A proposed Twin Metals copper-nickel mine near northeastern Minnesota’s Boundary Waters is back in play after Congress and President Donald Trump overturned a Biden-era mining ban. Environmental groups warn that pollution could flow into the federally protecte
At dawn. loons cut through the Boundary Waters’ placid water and. come nightfall. the stars scatter across a sky that feels stubbornly out of reach of modern life. The wilderness itself—more than a million acres of lakes. streams and islands near the Canadian border. about four hours north of Minneapolis—has hardly any human infrastructure. It is also federally protected. the kind of place where federally threatened species like the gray wolf and the Canada lynx can still make a living.
Now, that stillness is being tested by a plan for a mine just outside the wilderness’s southern edge.
Twin Metals Minnesota. a subsidiary of the Chilean copper giant Antofagasta. wants to mine copper. nickel. and other metals deep underneath the wet Earth. Earlier this year. Congress and President Donald Trump removed a major obstacle that had blocked the company’s push: the House and Senate overturned a Biden-era mining ban in the region. clearing the way for Twin Metals to revive its efforts within the watershed.
Environmental advocates say the stakes are not abstract. Mining is prohibited inside the Boundary Waters. but the region’s hydrology is such that they argue pollution from a mine outside could still drift into the wilderness area. That prospect. they warn. could harm forests and wildlife—and undercut the livelihoods of Native Americans who fish. hunt. and harvest wild rice.
“There’s no such thing as a truly pristine landscape,” the article notes, but the Boundary Waters comes close enough that the idea of industrial runoff landing in its lakes and streams feels like a line being crossed.
Ingrid Lyons, executive director of Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness, which leads a campaign called Save the Boundary Waters, put it bluntly. “It’s not a matter of if this mine is going to pollute, it’s a matter of when.”
Twin Metals rejects that framing. The company says the concerns are rooted in misinformation and that it can mine in an environmentally safe way. Like other mining projects seeking approval. it says it would have to meet federal and state environmental safeguards before opening—adding that Minnesota’s standards are particularly strong.
The company also defends the project on a different front: the world needs metals like copper. nickel. and cobalt to build clean energy technologies such as batteries for electric cars. And if the metals don’t come from Minnesota. Twin Metals argues they might come from other countries with less rigorous environmental regulations.
Yet even defenders of mining elsewhere concede that tradeoffs are unavoidable. Minnesota, where critics say there is still a path to ban copper mining near the Boundary Waters, now faces the question that cannot be solved with slogans: whether the potential benefits are worth the risk.
The mine Twin Metals wants to build sits on a geological prize known as the Duluth Complex. which the Boundary Waters area lies atop—one of the world’s largest unexploited deposits of copper and nickel. If approved. Twin Metals says miners would excavate and crush ore as far as 4. 500 feet down and then send it up to the surface. There, it would remove compounds containing copper, nickel, and other minerals, shipping them elsewhere for refinement into usable metals.
Twin Metals also says it would put some leftover rock—known as tailings—back underground, with the rest going into a pile on land nearby.
The company says it has pursued the planned mine for more than a decade and has spent about $650 million. But the project has faced major roadblocks in recent years.
In 2022. the Biden administration canceled Twin Metals’s two mineral leases—leases that gave the company a right to explore and mine in certain areas. but not approval for specific projects. Then. in early 2023. the administration put a 20-year pause on approving new leases near the Boundary Waters in the region where Twin Metals had planned to mine.
In a statement announcing the 20-year decision, then-Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said it was made “with an eye toward protecting this special place for future generations,” adding that she made the decision using “the best-available science and extensive public input.”
That temporary ban is what Congress and President Donald Trump moved to overturn. using an obscure law called the Congressional Review Act—an approach Republicans in Congress. led by Minnesota Rep. Pete Stauber, used to undo the protection and prevent future administrations from issuing similar ones without another act of Congress.
But the legal picture is not as simple as a full restart. The move does not reinstate Twin Metals’s two federal mining leases. Twin Metals had already challenged the 2022 lease cancellations, and it is still waiting for a decision from the courts. Congress is also considering a bill that would re-issue those leases to Twin Metals.
If the company acquires leases to mine, the project would be subject to review by federal and state agencies, both of which have the authority to block the project. Even if it clears federal approval, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources could decide not to grant a permit to mine.
Twin Metals says its approach would sharply limit the environmental damage critics fear. The company says the mine would be underground. with only a small surface footprint. including a processing facility about the size of a Super Target. It also claims the project would not produce a common mining pollutant called acid rock drainage.
Kathy Graul. a spokesperson for Twin Metals. told Vox that “Twin Metals Minnesota is focused on responsibly developing the minerals in the Duluth Complex.” She said “any proposed project in this region. including Twin Metals. must undergo a yearslong. multi-agency regulatory review before earning permits to begin construction of a mine.”.
Graul’s point rests on how the company describes the chemistry of the ore. Twin Metals says the metal in the ore is bound to compounds called sulfides. When sulfides react with air and water. they can produce sulfuric acid. which can be toxic to plants and animals and can leach heavy metals such as arsenic out of rock.
Environmental advocates and researchers say the company’s assurances don’t address what they believe is the core risk: that the process could still send harmful substances into the surrounding waters.
Lyons said. “If the mine is built. there would be runoff. there would be mine discharge. and that discharge would contain sulfate.” She added that Twin Metals “can’t present a credible argument otherwise. ” and that the company attempts “to distract from this main point by saying the drainage would not be acidic.”.
Lee Frelich. a forest ecologist at the University of Minnesota who has studied the impacts of sulfide mining. described concerns that harmful chemicals released from mined rock are likely to reach the Boundary Waters. He said the damage could cascade, affecting trees and aquatic animals. Sulfate pollution, advocates say, can also impair the growth of wild rice.
Emily Onello, a physician and medical researcher at the University of Minnesota Medical School Duluth, tied the issue to Indigenous food traditions, noting wild rice as “a critical and sacred food resource for Indigenous peoples in the region.”
Twin Metals and its supporters acknowledge mining has caused serious problems in the past. They argue modern mines are different, citing stronger regulations and the fact that any project would need permits. Graul told Vox that “projects must prove they can meet the stringent environmental standards that have long been in place in Minnesota before moving forward.”.
What cannot be guaranteed, critics say, is the absence of any long-term environmental impact. A key concession appears in the comments from Dustin Mulvaney. a researcher at San José State University who studies the impacts of resource use. He said. “New mines are going to be cleaner. they’re going to be better. they’re going to be better permitted—but they also are going to have impacts.”.
Mulvaney’s stance aligns with what the U.S. Department of the Interior said in a 2022 report: “Hardrock minerals mining of sulfide-bearing rock. no matter how it is conducted. poses a risk of environmental contamination due to the potential failure over time of engineered mitigation technology.” The report. according to the article. noted that many of the report’s authors were still government employees.
That durability problem is part of why opponents focus on time scales. They point to the fact that mine drainage can last for decades or even centuries after companies leave.
They also point to rising extreme floods and other weather events that can put infrastructure at risk. In their view, regulators can reduce risk, but cannot fully remove it.
The question becomes whether society accepts those tradeoffs—and where they are accepted.
Rep. Pete Stauber, a Republican from Minnesota, has framed the mine as an essential choice. The article says he told “me” that “we are blessed with these minerals right under our feet” and that he is confident the mine won’t pollute should it receive approval by the state.
Julie Lucas. executive director of MiningMinnesota and a former water resources director for Twin Metals. has repeatedly argued that the energy transition demands more minerals. In a 2024 commentary in The Minnesota Star Tribune. Lucas wrote that “Mining is fundamental to our lives today and more important than ever for our future. ” and that “We aren’t doing the Earth any favors by declaring a definitive ‘no’ against potential mining projects.”.
Supporters also argue there is a supply problem that can’t be wished away. What some mining proponents do not emphasize, opponents say, is whether there are less risky places to build.
Grace Wu, who studies the tradeoffs of clean-energy technologies at the University of California Santa Barbara, said, “There is almost always a better place to build that infrastructure.”
Mulvaney said copper can be mined elsewhere in the United States, most of it coming from Arizona, and that there is already an active nickel mine in Michigan. He also said the U.S. throws out a lot of copper each year and that, in 2023, only about a third of post-consumer copper was recycled.
In Mulvaney’s view, politicians pushing for more mining have not been addressing the recycling shortfall. “There’s no place that has to inherently be mined,” he said.
Opponents in Minnesota have argued not for exporting mining—and related ecological problems—to other countries with weaker rules—but for targeting extraction away from places they see as irreplaceable.
Frelich of the University of Minnesota said there are only so many intact expanses of wilderness left and that their value to future generations is infinite. dwarfing what a single mine could provide. Alex Falconer, a Democratic state Rep. in Minnesota who works for the Save the Boundary Waters Campaign. used a simpler line: “It’s just the wrong place for this type of mine.” He added. “Society can pick and choose where mining should happen.”.
The article ties that position to precedents. Under the first Trump administration, then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced a 20-year ban on hard-rock mining near Yellowstone National Park. At the time, Zinke said “there are places where it is appropriate to mine and places where it is not.”
What happens next in Minnesota remains murky. The article says it is unlikely the Trump administration will stand in the way of Twin Metals. It also points to a potential factor in the company’s push: a lobbying firm hired by Twin Metals was founded and chaired by David Bernhardt. Trump’s other former Interior Secretary.
That could mean federal mining leases arrive sooner than opponents want. If so, the battle shifts to the state.
Falconer is pushing a state bill intended to ban copper mining near the Boundary Waters and its headwaters. He said he hopes it will come to a vote early next year and—pending the results of the midterm elections—become law. “The watershed of the Boundary Waters is sacred to me,” Falconer said. “It’s off limits.”.
Lyons said if efforts to block mining in the watershed fail, the consequences could echo well beyond northeastern Minnesota. “If something bad can happen in the Boundary Waters,” she says, “it can happen anywhere.”
Boundary Waters Twin Metals Minnesota Antofagasta Duluth Complex mining ban overturned Congressional Review Act Pete Stauber Deb Haaland environmental advocacy Indigenous wild rice gray wolf Canada lynx