Smith urges colleagues to protect BWCAW, reject mining ban reversal

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate is expected to take up a vote on a bill in the next two weeks that could reverse a mining ban near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Democratic Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith urged colleagues across the aisle to consider various reasons to reject the bill in a floor speech Tuesday, April 14.

She pointed to the clean waters of the Boundary Waters, the treaty rights of the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and who stands to benefit from a foreign-owned mine in one of Minnesota’s most pristine areas.

“Just because the minerals are mined on United States forestland does not mean that they'll be reserved for an American market,” Smith said. “In fact, any copper or nickel that would be mined in the Duluth complex ... would immediately be sent to our strongest global competitor of China.”

Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of Chilean-owned Antofagasta, is seeking renewal of sulfide-ore copper mining leases across 5,000 acres of National Forest lands within the same Rainy River watershed as the BWCAW. The Duluth Complex is a mineral-rich geological formation that encompasses much of northeastern Minnesota.

“So what we're doing here with this mine is we're creating a pathway, a pipeline, for this foreign company to build a mine, almost certainly polluting the Boundary Waters, to take the copper, to send it to China, where they then have a sweetheart deal for smelting, and then sell it back out on the open market,” Smith said. “I mean, this is not an ‘America First’ strategy.”

The bill reversing a 2023 mining ban in the Superior National Forest, authored by Minnesota Republican Congressman Pete Stauber, passed the House earlier this year, largely along party lines. Stauber touted the measure as aligned with the Trump administration’s goals to “unleash” American manufacturing.

"This PLO [Public Land Order] sacrificed thousands of good-paying union jobs that would support families for generations, along with billions of dollars of revenue for our schools and state and federal governments, and most importantly, our nation's mineral security," Stauber said Jan. 21 on the House floor.

Smith warned of the dangers of what she describes as an abuse of the Congressional Review Act, which is meant to serve as a check on the executive branch within 60 days of a new rule.

"For the first time ever that I'm aware of, they are applying the CRA process not to a rule, but to a completely different public land order, a different statute," Smith said. “And what they want to do with the CRA is to claw back a public land order that was put into place three years ago.”

Sulfide-ore mining has not yet been done in the state of Minnesota, and the waste from these mines is laden with sulfates, a pollutant known to harm ecologically sensitive wild rice.