Urge Governor Walz to support the PolyMet mine!

Our friends at the group Better in Our Back Yard (BIOBY) are circulating a petition urging Gov. Tim Walz to publicly support the PolyMet mining project, which is the first-ever copper-nickel mine to be fully permitted in Minnesota.

Getting Walz to support the project publicly would be a major victory for the project, and it would be a first step in restoring Northern Minnesota’s faith that the administration will actually “follow the science,” on mining, as Walz promised to do during his gubernatorial campaign.

You can read the petition below, and sign it by clicking here.

Governor Walz,

The Iron Range needs your help.

For over 17 years, residents on the Iron Range, skilled men and women in the Union Building Trades, small business owners, and political leaders – some who are no longer with us today, some who hadn’t even been born when this process started – have waited patiently for PolyMet and the state regulatory agencies to navigate the complex permitting process, achieve permits and begin production. 

PolyMet is Minnesota’s first fully permitted copper-nickel mine. Your state regulatory agencies wrote these permits with confidence that PolyMet would not degrade our environment. However, opposition groups question and challenge each approved permit, leading to unnecessary appeals and permit remands.

Over the past 40 years, we’ve seen Iron Range communities, including Ely, Gilbert, Hibbing, and Virginia, experience population drops surpassing 20%. Hoyt Lakes, home of PolyMet’s NorthMet project, has suffered a population decline of 30%.

The success of PolyMet can help turn things around. It can be a catalyst for growth, but the Iron Range needs to see more support from the Governor’s office. Minnesota has ambitious renewable energy goals, and a strong desire to contribute to the broader national renewable energy agenda. Let the Iron Range supply the metals needed for this future. We can do it right here in our great state, where we have and meet the best environmental standards in the world, with the most passionate environmentalists working every day to strike a balance between continued development and environmental stewardship. Let the skilled men and women in the Union Building trades lead the way, backed by a region with over 130 years of mining experience.

It’s time to give the Iron Range the comeback it deserves.

Thank you,

—
Better In Our Back Yard
[email protected]