This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.
WASHINGTON – The Interior Department on Thursday announced a 20-year mining moratorium on 225,000 acres of the Superior National Forest that bars Twin Metals from constructing a proposed copper, cobalt and nickel mine in the area.
The moratorium is a result of a Forest Service study of the environmental and economic impact of building an underground mine in the Rainy River Watershed, which covers the forest and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
“This action is based on the best available science, robust public engagement and public consultation,” an Interior Department official said in a background briefing.
The official said that risk to the Boundary Waters posed by the type of mine Twin Metals has proposed is “simply too high.”
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness extends 150 miles along the U.S.-Canada border, covering more than 1 million acres with over 1,100 lakes and 1,500 miles of canoe routes.
The official also said the Forest Service had determined more than 350 species that depend on the “pristine lands” of the Superior National Forest and Boundary Waters were also at risk. And, she said the area withdrawn from mining includes all the land ceded to Lake Superior Tribes in 1854 by the federal government so the moratorium is need to protect the treaty rights of the Bois Forte, Fond du Lac and Grand Portage bands to hunt, fish and gather wild rice in the area.
The Forest Service also determined that there would be an adverse economic impact if mining despoiled the Boundary Waters, which draws 150,000 visitors each year.
Taconite is mined in the Superior National Forest and the moratorium will not impact on those operations.
But environmentalists argued that mining for minerals like copper, cobalt and nickel in the forest – which require deep extraction in an underground mine – would produce tailings that can be dangerous sources of toxic chemicals that would pollute the Rainy River Watershed – and the Boundary Waters.
Twin Metals vows its plans for a new mine are safe and says the new metals that would be extracted are needed to boost clean technologies aimed at fighting climate change.
Thursday’s announcement follows action by the Biden administration last year to cancel two federal mining leases owned by Twin Metals – prompting the mining company to sue.
While the moratorium would block Twin Metals from developing what would be one of the largest undeveloped copper-nickel resources in the world and make the area off limits to other mines, the ban could be scrapped by a subsequent administration.
“I can’t speculate on what future administrations will or won’t do,” the Interior official said.
However, Becky Rom, the national chair of the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters, a coalition of environmental and conservation groups, said it’s unlikely the moratorium would be scrapped and more likely that it would be renewed because the federal government has had a history of increasing protections on the Boundary Waters though clean water legislation.
Still, Rom called the public land order that imposes the moratorium “the most important land conservation measure to impact Minnesota in the last 45 years.”
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