For Immediate Release
January 17, 2025
Contact: Libby London, 612-227-8407
ICYMI: Westerman pushes to fast-track stalled mining projects, prioritizing Twin Metals project next to Minnesota's Boundary Waters
Dear reporters and editors,
On Wednesday, E&E News by POLITICO reported that House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman plans to fast-track mining projects, with the Twin Metals project in Minnesota topping his list. This move reinforces the new administration’s clear agenda to dismantle protections for the entire Boundary Waters watershed—including undoing Biden’s historic 20-year mineral withdrawal, a goal they’ve vowed to pursue within their first “ten minutes” in office.
“Trump’s inauguration on Monday kicks off the countdown to an all-but-certain and unprecedented revocation of Biden’s historic mining ban in the Boundary Waters watershed. The robust record of science, law, public opinion, and economics is clear - copper mining does not belong on the doorstep of America’s most iconic landscapes,” said Ingrid Lyons, Executive Director of Save the Boundary Waters.
House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman plans to jump-start stalled mineral development projects and mandate fossil fuel leasing as part of a sweeping budget reconciliation package Republicans are trying to advance this year.
Westerman (R-Ark.), in an extensive interview with reporters Wednesday, said the committee has a list of potential items that Congress could help approve as Republicans led by President-elect Donald Trump seek to rapidly scale up energy and resource production.
Among those targets are the stalled access road in the Ambler mining district in Alaska, the Twin Metals project in Minnesota and the Resolution Copper mine in Arizona.
“There are a lot of very specific things that we could look at, possibly for reconciliation, that we know can have a budget impact as well,” Westerman said.
“Take the Twin Metals project … it’s been a political ping pong ball,” Westerman said. “Is this a point where Congress needs to step in and say, ‘Quit the political pingpong, build the mine’ … we could take kind of a rifle shot on mining projects like that.”
Trump has made Twin Metals a priority. While campaigning this summer in Minnesota, he said he would reverse the 20-year mining ban the Biden administration imposed on the area where the project is located "in about 10 minutes."
In January 2023, the Biden-Harris Administration issued a Public Land Order (PLO) protecting the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW or Wilderness), Voyageurs National Park (VNP), and 1854 Treaty Area from sulfide-ore copper mining for 20 years. The PLO, called a mineral withdrawal, bans toxic mining on 225,504 acres of Superior National Forest land in the watershed of the BWCAW and upstream of the Wilderness. The PLO came after the Forest Service published a comprehensive scientific review finding that sulfide-ore copper mining would pollute the Boundary Waters in ways that could not be fixed or mitigated.
The Boundary Waters is the most visited wilderness area in the United States, attracting more than 165,000 visitors from across the world. It is a major driver of the regional economy, supporting hundreds of businesses and thousands of jobs. A vast collection of peer-reviewed science shows that if a Twin Metals copper-nickel mine were built along the rivers and streams flowing into the Wilderness, pollution and environmental degradation would be certain. A peer-reviewed independent study from Harvard University showed that protection of the Boundary Waters from a proposed Twin Metals sulfide-ore copper mine would result in dramatically more jobs and more income over a 20-year period.
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