Archive | Minnesota Duluth Complex and Iron Range

http://www.startribune.com/

Permit approvals for PolyMet open a new chapter in an old struggle.

HOYT LAKES, Minn. – For years, residents of this struggling mining town have clung to the hope that their old way of life would return. But even so, when state regulators finally approved permits late last month for Minnesota’s first copper-nickel mine, the news hit like a thunderbolt.

“You could feel it,” said Toni Thuringer, co-owner of the Haven Bar and Grill, who described a buzz that ran through patrons dining in the restaurant and elbowing up to the bar. “It’s just so cool because it’s been so long since we’ve had that feeling around here.”

In Iron Range towns left for dead by the mining industry’s last bust in the 1980s, the sudden realization that, after years of contentious debate, PolyMet Mining Corp. might actually open its $1 billion mine has fueled rousing talk. Continue Reading →

https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/

Several Minnesota environmental groups asked state agencies to suspend permits for the contentious PolyMet copper-nickel mine in Minnesota.

The Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, WaterLegacy and Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness submitted a request for stay, or suspension, of permits issued by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources last week and pending permits from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency until the Minnesota Court of Appeals rules on whether an additional environment review of the project is needed.

Before the groups can ask the Court of Appeals for a stay on the permits, they’re required to first request a stay of permits from the agencies themselves, WaterLegacy counsel and advocacy director Paula Maccabee told the News Tribune on Thursday. “It’s not like this is the endgame, but it is a preliminary step,” Maccabee said. Continue Reading →

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The federal government’s sudden decision to reopen mineral exploration just outside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness was a resounding defeat for wilderness advocates. But for the mining industry, it means back to business as usual.

By 2016, when the U.S. Forest Service adopted the temporary ban on exploratory drilling, mining companies had already poked thousands of holes in the ground in northern Minnesota in a decadeslong hunt for copper, nickel, platinum and other precious metals.

Now, the grinding sound of the drill rigs in 234,000 acres of the Superior National Forest around Ely will resume and, over the next few years, probably increase, say those in the industry. More importantly, the decision to lift the ban makes it more likely that at some point all that exploration will result in a mine. Continue Reading →

https://www.voanews.com/

MINNEAPOLIS — The Trump administration on Thursday lifted a roadblock to copper-nickel mining near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness of northeastern Minnesota, reversing a decision made in the final days of the Obama administration.

The Obama administration in late 2016 withdrew around 234,000 acres of the Rainy River watershed near Ely from eligibility for mineral leasing pending a two-year study, citing the potential threat from acid mine drainage to the nearby Boundary Waters, the country’s most-visited wilderness area. The move could have led to a 20-year ban on mining and prospecting on the land.

The most immediate beneficiary is Twin Metals Minnesota, which hopes to build a copper-nickel-precious metals mine south of Ely. It plans to submit its first formal mining plan to regulators in the next 18 months. Continue Reading →

https://www.mprnews.org/

PolyMet Mining moved a tiny step closer to its goal of opening the first copper-nickel mine in Minnesota last week when the state Department of Natural Resources declined an environmental group’s petition for additional environmental review on the proposed mine.

But the controversial project, nearly 15 years in the works, still faces several hurdles before construction can begin, including lawsuits, potential administrative hearings, several key permits PolyMet still needs to obtain — and the significant funding the company needs to raise to build the nearly $1 billion project, which would include a mine just south of the Iron Range town of Babbitt, Minn., and a processing facility a few miles south in Hoyt Lakes.

The PolyMet proposal — and the prospect of a new copper-nickel mining industry amongst the forests and lakes of northeast Minnesota — is the most divisive environmental issue the state has faced in decades. Continue Reading →

https://www.cjr.org/

“MINNESOTA AS TRUMP COUNTRY? DON’T BET ON IT,” Marshall Helmberger, publisher of The Timberjay, headlined his June 27 editorial, which ran a week after President Trump held a rally in the nearby city of Duluth. Like most of Helmberger’s editorials, the piece was expansive, gutsy, thoroughly researched, and left of center.

It was also written from the heart of the Iron Range, a taconite and iron-ore mining stronghold President Trump has zeroed-in on. There’s a hotly contested US House seat up for grabs in Minnesota’s Eighth Congressional District, where Trump stumped for Republican candidate Pete Stauber.

And the Trump administration is quietly dismantling environmental regulations to pave the way for Twin Metals, a subsidiary owned by Chilean conglomerate Antofagasta, to build a controversial sulfide-ore copper-nickel mine near the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Continue Reading →