Ep. 07: Mining in the Boundary Waters Wilderness

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is the most-visited wilderness in the U.S., boasting over a million acres of pristine lakes on the Minnesota-Canada border. On April 16, 2026, the Senate voted to strip its 20-year mining moratorium, using an obscure 1996 law meant for regulatory rules to bypass the usual 60-vote threshold. President Trump signed it into law 11 days later, clearing the way for a Chilean mining giant to pursue a copper mine five miles from the wilderness's edge.

This is a real-time episode, which means we're covering a story still unfolding. We trace how we got here and lay out exactly what's still in flux, and what you can do about it right now.

Transcript

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Imagine putting your paddle into Knife Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe area wilderness on a summer morning, just as the mist begins lifting off the water. The blade enters softly, pulls through the water, and it drips clean. The open water of the lake stretches out ahead of you, framed by low ridges of spruce and pine. Somewhere across the water, a loon, the state bird of Minnesota, lets out its signature call, a tremolo. We'll play that sound for you in a minute. What you won't hear are motors. The vast majority of the boundary waters is paddle only, and motors are restricted to a small number of designated lakes. Knife Lake isn't one of them. You don't have cell service. You only have fresh water, forest, and sky in every direction. That's what it's like in the boundary waters. It's the most visited wilderness area in the country, even though most of it can only be reached by paddle. For most people who visit, it's the closest thing to true solitude they've ever experienced. On April 16, 2026, the United States Senate voted 50 to 49 to open the door to copper and nickel mining in the watershed that feeds that wilderness. The vote was close. The stakes are massive. The resolution, House Joint Resolution 140, doesn't authorize a mine. Not yet. But it strikes down a 20-year federal moratorium that had been keeping one out, and it clears a significant path for Twin Metals, Minnesota, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining giant Antofagasta, to restart its long-stalled push to build a copper mine just five miles from the boundary water's edge, and to develop three additional deposits, one of them less than a mile from the wilderness boundary. The resolution had one more step before it became law, President Donald Trump's signature. Given his record of supporting resource extraction on public lands, advocates on both sides expected him to sign it. On April 27th, he did. The 20-year moratorium on mining in the Boundary Waters watershed was gone. We're producing this episode differently from most. This isn't history. It's happening right now. We'll give you the background you need to understand how we got here, what's at stake for the Boundary Waters if mining moves forward, and what you can do about it. This episode was recorded on July 9th, 2026, so depending on when you're listening, things may have evolved already. For now, the boundary waters remain clean and clear. Just how long that will remain the case depends on what happens next. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness covers more than a million acres of boreal forest, bog, and open water. It's the second largest wilderness area east of the Rocky Mountains, after the Everglades. The Boundary Waters is part of a larger transnational ecosystem called the Quedeco Superior, which also includes Voyagers National Park, Canada's Quedeco Provincial Park, and the surrounding Superior National Forest. 4.3 million acres in total, all of it knit together by an intricate web of rivers, streams, wetlands, and lakes. The Superior National Forest alone holds 20% of all of the freshwater contained in the entire U.S. National Forest System. Every drop of it is connected, moving and flowing in a timeless dance too complex to fully understand. Within the boundary waters itself, there are more than 1,100 lakes, some sprawling and complex, like Trout Lake, which covers more than 7,000 acres, others small enough to cross in a few paddle strokes. What they share is a purity that's increasingly rare. Though rangers will tell you to filter it first, the water is clean enough that many experienced paddlers drink straight from it, dipping their bottles over the side of a canoe in the middle of a lake. Just water, the way water used to be. The landscape around those lakes is one of the most biodiverse in the Midwest. Fens and swamps buffer the low-lying areas between land and water. Forests cover the high ground, much of an old growth that's never been logged. It's a mosaic that supports an astonishing range of life. Some water. More than 225 species of birds use the boundary waters for at least part of each year, and as many as 165 of them nest there. The Superior National Forest supports the highest diversity of breeding wood warbler species, 24 in total, of anywhere in the world. Grey wolves hunt moose and white-tailed deer through the trees. Bobcats and lynx pick their way through the underbrush after smaller prey. Black bears forage on wild blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries, while beavers quietly reshape the landscape around them. Beneath the surface of those clear lakes, pike, walleye, bass, perch, and lake trout share the water with otters and mink. And on a still morning, if you're out early enough, the quiet will be broken by a sound unlike almost any other in nature: the iconic tremolo of a common loon, Minnesota's state bird. Here's what that sounds like. It's a sound many visitors travel a long way to hear. About 150,000 people make that trip every year. They come from across the country and around the world to canoe and kayak into the wilderness's most remote reaches, to camp on islands, to fish, and to disconnect. The Boundary Waters isn't a place you drive through, you earn access to most of it by paddling. That's part of what makes it so beloved, and it's why the vote on April 16th hits so many people so hard. The Boundary Waters is a place that people have fought to keep wild for generations, and it's now directly in the crosshairs of the federal government. That's because the land on which the Boundary Waters and the Greater Quedeco Superior ecosystem sits is considered valuable for an entirely different reason. Deep beneath the surface of Minnesota's northern region lies the Duluth Complex, one of the largest undeveloped deposits of copper, nickel, cobalt, and platinum group metals in the world. Billions of dollars worth of untapped natural resources kept locked away beneath land protected by a mining moratorium put in place by the Biden administration. But now, despite more than 650,000 public comments that supported it, the moratorium is gone, and those precious resources are one step closer to extraction by a mining operation within the boundary waters watershed. The danger posed by a potential mine comes down to chemistry. The deposits of metals beneath the boundary waters watershed are locked inside sulfide-bearing ore. When that ore is mined and the rock is crushed and exposed to air and water, a chemical reaction begins. The sulfide minerals oxidize and produce sulfuric acid. That acid then dissolves heavy metals like copper, arsenic, lead, cadmium, and zinc, and carries them into the groundwater and surface water. The process is called acid mine drainage, and it doesn't stop when the mine closes. It continues for decades, sometimes centuries, as long as there's sulfide-bearing rock exposed to the elements. The boundary waters is specifically vulnerable. Its waters have almost no natural capacity to neutralize incoming acid, and the watershed is massively interconnected. 1,100 lakes feeding into rivers, feeding into other rivers, all draining in the same direction. Contamination that enters the system at one point doesn't stay there. It flows and expands with the water itself. And this isn't just a hypothetical. Even with the Biden Moratorium in place, the Boundary Waters watershed is already being polluted today by two tacconite mines that sit in the unprotected upstream half of its watershed. As Ingrid Lyons, Executive Director of Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness, laid out in the Duluth News Tribune, the Duncan Taconite mine, closed since 1994, left behind a stockpile of sulfide-bearing ore that has continuously generated sulfate pollution for three decades. And Cleveland Cliffs Peter Mitchell Tackinite mine, which was allowed to expand into the watershed in 2016, generates ongoing water pollution today. In 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency listed Birch Lake, which sits along Twin Metals' proposed mine site, as an impaired lake for sulfate, based directly on pollution traced from the Peter Mitchell and Duncan mines. As Lyons noted, that sulfate doesn't just damage aquatic plants. When it settles into lake sediment, it reacts with naturally occurring mercury and converts it into methyl mercury, the most toxic form of mercury, the form that bioaccumulates in fish and the form that ends up in the bodies of people who eat them. Twin Metals proposed mine would add a third source of sulfate pollution to a watershed where the existing two have already triggered an EPA impairment listing. And, unlike the iron tachinite the existing mines target, the metals Twin Metal seeks are locked inside sulfide-bearing ore, meaning every ton of waste rock pulled from the mountain becomes a permanent source of acid mine drainage on a scale the watershed has not yet seen. According to reporting by Becky Rahm, national chair of the campaign to save the boundary waters, writing in the Duluth News Tribune, Twin Metals is actually pursuing four separate deposits in the area, and one of them sits less than a mile from the wilderness boundary. To understand what's facing the boundary waters, let's visit Ely, Minnesota, a small town in the far northeast corner of the state, just inside the boundary of the Superior National Forest. Ely is the gateway to the boundary waters. Most of its 3,240 residents make a living guiding, outfitting, feeding, or housing the thousands of adventurers who pass through every year. But not everyone in Ely is in the business of bringing people into the wilderness. Some are in the business of extracting what's underneath it. Just north of Highway 1, the main artery through Ely's business district, sits a modern office building with a large metallic orange tower rising above the entrance. The tower is covered in text, chemical symbols and atomic numbers from the periodic table. PT 78, NI-28, AG 47, CU29, platinum, nickel, silver, and copper. This building is the operational headquarters for Twin Metals Minnesota, a mining company with a second office in the capital of the state, St. Paul, 240 miles away. According to its website, Twin Metals is as much a Minnesota company as they are a mining company, and they proudly boast that all of their team members work and live in the state. What the website doesn't mention is that Twin Metals Minnesota is a wholly owned subsidiary of Antofagasta PLC, a Chilean conglomerate owned by the billionaire Luke Siege family, with its corporate headquarters in London. The metals pulled from Minnesota's wilderness would generate profits flowing to London and Santiago, not St. Paul. The mineral leases at the heart of this fight are more than a half century old. In 1966, the Bureau of Land Management issued two federal mineral leases covering nearly 5,000 acres of Superior National Forest Land, adjacent to the boundary waters, to the International Nickel Company, INCO, at the time the world's largest nickel producer. The leases changed hands several times over the following decades, eventually passing to Antofagasta, which holds them today through Twin Metals. They were renewed in 1989 and again in 2004, each time for 10 years. In 2012, Twin Metals applied for a third renewal. That's when things started to get complicated. Four years passed without a decision. At issue was whether Twin Metals had an unconditional right to that third renewal, or whether the government could deny it. The original 1966 leases had allowed for successive 10-year renewals, but only if the Lesee had begun actual mining production within the initial 20-year term. INCO never did, neither did any of its successors. Twin Metals argued the right to renewal was unconditional regardless. In March 2016, Hilary Tompkins, solicitor of the Obama administration's Department of the Interior, the DOI, disagreed. Her legal opinion found that because production had never begun, the Bureau of Land Management had the discretion to grant or deny the renewal. It wasn't automatic. Later that year, in December, the U.S. Forest Service withheld its consent to renew the leases. The BLM followed the next day, rejecting the application and allowing the leases to expire. Six weeks later, Donald Trump was inaugurated for his first term. In December 2017, Daniel Giorgiani, principal solicitor in Trump's Department of the Interior, rescinded the previous administration's rejection and reinstated Twin Middle's expired leases and renewal application. By 2019, the BLM had formally renewed them, touching off a wave of lawsuits from conservation groups and the state of Minnesota. The project stayed in limbo through the end of the first Trump administration and into Biden's. Then, in January 2023, following a series of decisions from the DOI, the BLM, and the U.S. Forest Service, the Biden administration imposed a 20-year moratorium on new mining leases across more than 225,000 acres of the Superior National Forest, specifically the lands that drain into the boundary waters. The goal was to protect the wilderness from the toxic drainage and acid waste that is a known byproduct of hard rock sulfide mining, drainage that federal scientists concluded the watershed would be unable to absorb. Conservation groups called the moratorium a generational victory, two decades of protection for one of the last truly wild places in the Midwest. The optimism was short-lived. The pendulum was about to swing back again. Donald Trump's return to the White House in January 2025 put the Boundary Waters back in play almost immediately. His first administration had pushed hard to get Twin Metals leases reinstated and succeeded. The Biden administration had reversed that. Now, with Trump back in office, only the 20-year moratorium on mining in the area stood between the Luksich family's mining ambitions and the Boundary Waters watershed. There's another layer to this story, too. The relationship between Trump and Andronico Luksich, the Chilean billionaire who controls Antofagasta, has been a matter of public record since 2017, when it emerged that Trump's daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, who was serving as a senior White House advisor, were renting a $5.5 million home in Washington, D.C.'s Kalorama neighborhood from Lukseach himself. At the time, Lukseech was actively pursuing litigation against the federal government over the boundary waters mineral rights that had been rescinded during the Obama administration. The White House said Kushner was paying fair market rent, had never met his landlord, and had not discussed the mine with him. Representatives for both Luke Seach and the president said there was no connection between the Twin Metals litigation and the rental arrangement. Two years later, the Trump administration renewed Twin Metals leases in the Superior National Forest. When the Biden administration imposed the 20-year moratorium in January 2023, the project was again stopped. That moratorium held through the end of Biden's term. Then, on January 12, 2026, one year into Trump's second term, Republican Congressman Pete Stauber introduced House Joint Resolution 140, a resolution aimed squarely at public land order 7917, the official name for the legal order that had created the moratorium in the first place. Stauber represents Minnesota's 8th Congressional District, which covers the Iron Range, the stretch of northeastern Minnesota where mining has been the economic backbone for more than a century. He also chairs the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources. In a press release the day he introduced the bill, Stauber described the Biden moratorium as an attack on his constituent's way of life that had cost the region good-paying union jobs and put the country's mineral security at risk. He argued that developing the Duluth complex, the name of the metal deposits that Twin Metal seeks to mine, would reduce American dependence on China for the critical minerals used in modern defense and manufacturing. Staubert pressed that national security argument even further in a recent op-ed published in The Hill, writing as U.S. military aircraft were conducting strikes on Iran, as part of what the Pentagon called Operation Epic Fury, he framed the Senate vote on his resolution as a question of whether the country would have the minerals it needed to build the weapon systems required to fight future wars. For many of Stauber's constituents, the argument is more immediate. According to Twin Metals, the mine would employ 750 people when fully operational, with another 1,500 jobs supported through its broader economic impact. In a region where mining has defined communities for generations, those jobs are important. But there's another set of numbers that gets less attention in the debate over jobs and minerals. Originally based along the Atlantic coast near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, the Ojibwe people, they call themselves the Anishinabe, began migrating west centuries before European contact, following a spiritual prophecy that instructed them to travel until they found the food that grows on water. The migration carried them along the Great Lakes over generations, and by the late 17th century, they had reached what is now northern Minnesota, where manumen, wild rice, grew in abundance in the shallow lakes and rivers of the region. Finding manumen marked the end of their centuries-long migration. Today, the Ojibwe are one of the largest indigenous nations in North America, organized into many bands across the Upper Midwest and Canada. Under the Treaty of 1854, three bands of the tribe, the Bois Forte, Fon du Lac, and the Grand Portage Bands of Lake Superior, Chippewa, ceded millions of acres of their territory to the U.S. government in exchange for the guaranteed right to hunt, fish, gather, and harvest on those lands in perpetuity. One of the things they were guaranteed the right to harvest was manumen. Wild rice is deeply woven into Ojibwe culture, ceremony, and diet, but it can be destroyed by sulfate levels above 10 milligrams per liter. Natural sulfate levels in the boundary waters watershed are well below that threshold today, but acid mine drainage leaking into those waters would push the number in one direction only. The loss of wild rice would be a destruction to a treaty protected resource, one that the U.S. government promised, in writing, would belong to the Ojibwe forever. Now that promise is being undercut by Congressman Stauber and House Joint Resolution 140. The resolution moved quickly. It cleared the House Rules Committee on January 20th and passed the full House the following day. In the Senate, it faced a narrower path. What drew scrutiny in Washington wasn't just the resolution itself, but also the mechanisms Stauber chose to advance it. Rather than pursuing conventional legislation, he used the Congressional Review Act, or CRA, a law passed in 1996 that gives Congress the authority to review and overturn rules issued by federal agencies. The CRA allows the Senate to pass a resolution by simple majority while bypassing the filibuster, the procedural tool the minority party usually uses to block legislation, which can only be overcome by 60 votes. By using the CRA, Stauber avoided the filibuster entirely and only needed 51 senators on his side. The problem, according to critics, is that the CRA was designed to apply to regulatory rulemaking, not to public land management. The Biden moratorium wasn't a regulation in a traditional sense. It was a mineral withdrawal, a formal action pulling federal land off the table for mining or drilling. No previous administration had ever classified a mineral withdrawal as a rule subject to the CRA. The stakes of Stauber's approach extend well beyond the boundary waters. If a mineral withdrawal can be classified as a rule under the CRA, so can other public land management decisions, potentially opening decades of established land protections to reversal by a simple Senate majority. Since 1996, the CRA has been used to overturn more than 40 agency rules, 16 during Trump's first term, and more than 20 already in his second. There's a second consequence built into the law. When the CRA is used to overturn a rule, it also prohibits any future administration from issuing a rule that is substantially similar, unless Congress specifically passes a new law authorizing it. The CRA doesn't decide what substantially similar means, and courts haven't settled that question either. The ambiguity is itself the threat. A future president who tried to reinstate mining protections in this watershed could find the new rule challenged. In court and struck down on those grounds, and would then have no clear legal standard to know in advance whether they'd cross the line. On April 16th, the Senate voted 50 to 49 to pass the resolution. Every yes vote came from a Republican. Every Democrat and Independent voted no, joined by two Republicans, Tom Tillis of North Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine, who warned of irreversible harm to the boundary waters and raised concerns about the irregular use of the CRA. Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, did not vote. In the gallery watching the vote was Francisco Awad, the managing director of Antofagasta's Shanghai office, whose job it is to expand the company's presence in China. Awad's last role, chief project officer at Twin Metals, Minnesota itself. Congressman Stauber had spent weeks arguing that mining in the Boundary Waters watershed was essential to reducing American dependence on Chinese mineral supply chains. But Antofagasta had already secured agreements with Chinese state-owned smelters to process its minerals for free. That means that the copper, nickel, and other minerals mined from Minnesota's wilderness would be shipped to China for processing, flowing directly into the supply chains Stauber claimed the mine would reduce American dependence on. On April 27th, President Trump signed the resolution into law. The 20-year moratorium on mining in the Boundary Waters watershed was pronounced dead. Minnesota Democratic senators Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar had been the central voices of opposition to the proposed mine. Speaking after the Senate vote, Klobuchar framed what had just happened as a warning for the rest of the country. She asked her colleagues where the CRA would be aimed next, which state, which public lands, which protections would be in the crosshairs, and said the answer should concern everyone, not just Minnesotans. It's a fair question. The boundary waters was first. It likely won't be the last. Trump's signature on House Joint Resolution 140 removed the federal moratorium. It didn't open a mine. There's still a long road between where things stand today and the moment any equipment breaks ground at the Superior National Forest. And that road runs directly through a set of decision points where public pressure can still make a difference. Here's where things stand as of this recording. We've done our best to make sure everything is current, but this is an active regulatory and political fight. Decisions can move fast, and it's entirely possible something here has already shifted by the time you're listening. If you want the latest, check Ecosidepod.com slash action, where we'll keep this updated as things develop. Twin Metals still needs its federal mineral leases reissued. The Biden administration canceled those leases in 2022 and they remain tied up in litigation. The Department of the Interior would need to act before the company could move forward at the federal level. That process will take time, and it will involve public comment periods. Pay attention to those. At the state level, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the DNR, would need to issue permits before any mine could operate in Minnesota. Those permits are not automatic, and conservationists say the DNR has both the authority and the mandate to deny them. Additionally, two things happened on the state level that are worth knowing about. The Minnesota legislature's 2026 session ended on May 17th. Two bills that would have added real barriers to a twin metals mine, the Prove It First bill, which would have required independent proof that a copper sulfide mine has operated for 10 years and then been closed for 10 years, without causing pollution before any new one could be permitted in Minnesota, and the Bad Actor Bill, which would have barred the DNR from issuing permits to companies charged, indicted, or convicted of violating environmental laws in the last 15 years, didn't pass this session. Given Antofagasta's environmental record, advocates say Twin Metals could have real trouble clearing that second bar. Both bills are expected to come back in a future session, and there's nothing stopping you from telling your state legislator now that you want to see them reintroduced and passed. In the meantime, there's a narrower, more immediate opening. Twin Metals has held a state mineral lease since 1990. Under the terms of that lease, the Minnesota DNR can cancel it this year if two things are true. Twin Metals hasn't begun active mining and it hasn't paid the state at least $100,000 in royalties in a single calendar year. By the DNR's own past reasoning, the agency said as much back in 1995, neither condition has been met. Canceling this one lease wouldn't stop the project on its own. The DNR itself has said this particular lease sits outside the area Twin Metals actually wants to mine, but it would be the first crack in the foundation. Roughly a third of Twin Metals proposed ore reserves sit on Minnesota state land, and advocates say a cancellation here sets the precedent for going after those leases next. The DNR hasn't said when or whether it plans to decide. As of this recording, it's told the public only that it's evaluating all options. That's exactly why sustained pressure matters here. There's no deadline forcing this decision, which means it's the kind of thing that quietly gets shelved unless people keep asking about it. If you're a Minnesota listener, the most direct action you can take right now is to contact Governor Tim Walls and the DNR about canceling this lease, and to let your state legislators know that you want to see the prove it first and bad actor bills back on the table next session. Making your voice heard at the state level is important because that's where the most consequential decisions will be made from now on. If you're outside Minnesota, your representatives in Congress may not have voted yes on this resolution, but the precedent it sets affects public lands everywhere. Contact them about the use of the Congressional Review Act against mineral withdrawals and what it means for public land protections in your state. Friends of the Boundary Waters has been working to protect this wilderness since 1976. If you want to stay current on developments or support their work, you can find links at Ecosidepod.com slash organizations. To find contact information for your elected officials, submit comments, and make your voice heard, visit our Action Center at Ecosidepod.com slash action. The fight over the boundary waters isn't just about one wilderness in one state. It's about who gets to make decisions about America's public lands, using what tools, and in whose interest. The CRA has now been used to overturn a mineral withdrawal for the first time in history. It won't be the only time unless people push back. We'll keep covering this story as it develops. EcoSide is an independent narrative documentary podcast. Each episode tells a story of environmental harm, who caused it, and who paid the price. These are the stories about what humans do to the natural world and what it takes to reckon with it.