Minnesota Experiencing A Mining Exploration Boom

In a January sale by the Department of Natural Resources, six mining companies bid on 112 mineral leases across northern Minnesota in Aitkin, Carlton, Itasca, and St. Louis Counties.

“Literally hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars [are] being spent just on exploration in Minnesota right now,” says Frank Ongaro, director of Mining Minnesota, a trade association that represents non–ferrous mining companies.

“They’re all poking holes in the ground, looking at mineralization and the Duluth Complex,” a 30–mile belt just south of the eastern end of the Mesabi Iron Range, believed to be one of the world’s largest undeveloped sources of base and precious metals.

The Superior National Forest alone is speckled with 32 sites where mining companies want to explore for copper, nickel, cobalt, and other valuable minerals—even if it takes some first–time legal wrangling.

The U.S. Forest Service is putting together an environmental impact statement to evaluate the cumulative effects of future minerals exploration, says Forest Service representative Kristina Reichenbach. “We’re anticipating this is not going to go away… What we’re trying to do is get ahead of it and get an idea of…‘cumulative,’ what could this mean for the forest?”

Their statement, combined with site –specific analysis, will form a recommendation to the federal Bureau of Land Management, which issues exploration permits.

The draft statement is expected to be published in January 2011. The public will then be able to comment on it before the final recommendation is issued next fall.

The first active proposal to mine sulfide ores in Minnesota is PolyMet’s NorthMet, an open pit mine near Hoyt Lakes, 80 miles north of Duluth.

The project would utilize LTV Steel’s shuttered processing plant, in addition to building a new plant, new pits, and waste rock piles.

PolyMet’s proposal also expands tailings ponds that catch the slurry left over from sulfide ore processing, which the DNR predicted in February will, within 65 years, contaminate the surrounding watershed with toxic levels of a number of minerals. Waste rock exposed to water and oxygen can also produce toxic runoff.

PolyMet contended at the time that synthetic liners, the use of sulfur waste as fuel, and water treatment could adequately address environmental concerns, while the $600 million project would create 400 full–time jobs extracting around $500 million worth of metals per year.

After a contentious public comment period, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sent PolyMet back to the drawing board last spring, after deeming their draft EIS “unsatisfactory” because it “does not present adequate information for the EPA to fully assess environmental impacts that should be avoided.”

PolyMet is now preparing a supplemental statement to present to the public next summer. Their new plans include design changes to the waste dump for “sulfate mitigation” to better prevent toxic runoff, according to PolyMet representative Latisha Gietzen.

The company is also proposing a land exchange with the Forest Service—a move which was originally a separate action from the environmental assessment.

PolyMet and the Forest Service have “a difference of opinion in deed language,” Gietzen says. “We believe we have the rights through our mineral lease to go ahead and mine without doing a land exchange, but have been working with the Forest Service…because we believe it’s the best way to get through the process.”

About 6,650 acres of contiguous land currently owned by the federal government would go to PolyMet, in exchange for 6,722 acres given to the Forest Service.

The company has leased subsurface rights for the parcels where the mine would be located, but can’t pursue an open–pit mine without owning the surface as well, according to the Forest Service.

“We have certain guidelines and restrictions on the type of activities,” Reichenbach says. “Especially with that land, which was required under the Weeks Act”—a 1911 law granting the Department of Agriculture authority to purchase land that “shall be permanently reserved, held, and administered as national forest lands.”

Reichenbach says a land exchange is the only legal means she knows of by which PolyMet can obtain surface rights.

“We couldn’t sign a decision that would allow this kind of mining activity on that national forest land. So we said we can talk about a land exchange as…one alternative.”

On October 12, the Forest Service announced a 45–day comment period for the land exchange, with open houses last week in Aurora and New Brighton. Reichenbach acknowledges this was short notice, but says they wanted to wrap up the process before the holidays.

She says land the Forest Service would receive from PolyMet in the swap must protect wetlands, give the public more access to water, and consolidate private inholdings under federal control.

The five separate tracts range in size from 32 to 4,650 acres. Two of them are in areas with high to moderate potential for future mining and it is not yet known who owns their subsurface mineral rights.

Gietzen says PolyMet has cooperated with the Forest Service’s long–range plan. “I think if people take a step back and really look at what we’ve put on the table, it’s a very good deal for the Forest Service and the public.”

But Bob Tammen, a retired iron mine electrician and environmental activist, says the processing of sulfide ore poses a serious pollution risk because the ore must be finely ground and separated through liquid flotation.

“You’ve got this tailings pond full of a witch’s brew of chemicals. They still don’t have the answer of how to clean that up. The old LTV pit is an example because that’s still leaking.”

In January, the Center for Biological Diversity filed suit against iron mining company Cliffs Erie over polluted runoff at their LTV and Dunka tailings basins.

The action was intended to halt new mines, including PolyMet’s, which would use the basins for their tailings, according to the Center’s attorney Marc Fink.

Fink says a last–minute settlement agreement involved a $50,000 fine and mitigation measures. “We’re in a wait–and–see mode, to see whether those corrective measures are going to make a difference or not.”

Tammen, who lives near Ely, also has his eye on two potential underground mines within a few miles of the Boundary Waters, located on connected waterways that flow into the wilderness.

Last summer, Franconia Minerals completed test drilling from a barge on Birch Lake and announced plans to move forward with an underground mine, half of which would lie beneath the lake.

A few miles northeast, the Twin Metals Nokomis project would mine a deposit along the south fork of the Kawishiwi River, with a mineshaft just across Highway 1 from the South Kawishiwi River campground.

Controversy erupted this summer over Forest Service plans to demolish the historic South Kawishiwi Research Station, which sits where the Twin Metals mineshaft would be located.

Mine opponents suspected demolition plans were helped along by the mining proposal. “It’s a great multiple–use area,” Tammen says, “and they’re proposing to convert it to mining in a low–grade ore body. We don’t think it’s a good trade.”

Northern Research Station representative Deborah Dietzman denies any connection between the plan to demolish the buildings, which began in 1999, and the more recent potential for mining in the area.

The buildings are currently used for wolf research by the United States Geological Survey, which Dietzman says is not interested in continuing to maintain them.

The Forest Service shelved the demolition plan in early October due to public opposition.

Dietzman says they are now working with outside groups interested in maintaining the station under a special use permit, but she declined to name the groups involved.

Twin Metals and Franconia’s deposits both contain mineral concentrations of just below one percent, leaving 99 percent as waste rock. Mining companies have contended these concentrations are too low to pose a significant risk of polluted runoff.

Then, last month, Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness announced the discovery of acid mine drainage from a nearby 1974 test site.

The environmental advocacy group released lab results showing high concentrations of copper, arsenic, and other metals, along with photos of a creek filled with orange–tinted runoff, which the group’s policy director, Betsy Daub, describes as “a red flag.”

“It tells us that…even from a relatively small excavation site, we can get toxic mining pollution where the industry has told us we cannot get it.”

A sample of 10,000 tons of ore was excavated at the site by the now–defunct International Nickel Company (INCO), which then backfilled the pit. By comparison, Twin Metals would excavate 40,000 tons of ore per day.

Franconia did not respond to requests for comment. Twin Metals deferred comment back to Frank Ongaro at their trade association.

Ongaro dismisses the contaminated site as a “two foot by eight foot puddle,” possibly the result of natural rock outcrops. He points out the INCO excavation was before modern reclamation standards were put into place.

“It’s the perfect example of the type of thing that can’t happen today. You have practices in place now that would require monitoring.”

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency did monitor the INCO site for two years and reported in 1976 that toxic drainage there needed continued monitoring—which Daub says was never done.

“They knew it existed; they knew it hadn’t been fixed; and yet they have chosen not to do anything.

“In the face of large–scale mining operations, we need to have confidence in our state agencies that they’re up to the task of…adequately protecting our state’s waters.”