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Sulfide-ore copper mining in the Boundary Waters watershed is not inevitable. I am confident that ultimately the people of the U.S. will not allow it to happen. They will do that by electing politicians who, unlike the current regime, have social values, are not corrupt, and can do the math. The economic impact of mining on communities has been on full display in Minnesota for many decades, so judging the impact of sulfide-ore copper mining on Boundary Waters region communities can be based on experience as much as academic analysis. I have been a resident of Minnesota since 1973. Two things never change: the Vikings don’t win the Super Bowl, and the Iron Range cries for help from the state and federal governments because its economic problems are so serious. Dr. Tom Power, an economist who taught at the University of Montana for 40 years, with a focus on rural extraction economies, famously said “I’m still looking for a prosperous mining town.” The reasons for this are widely known—destruction and pollution of the natural environment so that the community becomes unattractive, mining company capture of the political process to the detriment of other, diverse industries (and of the environment—the taconite industry controls Minnesota water pollution enforcement, or lack thereof, thanks to Bakk, Tomassoni, and their ilk), and mining overwhelms infrastructure (see the Highway 53 re-route), among other things. The assertion that the Duluth Complex is a rich resource is belied by geology and history—if it were rich, it would have been mined long ago. Indeed, the deposit is quite poor, with the copper and other minerals at substantially less than one percent. Consequently, mining would generate massive amounts of waste, only part of which would be returned to mine pits or tunnels, and that only after many years. The poor quality of the deposit would be a further driver of economic destruction, because such mines can be profitable only if automated to the nth degree. Any mining executive willing to tell the truth will admit that few local jobs would result from turning the southern edge of the Boundary Waters into something like the Iron Range. History proves it—taconite mines produce the same amount of ore with a third of the workers of 50 years ago, and technology is driving employment down-down-down. So, the mines would produce few local jobs, but would eviscerate the current healthy Wilderness-edge economy. As for morality, that argument might have some weight if a mining company would stop mining in Zambia or Indonesia, etc., if it is allowed to mine the Duluth Complex. But no mining company will agree to that. In yesterday’s Strib, Lee Schaefer had a great column about the 2008 financial crisis. He wrote in part: “It’s a problem often called ‘moral hazard,’ a term that was talked about a lot just after the financial crisis but not as much lately. . . . To get the idea, just imagine what would happen if you had to decide how much risk to take while fully aware that somebody else would bear the losses if things don’t pan out. Sounds a little like “heads I win, tails you lose.” “Moral hazard” fits the conduct of the mining companies and their enablers. If mining were permitted, and the inevitable massive surface destruction and pollution that it causes destroy the livelihoods, property values, and communities of thousands of people across northeastern Minnesota—well, that’s their problem. The mining company makes out like a bandit—heads I win, tails you lose.

From: Copper-nickel? The data say it’s bad economics

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