EDITORIAL: A betrayal of America’s conservation ethos

There is a good chance that, unless six Republican senators muster the courage to defy President Donald Trump and defend some of the most extraordinary wilderness on the North American continent, Congress will vote this week to potentially pollute the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota.

The Senate vote will determine whether a copper sulphide ore mine can operate in a national forest near the glacial lakes, boreal forests and rivers of the Boundary Waters.

Water pollution is endemic to this type of mine. There are numerous instances of acid mine drainage accidentally or purposely released from such mines profoundly damaging aquatic systems in the U.S. and other places in the world. Environmental Protection Agency data shows that nearly every mine of this type eventually releases toxic pollution.

The House of Representatives has already passed a resolution to cancel federal protection of the Boundary Waters area of the Superior National Forest to allow a Chilean company to operate a mine there.

The House vote followed party lines with only one Republican voting against it. If the Senate vote on the resolution, likely to happen this week, also goes along party lines, the mine will be permitted; Republicans have 53-47 majority in  the Senate.

President Trump has campaigned for opening public lands to mining and oil drilling, and is eager to sign the resolution.

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, located about 100 miles directly north of Superior, Wis., along the Canada border, is a vast roadless expanse embracing pristine lakes and connected waterways, including the Brule River that is treasured by canoe voyagers.

The Boundary Waters have been protected since 1909 when President Theodore Roosevelt established the Superior National Forest. Roosevelt’s great-grandson, Ted Roosevelt IV, and other descendants of the greatest conservationist president, who was a Republican, recently wrote to Republican senators calling on them to vote against allowing a mine in the Boundary Waters area.

It is hard to imagine a more unsuitable place to permit a sulphide ore mine to operate. The sulfuric acid created when minerals from such mines are exposed to air and water is a particularly poisonous form of water pollution. Leaked from the mine, it would flow downstream into connected waterways where, according to the head of the National Wildlife Foundation, it “could mean the collapse of the Boundary Waters food chain.”

It is also difficult to understand what Wisconsin’s six Republican House members thought they were doing on behalf of their country and their constituents by voting to allow mining in a national forest in a neighboring state. (Wisconsin’s two Democrats in the House voted against it.)   

Supporters of opening the wilderness to mining cite the economic benefit of what the mine owners claim will one day be 750 jobs. Even if that actually happens, it is a tiny increment of economic growth bought at an exorbitant price.

It would be a fraudulent use of the popular MAGA motto “America first!” to apply it to the Trump administration’s push to open the Boundary Waters area to mining. The mine will have a South American owner, Autofagastsa and Twin Metals, a huge conglomerate that has spent nearly $2 million lobbying Congress. What’s more, much of the product of the mine is expected to be shipped to China for processing because U.S. refiners have little capacity to produce more copper.

Copper ore is not to be confused with some sort of rare earth mineral. It is abundant and produces a metal that is one of the most sustainable and easily recycled of any. There is little need for a new copper mine any place in the country, much less in a vulnerable natural area with more than 1,000 lakes and 1,500 miles of rivers.

In an interview with the New York Times, Ted Roosevelt IV said his great-grandfather would be “appalled” by politicians’ efforts to insinuate a polluting menace into a magnificent expanse of nature that has been protected by the American government for more than a century. We should all be appalled.