I appreciate your efforts to report on the specifics of the NorthMet metallic sulfide mining proposal. Yours is one of a very few newspapers to examine the proposal. The required land exchange between USFS and PolyMet (to give PolyMet clear title to NorthMet lands), however, is more complicated than reported in your Feb. 13 article, “Second EIS needed before mining starts.”

You accept without further investigation the assertion by PolyMet that a second Environmental Impact Statement is the answer to questions concerning the required exchange. The Environmental Protection Agency has advised the responsible agencies and PolyMet that the exchange constitutes a “connected action” with NorthMet that should be considered as part of the current Draft EIS, rather than deferred to a second DEIS. That the agencies and PolyMet chose to ignore this advice is indicative of the generally inadequate planning reported in the DEIS.

A second major complication is that the USFS lands proposed for exchange are part of the 1854 Ceded Territory in which Native American tribes transferred lands to the federal government in exchange for their rights to “hunt, fish, and gather” on those lands. The lands acquired by USFS in exchange must therefore be within the 1854 Territory and be equivalent in functional value to the tribes. USFS described the exchange as “complex” but failed to identify the 1854 Treaty as a major source of that complexity.

The NorthMet DEIS contains very little that meets federal and state environmental standards for proposed mining projects. Tribal Cooperating Agencies offered over 300 specific comments on the DEIS. NMW and other environmental organizations added several hundred additional comments. The necessary role for a newspaper is to investigate the complexity of the issues rather than rely on statements from PolyMet and broad generalizations from government agencies.

Brad Sagen

Chair, Northeastern Minnesotans

for Wilderness

Fall Lake Twp., Minn.