Who Wins If Republicans Destroy The Boundary Waters? China

Why destroy America’s most popular Wilderness? Foreign profits, obviously.

Some time in the next couple of weeks, it looks like Republicans in the Senate are going to vote on using the Congressional Review Act (which gives them the ability to ram through their public lands priorities with a simple majority) to authorize construction of a copper mine in the headwaters of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters. That mine will dump vast quantities of sulfuric acid into the water that flows into our country’s most-visited Wilderness, forever destroying its currently pristine ecosystem. Why? Let’s follow the money.

That copper mine will be built by Twin Metals, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Antofagasta, a giant Chilean mining conglomerate owned by that country’s billionaire Luksic family, which enjoys deep political ties to Republican politicians in America.

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area covers 1,700 square miles of northeastern Minnesota. Because it’s a Congressionally designated Wilderness, motorized access and commercial development are not permitted. The vast area contains fully 20 percent of the fresh water supply in the entire National Forest system, water that is so famously clean you can drink it right out of the lakes you’re paddling across. That water’s source lies not in the Wilderness area itself, but just outside it, from a handful of rivers. One of those is the Rainy River, and it’s in that watershed, on National Forest land, that Antofagasta wants to build its copper mine.

According to the Chilean company’s own accounting, that mine will take three years to build, at which point it should generate about $1.2 billion in revenue annually, supporting approximately 750 jobs.

But this is where math in favor of the mine starts to run into trouble. Profits from that revenue will not stay in America, they’ll go to Chile, to line the pockets of the parent company’s controlling family. This will be the first-ever copper mine opened in all of Minnesota, so many of the skilled positions at the mine will rely on labor imported from other states, regions, and countries.

“There’s just not that technical talent base here,” Antofagasta spokesperson David Ulrich told the The Timberjay. “We’ve reached out across the world to find some of the premier folks on Earth to come and help us with this project.”

The ore contained underneath the headwaters of the Rainy River is low-grade copper-nickel sulfide. That will need to be crushed on-site, and the process of separating the copper will expose the sulfide to oxygen and water, which will form sulfuric acid. The mine’s construction plan calls for ore and waste products to be stored immediately adjacent to water sources, and the Environmental Protection Agency found that the odds of acid mine drainage entering the Rainy River and flowing into the Boundary Waters are, “highly likely.”

The water in the Boundary Waters is so pure that it lack the kinds of minerals that might buffer sulfuric acid, so there’s nothing present that’d be capable of checking its damage. Sulfuric acid is a “perpetual pollution.” It will contaminate the region’s water for centuries once it begins leaching into them.

Once sulfuric acid enters the Boundary Waters, it will render the area’s water unsafe to drink. It will also kill the region’s abundant fish populations. It does that by lowering the pH of water, which then damages sensitive gills, leading to respiratory failure. Sulfuric acid also leaches toxic aluminum from surrounding rocks and soils. That metal causes reproductive failure in fish, and also damages organisms lower down the food chain that fish rely on.

Should sulfuric acid enter the Boundary Waters, it will cause fish populations to collapse, breaking the entire ecosystem. The only way to mitigate harm here is to prevent it from happening.

The justification used by politicians working to permit the mine is that copper is necessary for the expansion of America’s electric vehicle and power generation industries. But like the mine’s profits, the copper produced in Minnesota will not stay in this country.

Last year, Antofagasta signed a deal with the Chinese government that will provide zero-cost smelting for its copper ore in return for shipping it to that country. Once smelted, that copper will be sold on the open market. Copper is currently in high demand in China, which just last year added 543 gigawatts of new power generation capacity, more than half of the entire capacity of the entire American electrical grid. Copper is a key ingredient for both power transmission and storage.

Even if American companies wanted to compete in the bidding for the copper that originated in Minnesota, after it’s smelted in China, that material would presumably be subject to some form of tariff, should Republicans still hold the White House once the mine begins shipping its copper to China in 2029 or 2030.

And while it’s very hard to see any sort of upside for our country from this copper mine, it is very easy to see the harms extracting it will cause. Because the sulfuric acid pollution it will create represents an existential threat to the very existence of the BWCA, we must consider construction of the copper mine in opposition to the continued existence of that area’s clean water and healthy ecosystem.

Those factors currently draw 165,000 visitors to the Wilderness each year. According to The League of Conservation Voters, that supports $1.1 billion in economic activity for the region each year, and 17,000 jobs.

The loss of those visitors and the economy they support is not an unlikely outcome. A Harvard economics study projected 72 different scenarios for the region’s economy over a 20 year timeline. In 89 percent of those scenarios, construction of the mine resulted in fewer total jobs and lower total income for the region, overall.

Foreign jobs, foreign profits, and the raw materials necessary for the construction of an economic rival’s energy grid, or one of America’s most iconic natural wonders? $1 billion a year in copper for China, or $1 billion a year for the economy in Minnesota? These are the decisions our politicians will be making for us. Watch how your Senator votes, and you’ll understand where their priorities lie.

Top photo: USFS

A journalist with more than two decades of experience working around the world, Wes Siler is here to cut through the outrage and disinformation to bring you the factual, insightful, actionable reporting you need to understand what’s going on. Upgrading to a paid subscription supports this reporting, and buys personal access to Wes, who will help you save money on gear, and prepare for real life.