s natural resource and energy priorities.”

A December 1 letter from representatives Bruce Westerman (R-Ark), Pete Stauber (R-MN), and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) accuses the Center for Biological Diversity, the Wilderness Society, Earthjustice, “and other similar radical groups” of “collusion” with “the Biden administration.” The letter also makes not-so-veiled threats about the groups’ tax-exempt status.

The letter purports to be concerned about the “backroom role” these groups are supposed to have played “in the Biden administration’s cancellation of [Antofagasta’s] two decades-old mineral leases” on the edge of the Boundary Waters.

The Republicans have very little to go on. Their “serious” allegations actually sound absurd, given the ongoing, multimillion dollar lobbying campaign for the Twin Metals project and all the well-documented, corrupt dealings to advance it during the first Trump administration.

It’s clear the Committee’s true purpose is to harass and intimidate groups that have spoken out for environmental protections and committed the thought-crime of opposing Trump’s unlawful, reckless, and incoherent “energy dominance” agenda.

Yesterday, Kieran Suckling, Executive Director of the Center for Biological Diversity, sent this clap-back to the Committee. It’s worth reading in full. Suckling kindly sent me a copy after a brief email exchange over a comment he left on one of my posts.

And here, for good measure, is the December 1 letter to Suckling from Westerman, Stauber, and Gosar.

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#1A #BoundaryWaters #corruption #FirstAmendment #FOIA #Water

SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING:

A #severe #thunderstorm capable of producing 3hail up to ping-pong ball size is pushing through the eastern half of the #BoundaryWaters region of the #Northland.

Be prepared to seek shelter as it passes through.

#wxtooter #weather #wx #MNwx

4 P.M. #RADAR UPDATE:

The current focus for the #showers and #thunderstorms forming as part of a #storm system pushing into the #Northland is the #BoundaryWaters region.

This will push south as we go through the night and throughout the day Tuesday. Heavy #rainfall is the greatest threat.

#wxtooter #weather #wx #MNwx #WIwx #UPwx

Public Comment on the Rainy River Watershed Withdrawal

https://twitter.com/lvgaldieri/status/1478795253108912128?s=20

My written comments ran to five pages, so instead of posting them here, I put them online as a PDF, which you can read here. I also made a three-minute comment in the live session hosted by the Bureau of Land Management and the US Forest Service this afternoon. My comments focus mainly on the story I’ve been pursuing for the past few years — a story of corruption. The first couple of paragraphs convey the general idea:

Federal lands in the Rainy River Watershed should be withdrawn from disposition under US mineral and geothermal leasing laws for the proposed initial twenty-year period, if not permanently. This is an overdue decision, grounded in science, economics, law, and environmental ethics.

Why, then, hasn’t it already happened? How did this withdrawal process, which started in 2017, go off track? Agency records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show clearly that a foreign mining company, Antofagasta plc, acted to prevent the withdrawal; and from 2017-2021, members of Congress and the executive branch ran political interference on its behalf. Decisions taken behind closed doors during that period served foreign private interests, not the American public interest. The agencies now have an opportunity to rectify the situation.

I end with three recommendations:

The announcement on October 20, 2021, that the Biden administration will complete the “science-based environmental analysis” was encouraging. Given all the political interference, the two-year study really ought to have been started all over again, from scratch, in the interest of scientific integrity. At the very least, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack should release – unredacted — the preliminary findings of the canceled two-year scientific study, so that they can be compared with the new and complete analysis.

As agencies work toward a science-based decision on the twenty-year withdrawal, they also need to take additional steps to restore public confidence and guard against undue influence. As a first step, the USDA Inspector General could review Secretary Perdue’s decision to cancel the 2017 withdrawal process and report on scientific independence, ethical conduct, and political interference at the agency.

Finally, the agencies can help raise standards. Industry repeatedly assures us that non-ferrous mining in the Rainy River Watershed and elsewhere can be done “responsibly,” and there are a growing number of calls, from Congress and from within the Biden administration, for “responsible mining” for the transition to renewables. How should government respond? Rigorous and practical guidance for agencies on the law and ethics as well as the technical and scientific aspects of “responsible mining” would be a good start.

Here is a recording of my three-minute live comment, which tracks all this pretty closely. Video is cued to the mark.

https://youtu.be/jThQgcFySC8?t=8859

#BoundaryWaters #corruption #environmentalEthics #ethics #ethicsOfMining #goodGovernment #governmentFailure #Water