Another long delay: Walz’s DNR stalls NewRange mine permit until late 2025

More state foot-dragging, as the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Monday suspended proceedings on the NewRange Copper Nickel project until August 2025. The company is studying potential changes to the project’s design as of August 2024, though it stands by its current design submitted for permitting.

The proposed NewRange Copper Nickel project, formerly known as NorthMet, would be Minnesota’s first copper-nickel mine—but two decades of bureaucratic delays have left the mining companies’ projects in limbo. This is the latest setback for the mine, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers revoked a wetlands permit in June 2023.

NewRange Copper Nickel describes the new studies as relating to tailings storage, water quality, efficient production, and carbon reduction. If changes are proposed to the mine’s plan as the result of these studies, it may be subject to more environmental review and permitting, with opportunities for public comments.

NewRange’s predecessor, PolyMet, began the permitting process in 2004—20 years ago—and received key state permits in 2018.

Conflict of interest at the top of the MnDNR

NewRange spokesperson Bruce Richardson is quoted in the Duluth News Tribune expressing disappointment about DNR’s decision:

“While NewRange’s previously announced studies may alter some aspects of the NorthMet Project, there are elements of the recommendation that could affect the design of any nonferrous tailings facility in Minnesota,” said NewRange spokesperson Bruce Richardson. “The DNR has an obligation to determine and communicate what its rules mean.

But obligation or not, the Minnesota DNR is under the direction of a Gov. Tim Walz appointee made when he first took office in 2019: commissioner Sarah Strommen.

Strommen is on record as stating she has “no opinion” on the copper-nickel mining process—but she was previously policy director for Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, a hyper-aggressive Twin Cities nonprofit that that does little else than oppose both PolyMet and Twin Metals since their beginnings. Strommen was also associate director of the Minnesota Land Trust—another Twin Cities anti-mining outfit.

Not only are Friends of the Boundary Waters and Minnesota Land Trust both Twin Cities-based organizations, in a metro area whose own polluted water systems are in trouble, but they receive funds from out-of state nonprofits, including Sierra Club, and pretend to know what is best for the ground water in Iron Range communities which have managed to have the cleanest water in the state, thanks in part to responsible mining. These organizations have had the ear of the state’s Democrat trifecta, and while Iron Range communities struggle to maintain population and infrastructure which would benefit from the hundreds, if not thousands, of high paying jobs for years to come. Scientific studies upon studies—by both NewRange and Twin Metals as well as from independent analysts—have proven that nonferrous mining (which will be done outside of the Boundary Water Canoe Area) can be achieved with no threat to the surrounding and upstream environments

NewRange explains new pending studies.

“While the NewRange studies will continue, today’s decision has unnecessarily extended the current uncertainty over the regulation of these facilities,” Richarson told the Duluth News Tribune..

Monday’s press release from NewRange did offer some details about the new studies it will perform:

“NewRange is studying a variety of tailings storage options that will minimize impact by reusing the former LTV iron ore tailings facility and clean up impacts from previous iron mining operations, leaving the region in better condition than it is today. Options include keeping the current design detailed in permits, potentially refining the current design to use a centerline dam design, or possibly relocating tailings storage to nearby unused mining pits…

“NewRange is reviewing planned water treatment technologies, which already meet all applicable water quality standards…

“NewRange is studying how to utilize the existing footprint to modestly increase production from 32,000 tons per day to 40,000 tons per day to deliver an increased domestic supply of high demand copper, nickel and cobalt, while reducing project emissions…

“There would be no change to the project’s 225 million total tonnage of minerals currently permitted for mining and processing. However, if feasible, increased daily production could shorten the mine plan from 20 years to 15 years…

“We are also studying whether an opportunity exists for NewRange to have a net negative carbon footprint, thanks in part to the unique geologic characteristics of its rock formation. NewRange is exploring various techniques to sequester carbon in the mine tailings.”

It is widely accepted that the federal permitting process is broken, and the incoming Trump administration has signaled that streamlining it will be a top priority. It has cost Americans dearly from automobiles to cell phones to military technologies by being dependent on China for vital nonferrous minerals in absence of mining their domestic abundance. Many Minnesotans hope that the now-divided incoming state legislature will do the same by setting politics aside in favor of sound policy.

Sources include: Sarah Montalbano, Policy Fellow at Center of the American Experiment; Friends of the Boundary Waters; Minnesota Land Trust.