Talon's Minnesota mine plan raises a familiar question: Can nickel be extracted safely?

TAMARACK, Minn. — At Talon Metals' drill site just north of this northern Minnesota town, workers are hauling out cores showing some of the highest-grade nickel ever found in the state — a metal the company says will make it a crucial player in the fight against climate change.

Talon's clean energy argument for its mine has gained two influential backers: Tesla, which signed an agreement to buy half the mine's nickel for electric vehicle batteries, and the Biden administration, which granted a $114 million grant to move the mine's processing to North Dakota. The White House has also highlighted the mine in its push to extract more critical minerals from under U.S. soil.

But in submitting its first draft plan for an underground mine this week, Talon faces anew a question that's been asked for decades in Minnesota: Can hardrock mining be done safely in such a water-rich environment?

No hardrock mine has opened in Minnesota since a massive study of copper-nickel mining in 1979. That report concluded that companies would have to use state of the art technology to control air and water pollution, the Star Tribune reported then.

Forty-four years later, Talon's proposals to stop acid, salt and metals from leaching into Aitkin County water will be the basis of the latest mining battleground. But the urgency of addressing climate change with cleaner technologies adds a new twist to the old story.

To Kelly Applegate, the commissioner of natural resources for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, the push for minerals to electrify the country has been "so, so rapid." He said the tribe is focused on ensuring that the lands and waters people depend on for resources like wild rice stay clean for generations to come. It's a familiar clash for Indigenous people, he said.

"The track [record] has always been that we tend to lose on these things and end up with a compromised environment or, you know, the loss of our land," Applegate added.

But Todd Malan, chief external affairs officer and head of climate strategy for Talon, argued that the company is committed to making sure it doesn't damage culturally important natural resources, like wild rice.

"We want to recognize that importance, and we want to be able to, over the time of this environmental review, demonstrate we don't have to make a choice between [wild rice and mining]," Malan said.

Unique geology

In 2002, the mining company Kennecott started probing at the Tamarack Intrusion, a deposit hundreds of feet below Aitkin County that was formed 1.1 billion years ago from the seepage of a rift in the earth's crust.

It took six years and 42 bores to hit nickel, but now, exploratory rigs are pulling out cores with concentrations as high as 12%. Kennecott, a subsidiary of international mining giant Rio Tinto, became a minority owner of the Tamarack project, with Talon owning the majority and running the operations.

At Talon's drill core warehouse in Tamarack in April, Jessica Johnson, community outreach and government relations manager, pointed out glittering streaks through the long cylinders of rock — minerals called pentlandite with nickel locked inside.

"There's probably four projects in the world that see the grades of nickel like what we see here. So the geology is just — it's unique," Johnson said.

Talon's operations have roughly doubled the number of buildings in downtown Tamarack. The town had 62 residents as of the 2020 Census. Mayor J. John Cyrus said the town hollowed out significantly after its elementary school closed — in the mid-1960s.

He was optimistic about the potential for new jobs in the region from the mine site, which Talon says will support 300 workers.

But there are still risks. The minerals that bind the nickel below, called "massive sulfides" by geologists, can break down when exposed to air or water. That can create sulfuric acid. The metals in the rock could leach into nearby waters, too. And the salt that Talon has said is present in the deepest groundwater could corrode metal and create pollution of its own.

Today, the community that's left in Tamarack relies on wells for its water. "If the groundwater gets polluted, everybody has to move," Cyrus said.

But he was confident that Talon's proposal, including the shipment of ore to North Dakota for processing, would stave off that outcome. "I think they've got a plan that takes care of that," Cyrus said.

Not everyone is so optimistic. Bruce Johnson, a retired state employee who worked on Minnesota's original copper-nickel study and later mining-related environmental issues, is worried about potential water pollution at several points — and doubted that the mine would close after 10 years, as the initial plan says.

"They're sticking the camel's nose under the tent," Johnson said.

Malan said the company has been frank about the possibility that there could be many resources worth extracting in the Tamarack Intrusion — which extends 11 miles from north to south, roughly bisected by state Hwy. 210. In a news release earlier this year, Talon executive Brian Goldner said the region had "district-scale potential."

"There's no secret here," Malan said.

He added that any expansions or new mines would be reviewed by state regulators.

Complex flow

The groundwater at the mine site in Aitkin County flows generally in the direction of Big Sandy Lake, a popular destination about 8 miles northwest. Roughly 15 miles southwest is Rice Lake, a wildlife refuge that can host nearly a million ring-necked ducks a year. It's also one of the most productive wild rice lakes in Minnesota.

Wild rice, or manoomin in the Ojibwe language, is more than a plant to forage. It is the resource that led Ojibwe people to migrate around the Great Lakes and into modern-day Minnesota, following a prophecy to find the place where food grows on water.

During a May visit to Rice Lake, Applegate, the Mille Lacs commissioner, described how the rice requires a habitat that's unique to the area. The area is so successful "because of the interconnected hydrology," he said. "It needs a slow movement of water."

The question is whether that matrix of streams, wetlands, lakes and groundwater could carry mine pollution to Rice Lake or other rice beds. Data that Talon is collecting now through monitoring wells may shed more light on the flow of water, and the company said that data will be provided later in the environmental review process.

Talon has proposed a concrete lining for the 390-foot-deep tunnel that would ferry trucks in and out of the mine, in part to avoid contact with groundwater closest to the surface. But if pollution does escape, it might not be immediately apparent, Applegate said.

"Even elevated sulfate levels, the full cumulative impact of that may not show up for half a decade to a decade after," Applegate said. "And then, you know, once it's in a system, how do you get it out?"

Malan said the mine will have to meet the state's water quality standards — and that it's open to additional safeguards, such as an independent water quality monitor selected by the community and paid for by the company.

Water quality isn't the only concern. Talon's efforts to keep its underground mine dry could affect conditions at the surface, too. Its submitted plan notes that at peak operation, between 1.15 million and 2.3 million gallons of water could flow into the underground cavity each day. That water would either have to be sealed away or pumped out and treated, to make way for mining.

Lynn Anderson, of the grassroots group Tamarack Water Alliance, worried that pumping below could dry out lakes or wetlands on the surface. "People go nuts when the lake levels drop around here naturally," she said.

But Malan stressed that the plan submitted isn't a final version. "People can raise concerns," he said, adding that the company will revise the plan to address them.

The Department of Natural Resources will be working to develop the plan too, during the scoping process that's expected to take about a year, and the development of a detailed report on environmental impacts after that.

Even though Talon submitted a 109-page plan, "we expect that there will be multiple rounds of DNR review and comment, followed by company revisions and submittals," spokeswoman Gail Nosek said.