An 1,800-page scientific review to be released six days before Thanksgiving should provide the most in-depth insights to date to help answer a long-simmering question critical to Minnesota's future: Can copper, nickel and other precious metals be mined responsibly in the state's treasured northeast corner?
Given the daunting length and technical nature of the analysis of the proposed PolyMet mine near Babbitt — and more important, the critical need to balance the project's economic benefits and environmental risks — state and federal officials need to ensure that the public is given ample time to digest this information and weigh in.
While the informational review is not the final say on whether the project goes forward — that will follow in the permitting process — the public's chance to scrutinize one of the most comprehensive looks so far at the mine's impact on environmentally sensitive Arrowhead region's water, air and land should not be rushed. PolyMet and other proposed mines could bring good-paying jobs to the struggling region, but this type of mining also has an appalling environmental legacy — a history in Western states of leaving polluted waterways and other contamination to be cleaned up by taxpayers.
A project this important but controversial should not be dogged by questions about the public participation, which is why officials overseeing the review should work to avoid even the slightest perception that the comment period was inadequate.
How long the public will have to scrutinize the legally required analysis is unclear. While state officials announced recently that the review — known as an environmental-impact statement, or EIS — will be released publicly Nov. 22, they have not provided key details about the public comment process.
Not only is the length of the comment period unknown, there's also uncertainty about the number of meetings that will be held, their locations, and their formats.
Asked this week for these details, a Department of Natural Resources official said that his agency and the other two other "colead" agencies working on the PolyMet project are talking to each about this. A decision is likely to be released in November.
Steve Colvin, the DNR's deputy director of the division of ecological and water resources, did say that the public comment period will "certainly be longer" than the regulatory minimum of 45 days. But Colvin also directed an editorial writer to a federal database listing public comment period time frames for projects around the country, and noted that the longest that he'd seen was 105 days.