SAVE THE BOUNDARY WATERS

A foreign mining giant, a razor-thin vote, and the slow poisoning of Minnesota’s most sacred waters.

The unthinkable happened—the Senate narrowly passed a 50–49 vote to remove protections the Biden administration put in place for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) watershed, opening it up to toxic sulfide ore mining.

That vote cracks the door wide open for Twin Metals, owned by Antofagasta, a foreign Chilean mining conglomerate with a long, ugly track record of pollution, to move forward with its proposed mine south of the Kawishiwi River, on the edge of the Boundary Waters near Ely.

This fight over our most pristine lands has been raging since around 2011, when Twin Metals first completed its operational headquarters on Miners Drive in Ely, MN. Back then, just like now, Iron Rangers and Boundary Waters folk showed up to community meetings in Ely, packing rooms at places like Grand Ely Lodge to question mining executives.

And for the most part, people were pissed.

This proposal is a direct threat to the way of life people in Ely have built and protected for the past 60 years. Many spoke up but others, nostalgic for “the good ol’ days” when a single mining income could support a family on the Range, cheered the mines on.

Never mind that the local economy had already shifted years ago from extraction to a thriving tourism economy of mom-and-pop shops, outfitters, restaurants, and fishing stores, valued at over $850 million and employing 18,000 people.

But as they say in Ely: “You ain’t from here until you have grandparents in the graveyard.”

During that time some of my friends in the area picked up temporary, part-time work photographing rock and soil specimens for Twin Metals for a summer or two. New faces drifted through town—Antofagasta execs, Twin Metals geologists, pro-mining propagandists—sliding into local bars, Lions Club meetings, and Chamber of Commerce boards.

Rubbing elbows. Sponsoring sports teams. Trying, desperately, to become “locals.” They paddled the lakes for photo ops. Bought ads on WELY. Smiled for the camera like they belonged.

“See? We’re just like you. We love fishing. We love the lakes.”

Every PR move aimed at selling the same lie: We have money. We can revitalize your schools. Fund your teams. Jobs. Growth. Prosperity.

But the truth couldn’t be further from their manufactured reality. Sulfide ore mining is one of the most toxic forms of mining on Earth. The tailings react with air and water creating sulfuric acid runoff. And the Boundary Waters has both in abundance. These mines don’t just fail sometimes. They fail every time.

An example of sulfide ore runoff can be clearly seen here: the highly toxic Rio Tinto river in Spain which is heavily polluted with heavy metals.

Not a single sulfide ore mine in existence has operated without severe environmental damage. Not one. They leave behind a slow-moving catastrophe: acid drainage seeping into streams, rivers, and lakes. Poison threading its way through entire ecosystems. Superfund sites. Billions in cleanup costs dumped on local communities. And contamination that lasts not years, but centuries.

“NOT THIS MINE.”
“NOT HERE.”
“PROVE IT FIRST.”

These have been the rallying cries from Friends of the Boundary Waters to the tribes whose treaty rights are bound to this land. Who speaks for land that has no voice? Tribal nations fight to protect their right to harvest manoomin, or wild rice, an indicator species that only grows in clean, unpolluted water. These lands are not just scenic. They are sacred. Protected by treaties that promised their preservation in perpetuity. If the wild rice goes, so does a way of life. As the Anishinaabe prophecy says: “Live where the food grows on water.” And if that food dies, something far deeper dies with it.

On Earth Day at the Minnesota State Capitol, we gathered for a rally in the rotunda to demand: SAVE THE BOUNDARY WATERS.

We showed up for the land. For the water. For our Indigenous relatives. For the next seven generations. We called on our representatives to do their jobs, to listen to the people, end Twin Metals’ leases, and pass real protections for clean water. To demand that no mine operates in Minnesota unless it can prove it first. Prove it can operate without poisoning the land, and prove it can fully pay for the damage when it inevitably fails. Because we know the truth.

Seven hundred temporary jobs lasting maybe 10–15 years, many filled by out-of-state workers is a bad deal.

Billions in ecological destruction is a worse one.

A thousand years of toxic runoff? Unforgivable.

And letting a foreign corporation extract our resources, ship to China for processing, and stash the profits in offshore accounts?

That’s not economic development. That’s extraction in its purest, ugliest form.

The billionaire fat cats getting fatter.

Drinking our milkshake.

Ruining our land.

Decimating a tourism economy that actually sustains our communities, and leaving behind the same boom-bust wreckage mining towns have known for generations.

So raise your voice NOW.

Save the Boundary Waters.

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