As a mining engineer and graduate from the Colorado School of Mines, I dedicated my career to extracting minerals to support a modern society. Now my engineering and operating experience in 12 different open pit and underground salt, iron, uranium, and gold mines across the U.S. over the past 45 years, tells me Minnesotans should be deeply concerned about the long-term impacts for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA) watershed if the sulfide-copper and nickel minerals of the geologic Duluth Complex of northern Minnesota are mined according to the proposed Twin Metals mine plan.
First, the sulfide minerals of the Duluth Complex are significantly different from the low sulfur iron ores of the Mesabi Iron Range. The resulting waste dumps, tailings ponds, and abandoned mines from sulfide minerals all would be potential sources of acid mine drainage, heavy metals and other pollutants, contaminating clean water. If this area is mined, these sulfide wastes would need to be treated differently and isolated in a “geologic sarcophagus” in perpetuity, to try to protect the headwaters of the greatest source of fresh water on the planet.
Second, engineering can reduce but not eliminate risk, especially with sulfide minerals mining. Pipe, valves, pumps, liners and other parts of a mine do wear out and fail, and often the failures are not predicted. And of course all people are fallible, including engineers and miners, so it is impossible to say in advance that there won’t be mine design flaws, operator errors, and missed signs of an impending failure.
Third, and I say this as an experienced mining engineer, you can’t trust the startup mining company or the new mining operator to keep its most important promises. The executives making the promises today probably won’t be in charge when it’s time to keep them, and future mine permit amendments likely would expand the footprint of the mining project, increasing environmental risk. Start-up mining projects (mining juniors) are traded like commodities on the open market and there is no guarantee the new owner has any proven business or mining experience in a water rich place like Minnesota. The new owner could be a shell company, a convenient box into which the real mining company drops all the risk and long-term liabilities, and bankruptcy courts protect the main corporation’s profits. Twin Metals is owned by the Chilean company Antofagasta PLC, meaning the local mine executives might not have the authority to keep their promises made here in Minnesota.
Minnesota has provided valuable resource extraction for more than 100 years along the Iron Range. But the Duluth Complex is a very different rock type with higher pollution risk in a very sensitive environmental area, requiring more prescriptive mining rules and closer regulation than the historic iron ore mining.
As a lifelong engineer and miner and a native Minnesotan, I feel it is my duty to say this. The threat to the BWCA from a mine like what Twin Metals is proposing along lakes and under a river just upstream from the wilderness waters could be devastating under current best mining practices, and in my considered opinion, too risky to be allowed.
Even new sulfide mining and processing technology and practices like lime neutralization, cementation, double lined (ponds, tailings basins, and waste dumps), and topographic isolation of tailings, which are currently available and costly, would not take the risk away of a design flaw, or operator error, or failure to supervise for hundreds of years, or future decisions to cut corners because of a lower than expected ore grade or a market downturn. We should want this type of mining to be proven first, in a low environmental risk area. But sulfide copper and nickel mining should never be attempted on the border of the BWCA. The risks are simply too great.
Chris Baldwin, a third generation Iron Ranger, lives in Hibbing.
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Who are we gonna believe? You, some sociopathic company executive or some dumb as a rock iron range pol? I’ll take the first choice on the basis of experience and expertise. When these things go wrong the joke is on us – there is no one even there to bluff (Dylan?) When GE polluted the Hudson River and got caught, rather than do the remediation, they went to court for decades. At the end of the day it hurt both their bottom line and their image, but that’s is how many corporations operate. Buyer beware friends
“When these things go wrong the joke is on us”. You are right Charles, there is a long track record of egregious mining legacy messes left for the next generation to clean up in America. The taxpayer is left with the Superfund cleanup tab or the mess is just accepted as an environmental sacrifice zone. The mining company can get a pass at legacy costs by the bankruptcy courts. Even Reserve Mining got out of cleaning up tailings pumped into Lake Superior and Minnesota taxpayers paid for it.
We could use toxic tailings to line ATV trails. Sorry, gallows humor.
Did you read this, Governor Walz?
I would support this mining, though the BWCAW is my favorite place on earth, except I know, the mine owners have no intention to pay for the long term cleanup, and won’t. I would expect the long term costs of cleanup to exceed whatever Minnesota earns from the foreign corporate-owned plunder.
It is really astonishing we would condemn future generations to this – for our smartphones? For renewable energy production that those generations would inherit no longer functional?
Madness
“Cleanup” would be literally impossible after an accidental tailings leak. The idea that this mining can be “safely managed” near the BWCA is the entire con of the game; that’s what I take the author to be saying. The “cleanup” would necessarily have to be done by Mother Nature, over the course of, say, 10,000 years.
If Walz were smart (and he had the power), he would crush this application on his own initiative and trumpet it as a re-election campaign accomplishment. Sadly, he seems to think this poor politics.
“Corporate responsibility” is a convenient catch phrase that, in this particular environment, and given that the corporation in question is a foreign one, has zero application in the real world. A Chilean company doesn’t care in the least about whatever pollution its operations might create and perpetuate in a country thousands of miles away geographically, and whole worlds away in the courtroom. If necessary, they’ll simply declare bankruptcy, and let the residents and businesses that foolishly supported them in hopes of short-term gain deal with both the short and long-term consequences. The executives, like executives of multi-national corporations in general, will walk away unscathed.
An excellent article, a friend who is retired mining company geologist has a motto “Never trust mining companies.” He said this after his pension was cut in half when the original company he retired from was bought out by another company, and then that company was bought out by another and his pension was cut by an additional 50%. Thus a 25% pension. The “prove it first” standard seems very prudent, especially (as Mr. Duncan points out) if we care about the future of the area and the people who live here.
Thank goodness there are mining and chemical engineers that total disagree with Mr. Baldwin. The permitting process takes all of the concerns folks hav3 and addresses them.
The “permitting process” has surely not addressed my concerns.
“Jobs, Jobs, Jobs” will be humanity’s epitaph…
That such proposals are not simply told “no” immediately by government is a crucial sign of our endemic cultural dysfunction.
To whom do we protest?
William Duncan identified a big part of what should concern everyone … Gov Walz and legislative “leaders” (members too) have refused to hold both Twin Metals & PolyMet accountable for future responsibilities when a disaster occurs. The results will be devastating, not in terms of simply years or decades but multiple generations. The economic consequences will be staggering.
Gov Walz, et al will not demand indemnification to protect Minnesotans, will not demand a health impact study despite pleadings by the health care authorities and will not even demand that Antofagasta & Glencore have their names on the agreements. Given the above – and much, much more – it is easy to understand why. They know the environmental and financial exposure they will face. House DFL committee chairs have been told if they hold even public informational hearings on these mining projects, they will be removed from their chairmanships. Not even a single hearing! What are they afraid of? Connect the dots, folks. They put up shell companies like Twin Metals & PolyMet, take the money and leave 100+ years of future disaster for others to manage. These international corrupt corporations will prey on all Minnesotans and run. Sounds like a pretty good deal, huh?