On August 18, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed Executive Order 26-10, freezing all state permitting, leasing, and environmental review for copper-nickel mining near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and the Rainy River Headwaters Watershed. The move targets Twin Metals, which has pursued a state-of-the-art copper, nickel, cobalt, and platinum group metals (PGM) mine in the region for more than a decade.
Walz’s order is a blunt instrument that won’t shut down the project or protect the environment. Instead, the order stops Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency from using their technical expertise to work through permitting while court cases drag on. The order short-circuits the permitting process by directing the DNR to draft legislative language to permanently prohibit nonferrous mineral mining, or mining for metals other than iron, for consideration in next year’s session.
A project potentially this consequential to the region—economic opportunities, critical mineral production, and the environment—should be allowed to finish the permitting process and receive a clear determination on the merits.
Legal challenges and reversals have delayed Twin Metals since 2016, when the Obama administration declined to renew its federal leases. The first Trump administration renewed them in 2019. The Biden administration upped the ante in 2022, when it canceled the leases, and in 2023, when it withdrew about 225,000 acres of the Superior National Forest from mineral leasing for 20 years. This spring, Congress used its powers under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to nullify that withdrawal, preventing any “substantially the same form” of replacement rules.
Each reversal has tracked the party in power, even though the science of the proposed mine hasn’t changed. In 2020, Julie Padilla, then Chief Regulatory Officer for Twin Metals Minnesota, testified in a Senate committee that the U.S. could not produce its own nickel under a regulatory process that is “unpredictable, subject to political manipulation with changing rules in each administration, and in conflict with the priorities of our nation.”
The stakes are high for all Americans, because critical minerals are vital to U.S. prosperity and national security. According to New Range Copper and Nickel LLC, the Duluth Complex contains 95% of America’s nickel, 88% of America’s cobalt, and 33% of America’s copper resources. When companies can’t navigate the permitting process here, they go overseas to mining and processing operations controlled by China.
As Julie Lucas, executive director of Mining Minnesota, said in a statement:
The governor’s own Department of Natural Resources concluded a six-year legal review that considered more than 4,000 public comments and the most current science available, and ruled definitively that Minnesota’s nonferrous mining regulations are strong enough to protect the Boundary Waters and its watershed.
Unless Walz’s successor renews the executive order, it will expire 90 days after Walz leaves office. All that this order accomplishes is to add more months to an already-long process and prevent its own state regulators from ruling on the evidence.