Biden's Interior Department Cancels Two Hard Rock Mining Leases Near Boundary Waters
The Biden administration has canceled two leases near Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness — a remote, lake-pocked region at the center of a blistering fight over whether to mine near one of the nation’s most popular wilderness destinations.
On Wednesday, the Interior Department said it found that the leases to extract copper, nickel and other valuable hardrock minerals in northern Minnesota were improperly renewed under Donald Trump. The Biden administration’s decision will help protect the hundreds of lakes, streams and wetlands in the 1.1 million-acre wilderness area hugging the Canadian border from the potential toxic leaching from mining. “The Department of the Interior takes seriously our obligations to steward public lands and waters on behalf of all Americans,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement. “We must be consistent in how we apply lease terms to ensure that no lessee receives special treatment.”
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A month before Barack Obama left office, the Interior Department blocked a mining company’s request to renew permission to extract copper and nickel near Boundary Waters over concerns about the ecological and economic impact.
Two years later, the Trump administration changed course and eased the way for Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining conglomerate Antofagasta, by curtailing a detailed environmental review of the project. The prospect of a major copper-nickel mine, and the jobs it would bring, divided nearby residents, who disagreed over how best to harness and protect the region’s natural resources.
Ann Marie Bledsoe Downes, the Interior Department’s principal deputy solicitor, wrote in a legal opinion signed Tuesday that the Trump administration fell short in its legal obligations by conducting an inadequate environmental analysis and by sidestepping the U.S. Forest Service, which manages the surface area, in its decision-making.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/01/26/biden-boundary-waters-canoe-mine/
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