The election of Donald Trump means that America’s public lands will be on the chopping block for the next four years. Pete Stauber’s re-election puts the Boundary Waters and the greater Quetico-Superior ecosystem at grave risk, notwithstanding that our protected canoe country supports ‘our way of life’ and is the backbone of the regional economy.
Stauber attacked the Boundary Waters by proposing legislation that seeks to have Congress (i) overturn Interior Secretary Haaland’s Public Land Order withdrawing federal lands and minerals in the Boundary Waters watershed from mineral leasing for 20 years; (ii) order the issuance of federal mining leases and prospecting permits to Twin Metals without environmental review; (iii) prohibit judicial review of leases and prospecting permits; and (iv) force a rapid approval of a flawed mine plan – all for the benefit of Antofagasta, a foreign mining company. Trump has publicly stated support for reversing the withdrawal.
Vote counts strongly suggest that is not what the majority of people who live near the Boundary Waters want. Trump lost in Ely and the three surrounding townships. Stauber lost by a substantial margin in the three Boundary Waters counties—St. Louis, Lake, and Cook. Trump fared even worse in these counties. Stauber and Trump provided plenty of reasons to vote against them, but their high-profile position of being willing to sacrifice the Boundary Waters watershed to help Chilean billionaires get richer was likely a significant factor. The residents of the three counties are not alone; since the summer of 2016, during public comment periods established by federal government agencies, 675,000 people have submitted comments in opposition to copper mining in the Boundary Waters watershed and in support of a permanent ban.
There are some who say that Twin Metals needs a “fair shake” and that the process should be allowed to “play out.” It’s hard to say that Twin Metals didn’t get a fair shake, because its owner, Antofagasta, has spent millions of dollars on lobbying fees over the past nine years. And the legal process did play out. The U.S. Forest Service, which knows more about the Boundary Waters than any other organization, exercised its authority under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act to ask the Secretary of the Interior to issue a public land order banning copper mining on certain federal lands in the Superior National Forest for the maximum period allowed by current law, which is 20 years. After a thorough environmental review, as required by law, the secretary determined that copper mining in the headwaters of the Boundary Waters would pose a deadly risk to the wilderness and issued the requested public land order.
In his first term Trump brought the American people chaos and an utter lack of transparency. When the Trump Administration was finally compelled to release its own draft environmental review of the proposed mining ban (after breaking its promise to complete the review), it delivered a cover page followed by 59 blacked-out pages. Its entire review was willfully hidden from the public. The Trump administration followed this with issuance of federal mineral leases that were later determined to violate federal law and were canceled – a result Stauber seeks to reverse.
The Boundary Waters Wilderness, one of the most unique and precious landscapes in the nation, is owned by the American people. The three Boundary Waters counties are the frontline of defense. We will be joined by people from across the United States who will continue to work tirelessly to prohibit copper mining in the headwaters of the Boundary Waters.
Becky Rom
Ely