[image_credit]Copyright © Epiroc[/image_credit][image_caption]Will Twin Metals actually go electric? To my knowledge, Twin Metals has not amended its Mine Plan of Operation to include electric vehicles, it has not entered into any legally binding agreement, signed deals with suppliers, specified how much of the fleet will be electric, or how it will build the infrastructure to support an electric fleet.[/image_caption]
Let’s not be deceived by this PR stunt.
[image_caption]Pete Marshall[/image_caption]
A diversion from threat to water quality
Onto this stage comes Twin Metals with its tired campaign to convince Minnesotans that it will open a non-polluting mine. Its most recent stab at this comes in the form of a press-release announcing that it is going to use electric vehicles. Much like yelling “squirrel” to a dog, the hope is that shouting “electric vehicles” will make us forget what the science says and that unsettling fact that every copper-sulfide mine that has ever operated has polluted the surrounding water systems.
A water-rich environment like northeastern Minnesota would be particularly vulnerable. With or without electric vehicles, Twin Metals’ pollution would spill into the Boundary Waters, polluting a national treasure that is home to some of the cleanest water in the country.
As one Twitter user said, it’s like drinking motor oil out of a reusable straw.
Reason to be skeptical
There is reason to be skeptical about Twin Metals’ announcement. Will it actually go electric? To my knowledge, Twin Metals has not amended its Mine Plan of Operation to include electric vehicles, it has not entered into any legally binding agreement, signed deals with suppliers, specified how much of the fleet will be electric, or how it will build the infrastructure to support an electric fleet.
The biggest eyebrow lifter in the piece came with the claim that Twin Metals might be a carbon-neutral mine. Such a statement wasn’t surprising, given that Twin Metals has made it a policy of making fairy tale statements aimed at the environmental crowd. One of the best is that the mine will produce no acid mine drainage.
Twin Metals’ attempt to distract us with well-placed news stories about electric vehicles and a promise of a pollution free, carbon-neutral mine is a rhetorical trick meant to distract us from the science and naively allow this toxic industry to operate at the edge of the Boundary Waters.
Clean, fresh water is becoming a rarity. With some of the nation’s cleanest water at stake, Minnesotans cannot afford to fall for Twin Metals’ empty promises.
Pete Marshall is the communications director for Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness.
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Friends of the Boundary Waters is based in St Paul. How typical of those groups and individuals who want to make northern Minnesota “better” – for whom?
For all Minnesotans. Including the 57% in the northeast who oppose this dangerous plan.
Would have been nice if they could have been around before the iron industry turned it into a moonscape. I’m sure it was very nice country then. Now? A hollowed out, economically unsustainable bastion of drug running and despair.
So where are you planning on getting the precious metals you need for batteries, solar panels, computers. phones and hundreds of other products? The USA is blessed with all the natural resources we need to be independent from the world, as far as producing timber, oil, gas, precious metals. Unfortunately for my grandchildren, they will be dependent on China, Russia and Mid East countries for the very natural resources we have here. Makes no sense.
Please can someone show me the value in the USA being dependent on OPEC for our oil. We end up sending them billions in money for oil, billions more in protecting them so we can get the oil, fighting wars there for the oil and OPEC sets the oil prices so we pay billions more at the pump here in the USA.
Precious metals is the same thing!!
Fresh water is more important to the future than copper, or indeed any of the
Chile is supplying the US adequately in an arid environment, from much richer deposits.
Some might say you are pretending you care about the future when you are promoting short term gains in environmentally vulnerable wet surroundings.
Changes in pH from the sulfuric acid produced when these ores meet up with oxygen should be of equal or greater concern for those who care about the future. The plants and animals and their interdependent food chains cannot adapt to this chemistry experiment by companies that have already permanently damaged groundwater in neighboring Wisconsin and Canada.
Ah the future! Where will we get stuff? Why, in the free market, of course!
Who will protect Minnesota’s waters and her future if not Minnesotans who do not stand to profit from from reckless foreign and domestic extraction industries?
Sounds like a great excuse to quit depending on so much oil. You tell me what “precious metal” is going to waste (that can’t be more easily obtained elsewhere) that justifies the destruction of NE Mn for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, we can have a chat. Good luck finding that justification.