Today an editorial in the Star Tribune features the redacted mining ban study killed by the Trump Administration at the last minute. The study would have shown the impacts to the Boundary Waters from proposed sulfide-ore copper mining. The cover page is available but the rest of the report is redacted. The Trump Administration has moved heaven and earth to keep the contents of this report out of the public’s view. They have denied multiple congressional requests, fought lawsuits, and even threatened to shut down the government rather than allow a bipartisan provision in the most recent federal budget to move forward.
From from the editorial:
Sixty blacked-out pages. That’s what’s keeping secret the science involving copper mining’s risks to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA) watershed looks like.
In a congressional hearing last week, U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum held up the heavily redacted report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture as she demanded to know why the study’s findings haven’t been shared with Congress or the public. It’s a good question, one that the Star Tribune Editorial Board has asked repeatedly over the past year, and there are still no satisfactory answers.
That’s unacceptable and suggests strongly that the study’s findings show that copper mining’s potential pollution poses a serious risk to the BWCA. The wilderness lies downstream from one of the major copper mines proposed in the state — Twin Metals Minnesota, which seeks to operate near the wilderness and next to a reservoir whose waters flow into the BWCA. The other copper mining project, PolyMet, lies outside the wilderness watershed.
You can read the full piece here.