https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/
Of course Minnesota is a mining-friendly state. We’ve been successfully mining here for more than a century and a half, the industry fueling our state economy, propping up our schools, and defining us.
Minnesota mining has been credited for being a key to victory in two world wars. If it wasn’t for Minnesota mining, the bustle and activity at the port of Duluth-Superior, the largest on the Great Lakes, would be a shadow of itself.
https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/
Ryan Sistad of Duluth is executive director of Better In Our Back Yard (betterinourbackyard.com), which promotes responsible industrial development.
In her Jan. 25 column in the News Tribune, Lynn Anderson of the Tamarack Water Alliance attempted to convince Minnesotans that the high-grade nickel deposit discovered in the deep bedrock of Aitkin County by Talon Metals is actually not needed in the energy transition.
She even asserted that Tesla made a mistake by partnering with Talon Metals to source nickel because the company is moving to batteries that don’t use nickel and that any day now President Joe Biden will reverse course and remove nickel from the U.S. critical-minerals list. None of this is true.
The U.S. Department of the Interior issued a 20-year mining moratorium Thursday on 225,000 acres of federal land near the Boundary Waters, dealing a further blow to the proposed Twin Metals mine near Ely, Minn. and other potential mines for copper, nickel and precious metals within the watershed of the canoe wilderness area.
The decision is the latest milestone in a long and contentious tug of war over mining near the popular wilderness area that has spanned more than six years and three presidential administrations.
At the hunting shack this year, my grandfather Ward Brown, Jr., told how a high school friend saved him from getting beat up by a Chisholm gang back around 1952. Not long after, this friend lay dead in the wreck of his restored ’32 Chevy on the road between Side Lake and Hibbing.
No “Leave It To Beaver” utopia here; the 1950s were wild on northern Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range, wild because it seemed like it was all coming to an end. This happened more than 70 years ago. But it’s not just grandpa’s friend who’s gone, it’s also the road where he died.
Developers of a proposed nickel mine in northern Minnesota plan to move construction of its processing plant to North Dakota because of environmental concerns.
Talon Metals has been under pressure from environmental groups and the tribal bands of the Lake Superior Chippewa about a plan to build the processing plant in Tamarack, about 50 miles west of Duluth.
Talon Metals (TSX: TLO) has received more encouraging results from drilling at its Tamarack nickel-copper-cobalt project in Minnesota, including assays for 17 holes drilled on the western side of the Tamarack resource area between 2021-2022 that demonstrated the continuity and thickness of the high-grade massive sulphide zone.
The new drill holes extended the resource from 320 metres from northwest to southeast. One hole (21TK0380) returned a record intercept of 23.44 metres grading 6.04% nickel and 2.85% copper in the Main zone.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The developers of a proposed copper-nickel mine upstream from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northeastern Minnesota sued the Biden administration Monday to seek the reinstatement of federal mineral rights leases that are crucial to the $1.7 billion project.
Twin Metals Minnesota alleged in its lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, that the Department of the Interior acted illegally earlier this year when it canceled the leases. The company asked the court to declare that those leases remain valid and in force, so that it can proceed with the environmental review and permitting process.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/
A proposal for a ‘sustainable mine’ in Minnesota has the backing of Tesla. But will it win over the community?
TAMARACK, Minn. — Electric cars are still rare in this marshy stretch of central Minnesota, where it is more common to pass a flock of wild turkeys on the country roads than a Nissan Leaf.
But the region could have an outsize impact on America’s transition to zero-emission vehicles. Tamarack, sitting atop a treasure trove of metal used to power electric cars, is fast becoming a test case of whether the auto industry can meet this critical climate moment by sourcing colossal amounts of battery materials domestically and sustainably.
PolyMet Mining Corp (POM.TO) and Teck Resources Ltd (TECKb.TO) said on Wednesday they will form a joint venture to develop their Minnesota copper and nickel mining projects.
The new company, known as NewRange Copper Nickel LLC, will share costs to develop the two proposed mines, which aim to produce metals used to make electric vehicles and other green technologies.
A proposal to ban mining near the most popular wilderness area in the country is dividing members of Congress along party lines following President Joe Biden’s decision earlier this year to block federal approval of a new mine.
Democrats on the House Natural Resources Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee said last week they supported Minnesota U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum’s bill to permanently protect nearly a quarter-million acres of Superior National Forest near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness from the polluting byproducts of mining for nickel, cobalt, copper and other minerals.
A Minnesota project has to overcome tribal and environmental concerns. But the U.S. needs its own source of nickel, which is key to electric-vehicle expansion.
The future of US-made electric-vehicle batteries might be found in a modest white shed in Tamarack, Minnesota, population 104.
Beneath bright fluorescent lights, foot-long cylindrical pieces of rock are laid out in cardboard boxes, where they sparkle with grains found in the millions of pounds of nickel that Tesla Inc. committed to buy on Jan. 11. That commitment has the potential to turn into a savvy buy for the electric carmaker.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has dealt a fresh blow to PolyMet Mining’s (TSX: POM) plans to build an open pit copper-nickel mine in Minnesota, by recommending the US Army Corps of Engineers not re-issue a key water-related permit.
The agency said this week the $1 billion NorthMet project, the first large-scale project to be permitted within the Duluth Complex in northeastern Minnesota, risked increasing levels of mercury and other pollutants in the St. Louis River downstream from the proposed mine.
Companies and governments around the world have pulled out of Russia after the country invaded Ukraine last month, and the war has even sparked lawmakers in Minnesota to consider divesting state pension funds from companies tied to Russia in the midst of the humanitarian crisis. The Russian invasion has also now raised questions about Minnesota’s mining industry.
Both supporters and opponents of two potential copper-nickel mines have used the war in Ukraine to underscore their stances on the projects. Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, an advocacy group opposing Toronto-based PolyMet Mining’s project near Hoyt Lakes, says Russia’s attacks are just one more reason the mine should be stopped. That’s because, in part, PolyMet’s majority owner has business ties with Russia.
ELY, Minn. — This northwoods town is quiet and closed up for the winter — no throngs of tourists, the snowy streets largely empty. But there’s a range of emotions running among residents from hope and excitement to angry defiance.
The Biden administration’s decision last week to cancel the leases for the Twin Metals copper-nickel mine marked another dramatic turn in a dispute that has roiled this Iron Range community for decades: Does mining play a role in its future or is it firmly in the past?
The leases, reinstated during the Trump years, would have allowed a Chilean mining conglomerate to dig for copper and nickel near the Boundary Waters wilderness in Minnesota.
The Biden administration said Wednesday that it had canceled two mining leases that would have allowed a copper mine to be built near an area of pristine wilderness in Minnesota.
The Interior Department said it had determined that the leases, held by Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining conglomerate Antofagasta, were improperly reinstated by the Trump administration in 2019.
