The Next Phase of the PolyMet Fight is Upon Us
[In this previous article, we shared some thoughts about the Trump Executive Orders, especially around mining and how they relate to Minnesota. In this piece, we take up the question, “what’s going on with PolyMet”?]
Our water is our strength, and we’re about to enter into an important new phase in Minnesota in the fight to protect it. For the past twenty years, a foreign mining company called PolyMet has been pushing a brand new type of mining in Minnesota upstream of our communities and waters: copper-sulfide mining. Unfortunately, the pollution from sulfide mining is more toxic than pollution from taconite mining, and worse still, sulfide mining pollution persists for centuries.
So far, Minnesotans have prevented this extremely destructive industry from gaining a foothold in our state. But now, PolyMet (recently renamed “NewRange”) says it hopes to reapply soon.
The team at MCEA has been preparing for this. In this article, I’ll offer a refresher on the efforts to prevent a PolyMet mine upstream of Lake Superior to date. Then, I’ll share some thoughts on what may be coming next and how you can help.
WHAT IS SULFIDE MINING?
I ran into Bob Tammen at the rally for the EPA’s critical research arm in Duluth on July 21. Bob is a former miner who lives in Soudan, Minn., and he and his late wife Pat have been active on the PolyMet issue since the beginning. The Tammens’ commitment has been an inspiration. I mentioned this article to Bob, and I asked him, “What do you think people should know?”
He said, “When I try to think of a simple message that people can take with them I say, the Duluth Complex is less than 1% mineralization. You may find a plum here and there, but for the most part, you’re going to be trying to make a buck on an extremely low-grade ore body. That’s going to require subsidies, huge amounts of waste, and who knows what else.” Here’s what Bob is talking about:
There are copper and nickel deposits in the northeastern part of Minnesota in a geological feature called the Duluth Complex. Copper is a versatile industrial mineral with a wide range of applications, but there are less destructive means we can use to conserve and acquire it than new mining. This is because the copper in northeastern Minnesota appears in very low-grade sulfide-bearing ore, which means mining for it produces enormous amounts of waste – 99%, in fact. When sulfide ores are dug up, pulverized, and exposed to air and water, they produce sulfuric acid, which can result in “acid mine drainage” and release heavy metals like arsenic into the environment. This is why we call this type of mining “sulfide mining.” It’s also sometimes called “nonferrous” mining or hardrock mining. Pollution from sulfide mining persists in the environment for centuries and is devastating when it leaks into water. You can read more about this in our booklet “Our Water is Our Strength.”
Iron and taconite mining, on the other hand, involves “oxide” ores and produces a more benign (yet still challenging) form of pollution. This form of mining still causes pollution and habitat disruption, but the form of pollution isn’t persistently “reactive” in the way that pollution from sulfide mining tends to be. Iron and taconite mining is sometimes also called “ferrous” mining. We have a longstanding taconite mining industry with multiple active mines and communities that depend on it. For an excellent summary of this industry in Minnesota, and the challenges of balancing regulation of those mines with the economic prospects of nearby communities, check out Aaron Brown’s recent Star Tribune column, “Reflections from 5,000 feet above Minnesota’s Iron Range.”
WHAT IS POLYMET?
PolyMet is an international mining company that has been seeking permission to construct an open pit sulfide mine in the Lake Superior watershed for the past two decades. Pollution from such a mine – which would be inevitable – would make its way into the Saint Louis River, down through the Fond du Lac Band’s reservation, through communities like Cloquet, Esko, Carlton, and Duluth, and eventually into the freshwater estuary, and Lake Superior itself. If built, as described further below, it would threaten Lake Superior in perpetuity.
PolyMet is a wholly owned subsidiary of a notorious company called Glencore. Glencore is a giant Swiss-Anglo commodities conglomerate, with a market capitalization in the tens of billions, and a documented record of labor and environmental violations and fraud convictions. “Major” mining companies like Glencore prefer that permits are held in shell companies like PolyMet to avoid responsibility and liability when things do not go as they have promised. This is why we hear more about PolyMet in Minnesota; it has been the “local” face of the ill-reputed international conglomerate.
PolyMet’s original mine proposal included a 528-acre open pit mine with a 1,370-acre tailings basin and a dangerous “upstream” dam on top of unstable old LTV Erie tailings. For reference, a 1,370-acre tailings basin would be the equivalent of about 1,000 football fields. The company sought permission to use up to 6 billion gallons of water annually, destroy or degrade up to 7,000 acres of important carbon-sequestering wetlands, and emit roughly 700,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases annually, which would’ve made it the state’s 9th largest emitter. As described recently in the Star Tribune, the proposed mine plan contemplated a duration of 19 years, with a 32,000 tons per day ore throughput, and 360 jobs.
All told, nearly 100,000 public comments were made during the multiple stages of the PolyMet environmental review process, including from the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. It is the largest number of public comments received by state agencies on an environmental review in Minnesota’s history.
PolyMet was granted permits by the Governor Mark Dayton administration beginning in late 2018, shortly before Governor Tim Walz took office. The permits – in our view – were rushed, at least partly the result of unfortunate and misplaced political pressures, inadequate to protect Minnesotans and our water, and generally unwise. MCEA and our partners quickly initiated legal challenges on the grounds that the permits and the mine plan did not comply with our state environmental laws.
The specific problems with the PolyMet proposal and the state’s review of it are too numerous and complex to detail here, but the main problems are as follows:
- PolyMet proposed leaving its wet toxic slurry for literal centuries for Minnesota to deal with.
- It proposed to do this in an unlined pit, behind what’s called an “upstream” dam, a design that has been widely discredited worldwide due to frequent failures.
- The plan required use of active pumps that would need to be powered and maintained, also indefinitely.
- The proposal would have required the largest permitted destruction of sensitive carbon-storing wetlands in Minnesota’s history. That would have sent dangerous pollution downstream into the Saint Louis River and the Fond du Lac Reservation, violating Tribal water quality standards.
In other words, Bob’s right. The scale of waste and destruction required to extract copper from the low grade Duluth Complex deposit is such that Minnesota would be dealing with pollution for centuries and our water would be permanently impacted and threatened. And all to create 20 years of mining jobs and a relatively small amount of copper. This is why PolyMet has dominated environmental and political conversations in Minnesota for two decades, and why it’s been central to our work at MCEA. It’s worth taking a moment to appreciate that we as a state have so far succeeded in preventing this company from conducting this dangerous type of mining here.
ENTER “NEWRANGE” -- THE NEXT PHASE OF THE POLYMET FIGHT
Around this time last year, PolyMet announced that it was embarking on a study about how to improve its proposal, or in other words, make it less bad. It characterized the study as voluntary, but we know the truth. After years of public resistance and mounting legal and regulatory issues, Glencore and PolyMet were forced to acknowledge that their proposal was flawed. Indeed, issues that PolyMet said it would be studying – including dam design, mine waste storage, and water impacts – are the exact issues downstream folks have been demanding be addressed for over a decade.
We’re now approaching the one-year anniversary of the study announcement and the company has said that it will be releasing the results soon, as well as a revised mine plan. It will do so as “NewRange.”
“NewRange” is a new subsidiary of Glencore. It is technically a joint venture between Glencore and Teck Resources, another international mining company which owns the even bigger “Mesaba” deposit next-door. PolyMet is still 100% owned by Glencore. Those assets are now under joint management and ownership with Teck as NewRange. Simply put: NewRange is a rebrand, it’s a restructure, and potentially, it’s an expansion. It’s PolyMet 2.0.
According to the company, the revised proposal we may soon see will include changes to tailings management, a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and an increase in the amount of ore that would be processed each day. The persuasiveness of the changes remain to be seen. I wrote about this announcement in a piece for the Duluth News on August 30, 2024, titled, “In Response: Skepticism called for over PolyMet's new-studies announcement.”
Meanwhile, the Trump Administration has added NewRange to the “transparency” section of the new “Fast-41” federal dashboard. As we described in our article last month, the Trump administration has indicated a level of interest in the NewRange project, and we expect the company to try to use this interest to push the project forward at the state level.
NewRange told the Ely Timberjay recently that it is hoping to submit a new application for a Section 404 wetlands permit in September. The company says it is predicting an 18-month timeline for federal review of that application. To be clear, it would need to meet state and Tribal standards as well, something the prior version of the mine failed to do. The key state permits – permit to mine, dam safety permits, water permit – remain in various states of suspension with our state agencies given the issues with the PolyMet proposal. It’s not yet known how NewRange intends to approach the suspended state permits, but if history is a guide, we should expect that the company will attempt to do the absolute minimum required by our agencies and portray any such changes publicly as significant.
WE CAN WIN
The fight to stop PolyMet has been long and difficult, and because of the way the company has doubled and tripled down on a bad proposal, Minnesotans have never really had a chance to fully recover. And yet, a new era of the fight is about to begin, and our waters will be once again under threat.
It’s important that we go into the next phase of this struggle equipped with lessons from these recent years. We should expect that Glencore and its new partner will spend millions of dollars pushing NewRange, as it did with PolyMet. We should expect that NewRange will try to pit environmental organizations against one another – for example, clean energy-focused nonprofits against organizations that also work to protect water. We should expect that NewRange and its associates will attempt similar tactics with unions, courting certain unions over others without regard to impacts on the labor movement writ large. We should expect that their lobbyists will repeat the same self-interested talking points about jobs and clean energy that fail to help Minnesota understand the truth and broaden our vision about how we can thrive together.
And most of all, we should expect that NewRange will present a shiny new and rebranded promise, in an attempt to get out from the failed legacy of PolyMet 1.0.
The good news is that we’ve learned a lot over the last twenty years, and what matters most is how we respond. We know the playbook and players better. We understand the risks and the science better. And there are a lot of new people united by a love for Lake Superior and Minnesota’s clean water who are clamoring to join the fight – some of whom weren’t even born the last time around. (We’re looking forward to meeting you!)
It’s not easy pushing back against a multi-billion dollar industry. But if we are resolute in defense of our water, and unwavering in our commitment to each other, we can win again.
