ELY— Kathryn Hoffman offered a primer here this week on how best to understand what is significant and what is hot air in the seemingly overwhelming number of executive orders related to energy and mining issued by President Donald Trump, and how they might affect proposals for sulfide-based copper-nickel mines in northern Minnesota.
Hoffman, the CEO of the nonprofit public interest law firm Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, was in town to speak to the Tuesday Group at the Grand Ely Lodge and her presentation drew an overflow crowd of about 65 area residents.
“I have three key points,” said Hoffman as she outlined her talk early on. “The first one is that Minnesota gets to decide about sulfide mining. The federal government cannot permit a mine on its own in Minnesota.” Hoffman noted that Minnesota has its own environmental laws, with processes similar to the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, and that only the state’s DNR and Pollution Control Agency can issue three of the key permits needed to open a mine in Minnesota. Those include air and water discharge permits issued by the Pollution Control Agency and the overall Permit to Mine, issued by the DNR.
So, even while the noise and bluster over copper-nickel mining may seem to be centered in Washington these days, Hoffman said the fight at the state level is the one that’s most likely to count. “And I want that to be a takeaway for you all, because in the coming months, my guess is a lot of you may be called upon to, for example, call up your legislator, or call up the governor, or call up a state agency. And I will tell you that it really matters because these are the folks who are going to be most important in deciding whether we have sulfide mining in the coming years.”
Hoffman, in her second point, noted how the political rhetoric of the mining companies had switched in recent months, away from arguments centered on the clean energy transition. “Now what we hear is the language that was in these executive orders, national security, technology dominance, and now we’re starting to hear companies invoke artificial intelligence as a reason to do mining. It’s important to recognize here that the through line is what’s politically salient at the moment. They’re repeating the rhetoric that feels most powerful at the moment.”
Hoffman said she’s concerned that mining companies will use these talking points and the current support at the federal level to pressure the state of Minnesota to permit these mine proposals more quickly. “And I’m calling that out now because I think it’s helpful for all of us as residents to see that for what it is, which is an effort to use this rhetoric to try to lower state standards.”
While the federal government has considerable power, Hoffman noted in her third point that there are limits to that power, even when the Trump administration seems to claim otherwise. “I believe it is the role of lawyers like myself, in moments like this, to disentangle what is in fact meaningful legal authority and what is in fact bluster and fear, to make sure we understand what our rights are.”
Hoffman talked as well about the fast-track authority that the Trump administration recently granted to about two dozen proposed mines around the U.S., including the NewRange project, a joint venture between PolyMet Mining and Teck Resources. While the Trump administration has touted its willingness to wipe away most of the regulatory hurdles to new mining projects, Hoffman said the action was mostly for show. “The legal effect of that, to be very clear, is zero,” she said. “There is no federal permit that comes out of this. There are no rights that this mine is entitled to. There are no subsidies or access to any resources. It’s literally just your name gets on a website.”
Impacts on projects
While the second election of President Trump has been seen as a victory for mining interests, Hoffman said that’s not clear in every case. She noted that Talon Metals, which is pursuing a high-grade nickel deposit near Palisade, may have lost ground as a result. She noted that Talon had found considerable backing from the Biden administration, which included a $114 million Dept. of Energy grant to advance the project, funding which is now in considerable doubt. And the company had signed an agreement a few years ago with Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors to provide nickel for the company’s EV battery systems, a political connection that now seems to offer little material benefit and potentially significant political backlash with an administration that has turned hard against Musk.
Hoffman suggested that NewRange remains the best positioned to advance in the new political climate and she said it appears the company is gearing up with staffing and additional lobbying to move it toward the goal line.
The company had been headed that direction even before the election of President Trump and had been planning to announce a new mine plan later this year based on studies it hopes to have completed by next month. She said it doesn’t appear the company will try to take advantage of some of the regulatory shortcuts the administration has proposed, such as a 28-day environmental impact statement process that Hoffman described as “a joke.”
That’s in no small part because NewRange partner PolyMet Mining ran into major roadblocks in the Minnesota courts at the conclusion of the permitting stage as mine opponents successfully litigated some of the flaws in the original proposal.
Since most of those court rulings made it to the state’s Supreme Court, Hoffman said they set a strong legal precedent in Minnesota for any future sulfide-based mine proposals. “So, those are really important decisions that will continue to apply and help us keep our state law as a safeguard,” she said.
Hoffman mentioned but didn’t dwell on the Twin Metals mine proposal, which has been hotly contested in Ely for years. While she said she expects the Trump administration will eventually reissue federal mineral leases for the project, she noted that it was not listed on Trump’s fast track authority dashboard, which suggests it may not be a priority. And given the considerable opposition to the proposal within Minnesota, Hoffman said she’s not seeing much evidence that the company is re-engaging in a serious way to advance the project.
Challenging assumptions
While mining companies consistently argue that mining is necessary for the many products that people use daily, Hoffman said there are other ways of obtaining those metals. “For example, we are recycling 30 percent of our copper in the United States. Europe recycles 60 percent, so long before we dig a new hole in the ground anywhere in the world, why wouldn’t we be looking at our recycling rates?” asked Hoffman. “Another one is material substitution. One of the challenges that Talon faces is that nickel is being quickly phased out of EV batteries, and that’s because nickel is hard to get, it’s expensive, and it’s environmentally harmful. She predicted that nickel demand is likely to evaporate in the near future because of alternative materials are cheaper and easier to obtain. “So, we have these other options to explore long before we get to the question of where can we mine safely.”
She said mining companies like to frame the argument as either-or, that we mine these minerals here at home or it happens in some far-away country without high environmental standards. “I think it’s okay to question the assumptions of that say, ‘well, do we have to mine?’ Let’s make sure we have other options on the table before we start digging those other holes.”