Paul Douglas: My eyes are wide open to Boundary Waters threats

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Can we at least agree on clean water? Minnesotans love their lakes. The “quality of life” argument I heard when I moved here in 1983 is real. We live in a resort, surrounded by a magnificent constellation of inviting lakes. On any given day, we have the freedom to choose which lakes we want to enjoy — to fish, swim or cruise. This ethos cuts across the political divide. I suspect most of us do not want our lakes degraded by harmful chemicals in the water. This isn’t politics. It’s something more enduring: common sense.

The gold standard is the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA). My family and I have experienced the joy of portaging from lake to lake, trekking through relatively untouched wilderness, tying up our provisions in a tree so the bears wouldn’t pay us a courtesy call, and watching a Technicolor sunset with a soundtrack of loons calling out. There is nothing like it on the planet.

Some necessary context: The BWCA is the most-visited wilderness area in the U.S., with roughly 165,000 visitors annually. It holds 20% of all the fresh water in the entire national forest system. It is a national freshwater reservoir, not just a playground. The BWCA supports 17,000 jobs in northeastern Minnesota’s outdoor recreation economy.

Today the singular purity, health and future of the BWCA are at risk. The BWCA has been described as a “liquid labyrinth,” a network of more than 1,100 lakes connected by rivers and portages. It is a massive, flowing vascular system of clean water. Because these lakes are not isolated ponds but a connected chain, chemical pollution cannot be contained. If you contaminate the headwaters, you don’t kill just one lake; you poison the entire bloodstream of Minnesota’s last untouched wilderness.

At present the BWCA is protected by a 20-year federal ban on new mineral leasing on federal lands in its watershed. In January 2023, the Department of the Interior issued Public Land Order 7917, which established a 20-year mining moratorium on 225,000 acres of federal land in the Rainy River Watershed. But pending legislation in Congress seeks to strip away that shield, overturning scientific findings of the Department of the Interior, forcing the federal government to reinstate mineral leases previously held by Twin Metals. It would turn a federal “no” into a congressional “proceed.”

There is a critical (chemical) difference between traditional iron mining (taconite) and the copper-nickel mining proposed by Twin Metals. This isn’t iron. It’s sulfide. The chemistry of sulfide mining produces sulfuric acid, a pollutant that cannot be contained by corporate promises. When this rock is crushed and exposed to air and water it creates sulfuric acid — battery acid. The net result is acid-mine drainage. Acid leaches heavy metals (mercury, lead, arsenic) out of the rock and into the water table. Arsenic is a confirmed human carcinogen, and lead is a powerful neurotoxin, especially harmful to children. Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that bioaccumulates in the fish we eat and permanently damages the nervous system.

In 2016, and reaffirmed in later assessments, the U.S. Forest Service concluded that sulfide-ore mining in the Rainy River Watershed would cause “irreparable harm” to the Boundary Waters. In 2015, Tom Myers, a hydrologist specializing in mine water chemistry, published widely cited modeling specifically for the Twin Metals site. His conclusion: Any contaminants from a spill or leak wouldn’t just stay in Birch Lake (the mine site). They would travel downstream into the BWCA. His findings: Once contaminants enter the groundwater/surface water system, the pollution plume could persist and travel for decades to centuries, creating a “permanent source of loading” to the wilderness. As climate change intensifies rainfall rates and extreme weather, the risk of containment failure only increases over time.

For the record, I am not anti-mining. Like everyone else I have benefited from innovations and breakthroughs brought about by leveraging our natural resources. I am a proponent of responsible mining, considering all stakeholders involved: people, communities, ecosystems and the environment, the very thing that sustains and inspires us. Are we willing to roll the dice and take a chance? As William Shakespeare quipped, “What’s past is prologue.” Any clear-eyed glimpse of the BWCA’s future should be based on historical precedent.

The data isn’t encouraging. According to Earthworks, a study of 14 modern U.S. copper-sulfide mines representing 89% of production found that 100% experienced pipeline spills or accidental releases, and 92% failed to control water pollution. Another conclusion: “In some cases, water quality impacts were so severe that acid mine drainage at the mine site will generate water pollution in perpetuity.” Harvard economist James Stock analyzed Minnesota Arrowhead’s economy over 20 years. He ran 72 different economic scenarios. In 69 of the 72 scenarios, the regional economy performed better if mining was banned. His conclusion: The “amenity-based economy” (tourism, cabins, remote workers) creates more wealth than the boom-bust cycle of mining.

Feeling lucky? I’m a naive optimist, but on this topic my eyes are wide open. As a capitalist and business owner, I am very familiar with risk. We all take calculated risks every day. But privatizing profits while socializing losses — especially when the losses involve water that can never be cleaned up — sounds like a bad idea. An improvement in one mining company’s balance sheet isn’t worth chronic risk to the Minnesota Arrowhead’s water integrity, local jobs and our venerated quality of life.

There is an old proverb that sums up where I stand on the prospect of sulfide mining upstream of the BWCA. “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.”

Whatever happened to the common good? Let’s do something good for our kids and say no.