U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber reintroduces bill that would open copper nickel mining near Boundary Waters

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Republican control in Washington could open the way for copper nickel mining efforts near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

GOP Rep. Pete Stauber, who represents northeastern Minnesota, has again introduced a bill that would reinstate mineral leases in the Superior National Forest. With Republicans controlling the House and Senate, and President Donald Trump’s push to prioritize domestic mining, he likes his chances.

Stauber said that “without question,” the president will sign it into law if it reaches his desk.

The House passed his bill last year largely along party lines and will likely do so again. The question will be whether it can clear the Senate, which Republicans narrowly control. The legislation did not get a vote last year when Democrats controlled the Senate.

While Stauber is optimistic, Democrats from Minnesota are trying to stop the bill from advancing.

“Domestic mining is a priority, and so we feel that the speaker is going to bring it up relatively soon,” Stauber, who chairs the Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee within the House Natural Resources Committee, said of the bill’s chances of getting a House vote.

The Superior National Forest Restoration Act, which he reintroduced this week, would reinstate mineral leases that former President Joe Biden canceled and allow new leasing on more than 225,000 acres in the Superior National Forest.

It follows the Biden administration’s public land order that stopped mining in a section of the national forest where water flows toward the Boundary Waters.

The bill’s approval could be a boost for the Twin Metals project, which proposes to extract copper and nickel from an underground mine near Ely. Twin Metals is a subsidiary of the Chilean mining giant Antofagasta.

The project’s mineral leases lie inside the area where Biden barred new mining after a federal study determined hardrock mining risked polluting the Boundary Waters.

The Biden administration also canceled Twin Metal’s mineral leases. The company is now arguing in federal appeals court to keep alive a lawsuit that seeks to overturn that decision.

Last month, Rep. Betty McCollum, D-St. Paul, reintroduced a bill that would permanently protect the same 225,000 acres of federal land and waters.

She has carried the proposed legislation for the past decade and acknowledges it’s an uphill battle.

“What I’ve seen so far from this Congress: What President Trump wants, President Trump gets,” McCollum said when asked if she foresees Stauber’s bill facing any hurdles.

Stauber said he’s looking at a number of Republicans who could carry the bill in the Senate.

Minnesota’s Democratic Sen. Tina Smith opposed the bill in Congress last year and plans to try to block it again.

“I will oppose it on the Senate floor,” Smith said. “And as the senator from Minnesota, my voice will be important, it will be very important.”

Her objection would make it difficult to get the bill heard on the floor and as a policy bill, 60 votes would be needed to break a filibuster.

“Even if all the Republicans voted for it, and I don’t know that they would, it would be, I think, nearly impossible for the bill to pass on its own,” Smith said.

She said Stauber could take other avenues to get his bill passed. Attaching it to a larger bill is one way; another is to pass it through the reconciliation process, which bypasses the filibuster in the Senate.

Asked if he would try to move the bill through reconciliation, Stauber said: “All options are going to be on the table.”

He put the onus on Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., to support his bill in the Senate.

“One of our senior senators has said she supports mining, and so this may give her the opportunity to support a really, really good bill that helps mining in northeastern Minnesota,” Stauber said.

But as of now, Klobuchar’s office said she does not favor his proposal, citing “serious concerns” about projects so close to the BWCA.

“With an administration that has disregarded science and critical environmental studies, she does not favor this bill,” a spokesperson said.

Beyond just lifting the mining ban, Stauber’s bill would reinstate canceled mineral leases. Chris Knopf of Friends of the Boundary Waters said that would amount to a “handout” to a foreign mining company.

“What’s at risk is something we don’t have anywhere else in our country here, and that is a network of over 1,200 lakes and rivers of clean water,” Knopf said. “That clean water heritage of Minnesota is under attack.”

The bill also would remove opponents’ ability to sue to overturn the leases.

“That is a very dangerous precedent for public lands and for extraction on America’s public lands,” said Ingrid Lyons, executive director of Save the Boundary Waters.

Beyond the bill itself, Trump has spoken in favor of returning mining leases in the watershed of the Boundary Waters, and his early actions appear to support that goal.

In an order released Monday, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum directed his department to create a plan to reinstate all mineral, oil and gas leases on federal land canceled during the Biden administration and to examine how mining bans like the one in Minnesota could be reversed.

The bill would require the U.S. Forest Service to conduct an environmental review for all mine plans, which pro-mining groups and Stauber argue should quell concerns about mining having an impact on surrounding waters.

“Minnesota miners deserve the opportunity for our projects to be evaluated under the stringent environmental review process rather than having decisionmakers in Washington D.C. arbitrarily canceling leases and banning mining,” Julie Lucas of the industry group Mining Minnesota wrote in an email.

But Knopf said the bill’s restrictions on environmental impact statements — limiting the time to complete them to just 18 months — was concerning and could lead to errors by federal regulators.

Stauber has stressed that his bill would not allow for mining in the Boundary Waters or the buffer zone around it.

But McCollum said she thinks it’s more complicated in practice.

“I want you to just close your eyes for a minute and think of up north with the bogs, the rivers, the streams, the things that we see with water flowing above ground and [consider] what’s happening below ground, and then realize that where this mine is going to be located is at the headwaters at the BWCA,” she said. “All that water flows into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. All that water is totally interconnected.”

A spokeswoman for Twin Metals, Kathy Graul, wrote in an email that the company “appreciates the champions in Congress that recognize the significance of the domestic mineral resources that are available in northeast Minnesota, which are urgently needed to accomplish our nation’s energy independence, job creation and national security goals.”