Mining on the table again in northern Minnesota post election

President-elect Donald Trump may have only made one campaign stop in the state this year, but that’s all it took to get the attention of supporters of overturning the Biden administration’s ban on developing the world-class mineral deposits in the northern Minnesota wilderness.

At the campaign event, Trump gave a shout-out to the Iron Range, vowing to roll back Biden’s ban. That means in the aftermath of Trump’s convincing victory, the Duluth News Tribune notes, the issue of mining in northern Minnesota immediately goes back on the front burner again.

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to reverse the Biden administration’s 20-year mining ban on federal land within the same watershed as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, bolstering the hopes of copper-nickel mining industry supporters but worrying environmentalists who fear pollution to the downstream wilderness area.

The mineral withdrawal, which bans mining on 225,000 acres of the Superior National Forest until 2043, and non-renewal of key federal mineral leases to Twin Metals’ proposed copper-nickel mine effectively killed the company’s plan to build an underground mine and tailings-storage facility processing plant along Birch Lake, which flows into the BWCAW via the Kawishiwi River.

At a July 27 rally in St. Cloud, Trump said he’d reverse the withdrawal in “about 10 minutes.”

“Tonight, I pledge to Minnesota miners that when I am reelected, I will reverse the Biden-Harris attack on your way of life, and we will turn the Iron Range into a mineral powerhouse like never before,” he said.

The squabble over responsible development of the state’s mineral reserves goes back decades. The back and forth between competing administrations has left the mining industry in limbo.

The mineral withdrawal and rejection of Twin Metals leases were first enacted in the final days of the Obama administration. Those moves were then reversed by the Trump administration but later reinstated by the Biden administration, which also released an accompanying U.S. Forest Service study that said hard-rock mining within the Rainy River Watershed could pose an environmental threat to the BWCAW.

Environmentalists claim it will take more than an executive order to remove the mining moratorium imposed by the outgoing administration. If so, mining supporters have other options that could accomplish the same thing, particularly if the GOP controls both houses of Congress.

Congress could also pass a bill that reverses the withdrawal and reinstates Twin Metals’ leases.

In April, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill by U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Hermantown, that would have reversed the mineral withdrawal, reissued key federal mineral leases to Twin Metals, limited environment and regulatory review of mine plans of operations within the Superior National Forest to 18 months, and blocked judicial review of reissued leases or permits. However, the bill was never taken up by the Democratic-controlled Senate.

One thing’s for certain. The demand for Minnesota’s cobalt, copper, nickel, helium gas and other strategic mineral deposits will only grow, along with the pressure to develop them. The question remains whether the new administration will be able to break the regulatory logjam and clear the way to move forward.