Simmering conflict between mining and clean water come to a head in northern Minnesota

Ely, Minnesota, is "a focus of a national debate about the proper use of public lands," Reid Forgrave writes in a long but interesting story for The New York Times Magazine. "The place also distills the political fault lines in today’s America, pitting an angry working class against progressive activists."

Boundary Waters Canoe Area; blue dots mark entry points
(Map from Boundary Waters Outfitters, Ely, Minnesota)

Since its founding in 1888, people have come to Ely mostly "to make a living off the rocks. The ore supported abundant mining jobs for generations," Forgrave reports. "For almost as long, however, people have been coming to this area for another reason, too: to visit America’s most popular national wilderness area, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, which encompasses roughly a million protected acres and thousands of lakes and welcomes 150,000 visitors annually. "

The simmering conflict between the two interests has come to a head because "An international mining conglomerate has invested hundreds of millions of dollars during the past decade toward potential copper-nickel mines a few miles outside the Boundary Waters," Forgrave writes. "Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining giant Antofagasta  . . . hopes to process 20,000 tons of mineralized ore a day. The company believes the area’s valuable metals — copper, nickel, platinum, palladium, gold and silver — can be extracted in an environmentally responsible way and can provide hundreds of jobs to the job-starved economy of Minnesota’s Arrowhead Region, along the northwestern coast of Lake Superior." The mining would be underground, just southeast of Ely.

The Obama administration refused in December to renew Twin Metals’ leases and imposed a moratorium pending a study on mining near the Boundary Waters. "Depending on its findings, the stoppage could be a prelude to what conservationist groups here hope for most: a 20-year prohibition on mining in a 230,000-acre portion of the Rainy River Watershed that includes land surrounding the Boundary Waters," Forgreve writes. "That could lead to a permanent end to mining around the Boundary Waters."

But Democratic U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan, who represents the area, and others are trying to abolish the moratorium. "The battle is being fought on both moral and economic grounds," Forgrave reports. "Mining advocates stress the hundreds of tangible construction and mining jobs this copper-nickel operation could create in the coming decades. Boundary Waters activists argue that the very presence of mining — its disruption of this area’s natural character, not to mention the specter of pollution — could hamper the region’s “amenity-based” development in a multitude of tangible and intangible ways, from destroying property values to stripping away jobs that feed off this area’s natural beauty."