Archive

   Twin Metals announced a change in the location of their proposed mine’s Tailings Storage Facility (TSF) from the Lake Superior watershed to directly upstream of the Boundary Waters.

Twin Metals made a number of false claims in their announcement, the most brazen being that the Maturi Deposit will be non-acid generating. Prior to today’s announcement, Twin Metals had proposed a tailings basin outside of the Wilderness watershed. Twin Metals now proposes a location within several miles of the Wilderness and in direct proximity to Birch Lake.

Today Twin Metals Minnesota announced new plans to dry stack it’s acid-generating mine tailings in the watershed of the Boundary Waters and Voyageurs National Park, even closer to the BWCA

Congress has an opportunity to reauthorize a program that has provided billions of dollars to conservation projects for over 50 years, all at no expense to the taxpayer. Set up to improve access to the outdoors, as well as conserve fish and wildlife habitat, the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) has dedicated almost $4 billion to a mix of state and federal programs.

Nearly 30 years later, on Feb. 15, 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt decided that some of the wild forests, wetlands and waterways in northeastern Minnesota should be added to America’s protected public lands. He signed Presidential Proclamation No. 848 establishing the 3.9 million-acre Superior National Forest. Today the heart of the national forest is the 1.1 million-acre Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW), one of the world’s 50 greatest destinations according to National Geographic.

In the waning months of the Obama administration, a Chilean conglomerate was losing a fight with the United States government over a copper mine that it wanted to build near a pristine wilderness area in Minnesota. The election of President Trump, with his business-friendly bent, turned out to be a game-changer for the project.