BWCA advocacy groups move forward following latest ruling against Twin Metals

Though September is just through its first week, there was more bad news earlier this month for a company hoping to build a copper-nickel mine on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

In a ruling made public Sept. 6, environmentalists, including Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness, the lead organization in the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters, were victorious in the lawsuit in which more than a dozen advocacy groups and businesses intervened in support of the federal government.

Antofagasta’s subsidiaries, Twin Metals Minnesota and Franconia, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in August 2022. The lawsuit sought to force the renewal of federal mineral leases next to the BWCA, which had been renewed during the Trump Administration. In its lawsuit, the mining companies said the Department of the Interior acted illegally in 2022 when it canceled the leases.

Earlier in 2022, the Biden administration canceled the pair of Twin Metals mineral rights leases for a proposed copper-nickel mine in northeastern Minnesota.

At the time, it was widely speculated that this action alone could ultimately doom the proposed mine near the BWCA, according to many state and federal officials.

In making the announcement, the U.S. Department of the Interior said it determined that the expired Twin Metals leases were unlawfully reinstated by the Trump administration. This reinstatement violated federal laws and regulations, including the legal requirement that the U.S. Forest Service must consent to mineral leases, according to a directive signed by Ann Marie Bledsoe Downes, the principal deputy solicitor for the Department of Interior.

Becky Rom is the national chair of the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters. She spoke with WTIP’s Joe Friedrichs about this topic and other news specific to the BWCA and the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters. Audio below.

Joe Friedrichs September 10, 2023