Poisoning the Well - Another Day in Paradise

Sulfuric Acid and the Boundary Waters National Canoe Area

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) is Minnesota’s Grand Canyon.  It is the most visited wilderness area in the nation.  A Chilean copper company, Antofagasta and their subsidiary, Twin Metals, wants to put in a copper/nickel mine near it on Birch Lake in northern Minnesota.  The mine would grind up 99.5% of the rock to get .5% of the valuable ores. Read that again. This shows the extent of capitalist desperation at this point in history, given the increasing scarcity of copper and nickel.  This mine will create sulfuric acid, heavy metals like mercury and sulfates in the process, as rock exposed to oxygen creates the acid.  Antofagasta will only store the tailings in natural rock which has all kinds of fissures, so this toxic soup will leak.  Huge amounts of waste rock will be created, as well as the leveling of large areas of forest.  For the proposed mine on Birch Lake, the chemicals will leak and head north into the Boundary Area through the Kawishiwi river, then Canada’s Quetico Park, then into Voyageur National Park.  Any cleanup that costs over a certain amount will be the responsibility of the public.  Every sulfide mine like this in the past has had toxic cleanup problems.  Contamination could last 500 years.

BWCA Canoeing is like bicycling on water

Seems like a no-brainer, right?  Unsurprisingly Democratic governor Dayton is on the fence about the proposed mines (plural), as there is another mine proposed farther south from Birch Lake called “PolyMet.”  Most of the water flowing from that mine will go into the St. Louis River, through an indigenous reservation, then into Lake Superior.  The present Democratic U.S. House representative, Rick Nolan, supports the projects.  Of course the whole criminal Republican Party led by Tom Emmer is in favor, siding with a Chilean corporation against Minnesotans.  70% of Minnesotans and across the country, 98.4% of comments on the Interior Dept./ Bureau of Land Management/ Forest Service website opposed this proposal potentially draining into the Boundary Waters. Only 22% of Minnesotans are in favor. 

The Trump administration’s lackeys in the Interior Department reversed a legal ruling under Obama against the mine, and now have proposed a lower threshold of facts and public input for approval.  There are 9 months left before they have to make a decision.  Again, the U.S. is shown to have a sham democracy, as the capitalists will rape whatever land they can to extract profits, no matter what the public thinks!  As an aside, the whole Minnesota Republican Party and a wing of the Democratic Party supports these mines and also supports getting rid of general sulfide standards throughout the whole state.  The mining industry has wanted this repeal for years.

This issue also concerns the Canadian government, as their waters could potentially be affected.  If the Boundary Waters begins dying, a national park will be slowly destroyed.   More jobs will be lost in tourism, education and clothing businesses associated with the park then created by the mine.  If waters north or south of the park are contaminated, this will impact wildlife, plants, rice harvesting and humans.

Hegman Lake pictographs in BWCA

Amy and Dave Freeman are right now pedaling bicycles from Ely, Minnesota to Washington, D.C. with a signed canoe to lobby Congress about the importance of the Boundary Waters to people across the country.  They stopped in Minneapolis this weekend.  In every town they visited on a prior canoe paddling trip from Ely to Washington D.C. (yes, you read that right…), people had been to the Boundary Waters. This is not a local issue, no more than issues with the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, the Everglades or the Appalachian Trail are local issues.

Support “Save the Boundary Waters.”  https://www.savetheboundarywaters.org/

The real question here is that in the present political situation, where the capitalists have absolutely free reign on the government, will lobbying work?  Will having corporations like Patagonia on your side help?  Or the Big Green organizations?  The odds are not good.  The other travesty of environmental damage, the Enbridge oil pipeline through northern Minnesota, is a bi-partisan project.  The main opposition is coming from 2 Ojibwe tribes and the ‘usual suspects,’ but no one in power.  If this attempt to protect the boundary waters fails, something more radical will have to emerge.

Prior relevant reviews: “The Race for What’s Left,” “Tar Sands,” and ‘Open Veins of Latin America’ and “Collapse.”  Use blog search box, upper left.

Postscript:  The Trump Interior Dept. has just approved the BWCA mine today, Monday May 7.  'Save the Boundary Waters' will or has already filed a lawsuit. 

Red Frog

May 2, 2018