By Mordecai Specktor
Army Corps blocks NorthMet mine
In early June, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers revoked a permit for the NorthMet copper-nickel mine in northeastern Minnesota.
The Corps said in a statement that it revoked the Clean Water Act permit, which it had previously suspended, “because the permit does not ensure compliance with water quality requirements of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa,” according to an Associated Press report published in the Pioneer Press (St. Paul).
Minnesota Public Radio noted that the decision “does not deal a fatal blow to the project. NewRange Copper Nickel, a new joint venture between PolyMet and Teck [Resources] that now controls the deposit, can submit a new application for a wetlands permit. The company could also challenge the decision in federal court.”
MPR’s report added that the Army Corps’ decision is “a significant setback for NewRange, which is seeking to build the $1 billion project in northeastern Minnesota.”
The decision by the Army Corps was a great victory for the Fond du Lac Band, which filed its lawsuit in 2019.
“The victory really is theirs,” said Paula Maccabee, regarding the band’s participation in the environmental review of the PolyMet project. Maccabee is the advocacy director and counsel for WaterLegacy, a nonprofit 501c3 organization that formed in 2009 to counter the threat from sulfide mining in Minnesota.
“I think we need to be very clear that this process of the Army Corps review wouldn’t have happened at all but for the Fond du Lac Band,” Maccabee told me during a telephone interview.
I’ve been writing about sulfide mining schemes in Minnesota’s Arrowhead region for more than a dozen years, warning about the potential environmental destruction posed by acid runoff from sulfide mine debris.
The Fond du Lac Band, along with other Minnesota Indian bands, has expressed concern from the get-go about the threat posed by copper-nickel mining pollution to wild rice beds, water and wildlife (including the two-leggeds), in land that was ceded in 19th-century treaties between the Ojibwe and the U.S. government. In the treaty-making process, the Indian bands reserved subsistence rights — to hunt, fish and gather — within the vast ceded territory.
Minnesota’s North Country has been the site of iron ore and taconite mining dating to the late 19th century. However, copper-nickel mining is a different animal. Sulfide mining has never been done in the state; but the history of “hard rock mining” in the American West is a catalog of gross environmental despoliation. Communities have been left holding the bag, so to speak, after mining companies destroy the natural environment and then go bust. In Minnesota, there’s a push for mining jobs attendant to these mining projects; and the tourism industry has pushed back on extractive projects that will degrade the integrity of the north woods.
A new wrinkle with these copper-nickel projects is the rubric of “alternative energy” development, which in many cases depends on raw materials for storage batteries – copper, nickel and lithium. As with past struggles over energy development and mineral extraction, Native communities often bear the brunt of the downside effects of these projects.
While Fond du Lac celebrated its victory vis-à-vis the PolyMet project, the Mille Lacs Band is raising an alarm about another sulfide mining venture. In late June, Talon Metals LLC filed a proposal with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) for its Tamarack Nickel Mine Project. The mine, which would have an 80-acre footprint, as per the DNR, would be built near Tamarack, about 50 miles west of Duluth.
PolyMet, or NewRange, is owned by global mining giant Glencore; and Talon has a participation agreement with Rio Tinto, a multinational mining corporation that has compiled an atrocious record of labor and environmental abuses around the world.
Paula Maccabee mentioned that Talon began the environmental review process for a “tiny fragment of the 30,000 acres of surface land and resources that they control.” The mining project poses pollution threats for both the Mississippi River and St. Croix River watersheds, according to Maccabee. She recommended the St. Croix 360 website (bit.ly/talon-mine) for its maps and resources about the Tamarack Nickel Mine.
A St. Croix 360 article quotes Kelly Applegate, Mille Lacs Band commissioner of natural resources: “The Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe believes that advancements in green technology are critical to protecting our planet from the effects of climate change. At the same time, we must ensure that these advancements do not endanger our natural environment or indigenous communities.”
Stay tuned for further developments in the PolyMet and Talon sagas, and the popular resistance to these extractive schemes.–
