Mining for sustainability?

The federal agencies with responsibility for the decision have decided not to renew the two mineral leases associated with copper-nickel mining near the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area. (The entity holding those leases had already filed suit to ensure their renewal.) On the one hand, I'm very pleased with the decision and hope the courts affirm it. On the other hand, I wonder if such a decision would be necessary if the mining sector were known to be better stewards of the environment.

Birch Lake on the Gunflint Trail

Photo by J. Harrington

Because it's Christmas season, I'll be brief in enumerating what I see as some critical points.

• According to an April 2016 story in that bastion of environmental radicalism, the Wall Street Journal, Mining Dams Grow to Colossal Heights, and So Do the Risks


• The National Park Service has identified high failure rates for tailings dams 


• BLM maintains an inventory of known abandoned mine lands on public lands. Most of the sites are abandoned hardrock mines. As of April 18, 2014, the inventory contained nearly 46,000 sites and 85,000 features. Approximately 23% of the sites have either been remediated, have reclamation actions planned or underway, or do not require further action.  The remaining 80% require further investigation and/or remediation.  


• The USEPA is working toward remediation and beneficial reuse of many abandoned mines and related superfund sites


• Mining has operated in such a way that its very social license to operate may be denied, or like some leases, not renewed in some locales. 

On the other hand,

• the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed approaches for environmentally sensitive "green" mining. 


• The Mining Association of Canada has an initiative Towards Sustainable Mining


• There's also the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, which is working toward Standards for Responsible Mining


• The United Nations has a public consultation on how mining can contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals

If mining in Minnesota and the United States could demonstrate a successful period of contributing to the world's sustainable development, avoiding environmental disasters and cleaning and rehabilitating the sites it uses, federal, state and environmental interests might not find as many objections to new endeavors. Can Twin Metals or PolyMet point to any major successes in sustainable mining that they have participated in? If so, what, where, how did it come about, when? Resources might be better spent on getting answers to these questions than in courtroom battles, wouldn't you think?

An Identity Crisis

By Garry Gottfriedson

I certainly know who I am . . .

I can get away with being politically incorrect.

I am the ambassador to First Nations’ poetic expressions

& as Kinsella pompously put it straight

“I have the license to do so.”

what a magical way to escape tyranny!

just like Trudeau & Chrétien hiding beneath cowboy hats

nevertheless & back to the point,

call me cowboy

call me First Nations

call me aboriginal

call me native

call me chug

call me skin

if you must,

but never call me Indian.

I call myself that!

& if you feel guilty when I say so,

this is not about postcolonial rhetoric

it is about an identity crisis

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