The Senate Vote That Could Open the Boundary Waters to Sulfide Mining

At some point in the next two weeks 100 senators are going to take a vote regarding House Joint Resolution 140 (HJR 140), which could overturn 20-year federal protections for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) in northern Minnesota. If these senators vote wrong people may die and fishing in the BWCAW will never be the same.

This is the reality over the next two weeks. 

A mining company called Twin Metals Minnesota is seeking to develop an underground copper nickel sulfide mine just outside the headwaters of the BWCAW. Their sales pitch is friendly and familiar: They want to develop this mine in rural northern Minnesota where the economy desperately needs the attention. It's a region with a history of mining that helped America win World Wars I and II. More American jobs! More blue-collar jobs! More jobs in a part of the country where there's never enough to go around!

It's a hell of a sales pitch with some great marketing behind it. The unfortunate reality is that Twin Metals Minnesota is the name specifically chosen to reinforce this easily digestible patriotic narrative. Twin Metals is actually a subsidiary of a Chilean mining company called Antofagasta. They're doing business as Twin Metals Minnesota to trick you and sound more American.

Antofagasta is a massive mining company with all the resources and infrastructure it needs to operate this mine. The large influx of American blue-collar jobs in the area is a farce. Sure, they will hire some people–but the profits and the bulk of the work will go elsewhere. 

Why Not an AMERICAN Mining Company?

The reason we are not using an American mining company that could provide a large influx of blue-collar jobs and help the local economy in a part of the country that really needs it is simple. This type of mining, in this area, is different. 

The proposed mine is a sulfide ore mine, a category of mining with a long and well‑documented history of environmental failure. In traditional mining, companies extract relatively concentrated deposits of metal‑bearing rock that can be processed with limited exposure to air and water. In this case, however, the desired metals are present only in trace amounts, requiring enormous volumes of sulfide‑bearing rock to be blasted, crushed, and stored. Exposing this rock to oxygen and water creates the conditions for acid-mine drainage–a chemical reaction in which sulfuric acid forms and leaches heavy metals from the waste rock into surrounding waters. Acid mine drainage is a predictable and persistent consequence of sulfide mining, and once it begins, it can contaminate waterways for generations.

This type of mine has caused water pollution and ecological failure at mining sites across the world and in the U.S. every time it has been tried. Seriously there are zero examples of a mine of this type working out. And they want to put it 80 yards uphill from the headwaters of 1,000,000 acres of public lakes and rivers connecting northern Minnesota to Hudson Bay?

So the reason we don't have American mining companies signing up for this opportunity is because the amount of labor would be so intense using traditional mining practices that any profit would be negated. To put it plainly, the juice is not worth the squeeze. 

But if you were a Chilean mining company using predominantly cheap labor where you won't have to hire too many Americans who must work at higher labor rates–who also have a predetermined agreement to sell the copper outside of the United States–you can make a profit.

Antofagasta has an agreement to sell this bounty to China. China will then use this raw copper to make all sorts of copper goods–predominantly electrical wire and things like intercontinental ballistic missiles.

What would HJR 140 Do if Passed?

In 2023, the federal government placed a 20-year ban on new mining leases in the watershed surrounding the BWCAW. HJR 140 would reverse that decision thus removing current mining protections, allowing federal mineral leases to be reinstated, and restarting the process of the Twin Metals Mine.

Congress has already passed HJR 140 and sent it to the Senate. If Congress passes HJR 140, the door will be open for the Twin Metals Mine. A Chilean mining company will profit off one of the most pristine wilderness areas in the United States using a type of mining that has never not had a dramatically negative ecological impact. The Chilean mining company will then take the goods from these mining practices and sell them to China. There is marginal benefit to the local economy, there is no benefit to any American-owned business, and the United States is left in a disadvantaged situation with China.

Meanwhile when this mine fails–like they have in Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado–and leaches sulfuric acid throughout the BWCAW, it will lead to permanent acidification of lakes and rivers (lowering water pH, sometimes to levels comparable to vinegar or battery acid), dissolve metals naturally present in rock–such as mercury, lead, and arsenic–into the water, lower water clarity and oxygen which smothers fish habitat, collapse aquatic insect populations, damage fish, disrupt fish-egg development, prevent successful spawning, and eventually trickle up the food chain to humans. Complete restoration of complex lake systems has never been demonstrated, and in a high‑water, bedrock‑dominated region like northern Minnesota, containment is especially difficult.

The BWCAW isn't just a place. It's one of the most beautiful places in the world. If you're a fisherman, it can be heaven on earth. It's a place where the chime of a Microsoft Teams message cannot find you, where your cell phone won't ring, and there's no work emergency to pull you away from your 8-weight. You wiggle your barefoot toes into the pea gravel while standing knee deep in the azure-blue water, and the smallmouth, pike, walleye and lake trout won't stop eating. When you crawl into your tent at night the call of the loon sings you to sleep. 

The only cost to get to a place like this is effort. Normally it's the kind of effort that requires toting around a 50-pound pack and a canoe on your back but today it requires another kind of effort. Today you need to pick up the phone and call your senator and tell them to vote no on HJR 140.

We need places like the BWCAW, because there's something intrinsically good about them, something that cannot be seen. I'm part of an organization that takes veterans fishing to help combat the symptoms of PTSD and the trauma of military service. In 2022, I took 18 veterans into the BWCAW for seven days of fishing. On day six, one of the veterans, Mike, told me a story.

Six months ago, Mike was sitting in his living room at 2:00 in the morning and he was in a bad place: “I had a pistol in my mouth, and I was ready to go.” Mike had been blown up six times on 10 different deployments. Mike is here today because that night he got an e-mail from the organization I work with inviting him to the Boundary Waters. That trip helped Mike and now he takes other veterans fishing across the northern Midwest to help teach them what the BWCAW taught him.

We need places like the BWCAW and today the BWCAW needs you. 

You can contact your senator via the U.S. Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 or visit this website.

If you’ve never made that call before, keep it simple: “I’m a constituent, and I’m asking the Senator to vote NO on HJR 140 to protect the Boundary Waters.”

That’s it. It takes less than a minute and it could buy you a lifetime.