#responsible-mining — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

lvgaldieri @[email protected] · 2026-02-22 · 20:08 UTC

The Chilean billionaire who wants to mine copper and nickel near the Boundary Waters can’t even be bothered to pay his DC sewer bill?

Kalorama Sewer_ 2025115942 Download

Law professor and ethics watchdog Richard Painter put it bluntly back in 2019:

Jared and Ivanka’s landlord — a billionaire from Chile who rents them their mansion in D.C. — will use the Boundary Waters as his toilet. Pro-sulfide mining politicians in Minnesota and Washington are handing him the washroom key.

Seven years later, the key to the billionaire’s commode is now turning in the lock. House Joint Resolution 140 will open the door. Meanwhile, as the above notice of delinquency indicates, this same Chilean billionaire has been using Washington DC’s waters and sewers, and the people charged with managing his toilet can’t even be bothered to see that the water bill is paid on time.

The District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority — whose motto reminds us that “Water is Life” —issued this notice to the owner of 2449 Tracy Place NW back in November. The property in question is the Kalorama mansion purchased for $5.5 million right after the 2016 election by Andronico Luksic Craig, the billionaire whose family also controls Antofagasta plc, the foreign mining conglomerate currently pushing to mine copper and nickel on the edge of the Boundary Waters.

Luksic rented the Tracy Place NW mansion to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump for the duration of Trump’s first term while Antofagasta’s lawyers, lobbyists, and executives worked behind closed doors with administration officials to undo environmental protections and advance the Twin Metals mine. Despite serious public concern about foreign emoluments and other improprieties, no formal ethics review of the Kalorama rental arrangement was ever undertaken. It was, at best, a not-so-subtle influence operation, a form of corruption that today can seem almost quaint (but that hardly makes it excusable). Nowadays, Luksic could just arrange a meeting at the White House and present Trump with a gilded copper chamberpot.

Luksic continued to hold the Kalorama rental property after Trump’s first term violently unraveled and Jared and Ivanka fled DC. These days, the billionaire’s lawyers are supposed to be managing Tracy DC Real Estate (a Luksic front, one of many) and the the Kalorama property. They appear to be negligent or inattentive managers. In 2019, they failed to renew the required business license for the rental property on time; then in 2023, they simply “abandoned” the business license. The matter was referred to enforcement.

So this latest infraction appears to be part of a pattern of neglect, and I would suggest that the pattern merits some serious consideration. In other words, I don’t think I’m just taking cheap shots here. In Washington DC, Luksic is an absent rent-seeker, as he would be in Minnesota; and in DC, it seems, his property managers can’t be arsed to comply with local codes and ordinances. His Minnesota managers might do better, or not; but the irresponsible oversight of the Kalorama property does nothing to assuage concern. (Much the same could be said about the significant fines another Luksic enterprise incurred for unauthorized water extraction at Agricola El Cerrito in April 2025).

DC has had to chase down Tracy DC Real Estate for operating the Kalorama property without a license; and the city has had to place a lien against the property in order to collect what is owed for water and sewage management. This is not exactly the conduct of a model citizen or someone with a commitment to the District of Columbia. It’s what we might expect from an absentee landlord.

And that is essentially what Minnesota and the country will get with the Twin Metals mine: an absent owner from a faraway place and a group of hired managers on the ground. Antofagasta might hire the most qualified managers at the Twin Metals mine, and I’m sure they will say that they have; but even the best managers are employees, not owners. With ownership comes responsibility.

The absentee, rent-seeking model of resource extraction is especially concerning when it comes to sulfide mining, where responsible local water management is critical in order to prevent – or at least try to prevent – acid mine drainage and other toxic pollution. Only last month, in fact, the Chilean government fined Antofagasta $775,000 for failing to comply with water management rules. Will our regulators ever be so diligent?

Think of it this way: a copper and nickel mine is, among other things, a sewer. It can, and in most cases will, drain, leak, or discharge pollutants for decades after the mine has closed and the owner has absconded with the profits.

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