ELY— With the sense that the political winds are shifting, dozens of area residents and a handful of influential guests were upbeat during an event this past week at the Ely Folk School.
Keynoting the evening was U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico, the ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Heinrich, a former engineer and backcountry guide and a consistent advocate for the protection of public lands, was looking forward to his first canoe trip into the Boundary Waters, set for the following morning. He spoke to the assembled group as well as privately during an interview with the Timberjay and he was optimistic about the long-term prospects for permanent protection of the upper Rainy River headwaters from sulfide-based copper-nickel mining.
Despite the setback on protection earlier this year, when the U.S. House and Senate voted narrowly to repeal the 20-year mining ban in the upper Rainy River Headwaters under the Congressional Review Act, Heinrich drew encouragement from the coalition that formed in opposition to that measure, pushed by Eighth District Rep. Pete Stauber.
By focusing attention on the Boundary Waters through his political maneuver, Heinrich told the Timberjay that he believes Stauber unintentionally laid the groundwork and, in many ways, made the case for permanent protection of the upper Rainy River watershed, which flows into the heart of the Boundary Waters.
The bipartisan coalition that formed in opposition to Stauber’s measure convinced even some Republican senators that protection was in the public interest. “And I think right up until the White House got involved at the end, we were on track to win,” Heinrich said. He said he believes President Trump’s relationship with the Luksic family, which controls Antofagasta, the Chilean conglomerate backing the Twin Metals mining proposal, has been the primary driver of Trump’s interest in advancing the project.
Heinrich noted that resisting pressure from the White House is difficult for many senators. “And so, I think we lost some votes that, if the White House had not had their thumb on the scale, would have come our way.” In the end, the resolution to rescind the mining ban implemented by the Biden administration passed 50-49 in the GOP-led Senate.
While the measure rescinded the mining ban, supporters of permanent protection have long viewed the 20-year ban as a stopgap as they build momentum for a long-term solution. And on that front, Heinrich and members of the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters are bullish.
Heinrich believes the fight over the mining ban may well prove useful in the end. “I do think it elevated the issue of the Boundary Waters enormously to the rest of the country, and I think that it will go down as a sort of pivot moment where the rest of the country learned what the Boundary Waters is and what its value is to the American system of public lands.”
Heinrich, who has been involved in campaigns for public land protections in the Southwest throughout his varied career, said he thinks the signs are encouraging for those seeking protection of the BWCAW. “It feels like the Boundary Waters has kind of turned a corner and is on a trajectory that I think bodes very well for its future.”
A broad coalition
Heinrich said the broad-based coalition that pushed back against the repeal of the mining ban, had already begun to coalesce following the proposal by his committee chair, Mike Lee, R-Utah, to sell off millions of acres of public lands to private interests last year.
While Heinrich is a Democrat, he quickly found that opposition to Lee’s measure helped to unify individuals and groups across the political spectrum. “I mean, they are MAGA Republicans, they are Democrats, they’re people who care about politics, but they’re people who know that they can spend the weekend around a campfire with whoever they, you know, value most in their lives, and not spend an arm and a leg doing it.”
He said the current attitude in Washington, often driven by conservative D.C.-based “think tanks,” lacks the balance that most people want to see when it comes to management of public lands. “Like, there are places that are appropriate for development, but this administration gets it wrong. It’s like all development all the time, and they don’t stop to value those special wildlife or cultural or historical places that make us the great country that we are.”
Heinrich as chair?
While acknowledging there is much work to do if the Democrats hope to reclaim control of the U.S. Senate in this fall’s mid-terms, Heinrich makes it clear that he would take a much different approach to the management of public lands than his committee’s current chair. As ranking member, he would be in line to take the gavel in the committee should Democrats reclaim the senate. As part of that, he said, he’d work to fix the mess that the administration and Rep. Stauber created through the use of the Congressional Review Act, or CRA, to undo land management orders and plans.
Were Democrats in control of Congress, they could potentially reject management plans developed by the Trump administration, which might open public lands to more oil and gas development, logging, or mining.
But rather than a ‘turn-about-is-fair-play approach, Heinrich said he’d seek a “détente” with Republicans in hopes of getting back to the original purpose of the CRA. He said opponents of the mining ban made a mess of an act that was never intended to overturn management plans or orders pertaining to certain public lands. The CRA, he said, was built and designed to second guess last-minute regulations, like a pollution standard, that applies across the country. “It was never meant to apply to land use plans that were specific in nature, and because it’s kind of mixed those two things up, it’s called into question the validity of a lot of land use plans. It’s going to be a bit of a mess to unwind all that because of the way they went about it.”
But Heinrich said it’s important to make the effort, to create a foundation that everyone can understand when it comes to the management of public lands. “Both parties recognize that there’s no certainty in the current system where we each sort of take potshots at individual plans or rules.”
Instead, Heinrich advocates getting back to the original intent of the CRA. “I think that would be good for the country, frankly, because like, right now, everything’s up in the air.”
Why seeing for
yourself matters
Heinrich noted that he not only comes from the West, but from a family tradition of mining. “My dad worked for Anaconda Copper. My grandfather was a gold miner,” he said. But when then Gov. Bill Richardson appointed Heinrich to serve as New Mexico’s natural resources trustee, he ended up having to negotiate with large mining companies over natural resource damages experienced in that Southwest state. He said that experience told him that it really pays to see landscapes for yourself.
“There are smart places to put mines and there are places where they really don’t belong,” he told attendees at last week’s event. “And you don’t know that unless you get out on the landscape and you see it. I think it’s really hard just to look at maps and listen to rhetoric in Washinton D.C. and make a good decision. And I think too few of my colleagues are willing to spend the time, even those on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, to get out and to know these places, to really understand what the real risks are.”
Heinrich said he’s seen what copper sulfide mining has done in his own state, in a much more arid environment than northeastern Minnesota. “I mean, it creates sulfuric acid, which then dissolves heavy metals. It ends up in aquifers, even in very dry places.”
Heinrich said he worries about the impact of that kind of mining in a place like northeastern Minnesota. “I’ve never seen this much water. It’s completely alien to me,” Heinrich said. “I listened to some of you today and I was like, there’s blue all over your maps.” He called it “insane” to put one of the “last great North American wilderness areas at risk” over such a proposal. The Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters has argued for years that the abundance and quality of the water in the upper Rainy River watershed makes it the worst possible location for a sulfide-based mine.
An extended visit
Heinrich was in the Ely area for several days this past week, and visited Birch Lake, near Babbitt, to see the proposed Twin Metals mine site and visited with staff at both the Voyageur Outward Bound school and Camp Widjiwagan. He also met with representatives from the 1854 tribes at Fortune Bay Resort Casino.
He left Thursday morning for a four-day canoe trip into the Boundary Waters, along with his wife Julie. Heinrich noted that he had planned a Boundary Waters trip during the July 4 congressional recess last year but had to return to Washington to push back against Sen. Lee’s proposal to sell off millions of acres of public lands in the West. His wife and son ended up making that trip without him. This time, he was able to see it for himself.