ELY – Sulfide mining companies are subtly shifting their rhetoric and messaging about the proposed projects in northern Minnesota.
“No one is probably more familiar with this rhetoric over sulfide mining than the good folks of Ely,” said Katheryn Hoffman, chief executive officer of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy (MCEA), who spoke at a Tuesday Group gathering last week.
MCEA has joined forces with a number of other environmental organizations in a series of challenges to permits issued to PolyMet Mining’s proposed NorthMet mine near Hoyt Lakes, challenges which have left a number of key permits suspended by the courts.
Hoffman said it comes down to the risks posed by mining the sulfide-bearing rock that contains the metals companies like PolyMet and Twin Metals are after. That includes copper, nickel, and other high-value metals like palladium, platinum, and gold.
“We don’t really have good examples of clean sulfide mines, and the pollution could tend to last for centuries if not permanently, so we don’t have good strategies for cleaning up these sites,” Hoffman said. “MCEA wants to make sure the standards are set very high.”
As the debate over sulfide mining in the North Country continues, the mining companies have shifted their arguments for why the public should support their proposals. “I don’t think I need to tell you that for many years the mantra has been jobs, jobs, jobs,” she told the Tuesday Group audience. “That is the thing that people have sought from these mining operations.”
Numerous employment studies and economic projections have largely muted the jobs argument for sulfide mining operations in northeastern Minnesota, said Hoffman. And the instability of mining as an economic driver for the region was highlighted once again by last week’s announcement that the Northshore Mining shutdown would last at least through next April, a development guaranteed to bring a economic hit to places like Babbitt and Silver Bay.
“Increasingly, we are seeing these mining companies talk about the need for their operations in order to fulfill metals demand to support the shift to renewable energy,” said Hoffman. “They talk about the needs for wind turbines, and lithium, nickel, cobalt and, copper all needed for electric vehicles.”
Hoffman said she remains skeptical of these arguments. She said PolyMet has, for years, ignored MCEA’s suggestions that the company install solar panels or wind turbines to help offset the mine’s carbon footprint, should it eventually open. “There are mines around the world that do this, and it helps improve the carbon impacts of their operation. This is something that PolyMet has never really responded to. We don’t have legal tools to make that happen but we always thought that would be a good idea.”
Hoffman argued, as well, that the country is better off focusing on improving its recycling capacity for such metals. “We do have a ready supply of domestic metals that we are simply landfilling, over a billion tons every year,” she said. “Focusing on policies to reclaim and recycle metals is cheaper. It is faster because we already have those metals. And it is cleaner than any mining proposal. In many ways, this is a materials demand that we deal with like any other materials demand. We reuse. We reduce. We recycle. And only if we absolutely need to, we can get to a responsible mining operation.”
Hoffman pointed to a series of articles on MCEA’s website (mncdenter.org) titled, “Mining the Climate Crisis,”which dive deeper into the issue, and she encouraged the audience to seek more information on why sulfide mining is not necessarily a good answer to improving the green economy.
Hoffman argued that the United States has not even begun to explore reusing, reducing and recycling options. “Our recycling rates are low here in Minnesota and across the U.S. We do have a lot of policy options in other countries as models to improve those recycling rates.”
Mining proposals themselves have climate change impacts, she continued. “In the wetlands permits, a lot of those lands are peatlands that are a tremendous carbon storage sink, and digging those up releases that carbon which is not a good thing to do.”
The mining operation proposals also use a lot of energy. “Here in northeast Minnesota, we see Minnesota Power actually justifying the need for fossil fuel plants based on the projected future demand for proposed mining operations,” Hoffman said. “They are actually saying we need to keep our coal plants open longer and we need to build a new fossil fuel plant in Superior, Wis., in order to support that (energy) demand. It makes the mining industry a pretty carbon-intensive prospect.”
MCEA’s position continues to be that mining should be a last resort. “It is destructive, wherever it happens, even if it is done under the best of circumstances. It is better for us to look at recycling and reuse first,” she said.
“It is important to pay attention to the products we use, and an important conversation to think about is how demand and climate change intersect. We appreciate that there is attention being paid to this, but we want to be careful that it is not used to justify destructive mining practices. We can have both, metals for a renewable energy transition as well as protecting our clean water. As the climate changes, water is going to be one of our most precious resources and we want to protect it.”