The prospect of a new copper-nickel mine near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) is sounding alarm bells among environmental groups.  

“Now that President Trump is in office, the Boundary Waters is really at risk here,” declares Chris Knopf, Executive Director of Friends of the Boundary Waters. “Trump had as part of his mantra, ‘drill, baby drill.’ For the Boundary Waters, that means ‘mine baby mine’ at the edge of the wilderness. So, we are extremely concerned about that.”  

For several administrations, “to mine or not to mine” — has been a political back and forth.

After former President Obama issued a mining moratorium in 2016, Donald Trump reversed it during his first term — and returned mineral leases to Twin Metals Minnesota.

President Biden then rescinded those leases and went one step further.  

“You know, they did it immediately, imposing a 20-year mining ban on a quarter-million acres,” Trump told supporters during a rally in St. Cloud last July. Then-candidate Trump vowed to reverse the ban.

“We will end that ban in about 10-15 minutes,” he told the crowd.

David Schultz, a political science professor at Hamline University, doesn’t think that will happen — at least any time soon.

“Trump cannot easily bypass all the laws that are in place and just simply say, go and mine, do what you want at this point,” he explains.

Schultz says Trump could undo the ban administratively — or Congress could pass legislation to reverse it.

Either way could take weeks or months.

“There’s a whole framework of law out there, environmental laws that require permitting, licensure,” Schultz notes. “A whole bunch of things before you can actually allow that to occur.”

On Tuesday, Democratic Congresswoman Betty McCollum reintroduced a bill to permanently protect more than 225,000 acres of federal lands and waters within the Superior National Forest from copper mining.

“The Boundary Waters are a national treasure that must be protected,” she said in a statement. “Allowing these waters to be permanently poisoned by toxic sulfide ore run-off would be a devastating tragedy for our nation.”

A spokesperson for Republican Congressman Pete Stauber says he plans to reintroduce his bill revoking the mining ban in the Superior National Forest and restore mining leases there.

The spokesperson says the bill would not allow mining in the BWCA or the buffer zone surrounding it.

Knopf says a copper-nickel mine near the BWCA would leach sulfuric acid and mercury into the water.

“All that waste rock has sulfide in it, and you create sulfuric acid that runs off into the water,” he explains. “It also takes mercury, elemental mercury that’s otherwise inert in the soil and mobilizes it. It then gets into the plants, into the animals, into fish, and ultimately, human beings.”

But Julie Lucas, Executive Director of Mining Minnesota, an industry group, says pollution controls have evolved.

“Folks should be asking questions about mining and how are you going to do it, how are you going to protect the water,” she says. “Because mineral resources and natural resources need to find a way to work together.”

Mining Minnesota says the project would create 750 jobs, plus 1400 jobs in related industries, and have an economic impact of $2 billion.

Lucas says even if Twin Metals gets the leases back, the approval process could take years.

“The leases come back; they don’t flip a switch and start mining,” she notes. “We still have an environmental review, we have all the public comment periods, all the public engagement. There’s still a lot of research and development that’ll go into that project.”

Asked for comment, Twin Metals issued a statement, which says in part:

“We are committed to advancing our project in a bipartisan manner to ensure Americans can benefit from the much-need copper, nickel, and cobalt resources that are abundant in northeast Minnesota.”

Knopf says Friends of the Boundary Waters’ legal team is “ready to go to court” — and will lobby state lawmakers for BWCA protections — although he concedes gridlock in the state legislature might make that difficult to pass.

“(We’re trying) to pass legislation at the state level to protect the Boundary Waters and right now we are working with a number of legislators to try and get action on that,” he notes. “Ultimately, it’s citizen action that’ll protect the Boundary Waters.”