House Republicans vote to reverse 20-year mining ban in Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness
Congressional Republicans moved closer Wednesday to lifting a 20-year ban on mining near Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, pushing a resolution to end the moratorium through the House despite environmentalists' warnings that it could devastate a premier destination for campers, kayakers and canoeists.
The resolution now goes to the Senate, and approval there would send it to President Trump for his signature.
Republican Rep. Pete Stauber introduced the bill earlier this month, calling the Biden-era ban an "attack on our way of life" in northern Minnesota, as it "cost countless good-paying, union jobs."
"By locking up the Duluth Complex—the world's largest untapped copper-nickel deposit—President Biden cemented our nation's reliance on foreign adversarial nations like China for critical minerals that will be necessary for the United States to compete and win in the 21st Century," he said.
In 2023, then-Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland moved to protect 225,504 acres of the Superior National Forest from mining and geothermal leasing for 20 years, ensuring that a Chilean mining company could not move forward with its proposed Twin Metals mine.
It was the most significant conservation measure to protect the area in more than four decades. For environmental activists and outdoor enthusiasts, the ban was seen as a victory, protecting public lands and wildlife from pollution.
Stauber's bill, H.J. Res 140, uses the Congressional Review Act, enacted in 1996 to allow Congress to pass legislation to overturn a rule issued by a federal agency. Rules that are revoked under the CRA cannot be reinstated by a future administration.
According to the advocacy group Save the Boundary Waters, if the bill is passed, it could set a precedent that would "allow Congress to retroactively target virtually any public land action," and "would mean that no established land management decision would be safe from politicized attack and nullification."
Democratic Rep. Kelly Morrison called it "the greatest threat to the Boundary Waters in history."
"This would pave the way for sulfide-ore copper mining in the region — the most toxic industry in America — which has never been allowed in Minnesota before. It would cause irreversible damange to the most visited wilderness area in the country," she said.
