#boundarywaters — 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. #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. #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

Pure silence. Untouched beauty. Rose Lake’s wilderness will stop you in your tracks — See this stunning scene from the Pacific Northwest. https://buff.ly/I5ZQ6Ir

#BoundaryWaters #RoseLake #NaturePhotography #WallArt #Minnesota #RoseLake #SheliaHuntPhotography #BuyIntoArt

Pure silence. Untouched beauty. Rose Lake’s wilderness will stop you in your tracks — See this stunning scene from the Pacific Northwest. https://buff.ly/I5ZQ6Ir

#BoundaryWaters #RoseLake #NaturePhotography #WallArt #Minnesota #RoseLake #SheliaHuntPhotography #BuyIntoArt

Pure silence. Untouched beauty. Rose Lake’s wilderness will stop you in your tracks — See this stunning scene from the Pacific Northwest. https://buff.ly/I5ZQ6Ir

#BoundaryWaters #RoseLake #NaturePhotography #WallArt #Minnesota #RoseLake #SheliaHuntPhotography #BuyIntoArt

Pure silence. Untouched beauty. Rose Lake’s wilderness will stop you in your tracks — See this stunning scene from the Pacific Northwest. https://buff.ly/I5ZQ6Ir

#BoundaryWaters #RoseLake #NaturePhotography #WallArt #Minnesota #RoseLake #SheliaHuntPhotography #BuyIntoArt