ELY, MN--Today Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters Executive Director Tom Landwehr issued the following statement on the State Department’s “report” to the Government of Canada on the potential for cross-boundary pollution stemming from a Twin Metals mine. As reported by Rep. Betty McCollum the “report” was only eight paragraphs long and the quality of “a grade school-level book report.” The Trump Administration is not releasing it publicly.
“This is just another example of the Trump Administration’s reckless rush to ruin the Boundary Waters to benefit an international mining conglomerate with a terrible environmental and labor record,” said Landwehr. “The amount of effort this Administration is putting into selling out the Boundary Waters should raise red flags with every Minnesotan and American who cares about our special places. The Administration has unlawfully resurrected a terminated project, cancelled and hidden data from a critical study on the impact of sulfide-ore copper mining on the Wilderness, threatened to shut down the government rather than agree to a bipartisan budget provision to complete the study, and now are blowing off a report to the Canadian government on the threat of potential pollution from the mine. We have to ask - what are they hiding?”
The Canadian report was a requirement from last year’s federal budget. The Trump Administration separately killed a bipartisan provision that would have required it to finish a cancelled study on the impact of copper mining in the headwaters of the Boundary Waters.