Anybody want to change your vote yet?
10
If it stinks, the Trumps are sure to be at it’s core.
24
As usual, as always -- Infuriating!!
When, when, when will the self-dealing and self-enriching stop?
This group is so bold, they do it over and over and over, out in the open ... with no signs of let-up.
Vote. Them. Out.
20
Jared Kushner is always so stiff and rigid looking, so why is he smiling in the picture? Very creepy to consider what makes him smile. His wife Ivanka is also very and rigid, very plastic, literally and figuratively, so stiff and so very phony and superficial. It is amusing that both pretend to be Demi-aristos when they both come from family owned & operated sleazy real estate businesses with criminal fathers. These people need to be removed asap and sent to prison where they belong.
23
This guy could figure out a way to squeeze money out of a dead body. He especially likes destroying the environment, and opening a mine close to the boundary waters kills two birds: making money from destroying the environment. If anyone thinks a Chilean mining company cares if the boundary waters are destroyed, trump has a bridge to sell you—probably one that’s unsafe and goes nowhere.
20
Yeah, there is no corruption here.
This corruption makes the Tea Pot Dome scandal appear insignificant.
14
Why is this crime different for any other crime our President has committed?
7
Is this Trump's idea of draining the swamp?
12
In the next future the neologism “Trump” will be inserted in the dictionaries as a synonym of “corruption”.
12
Rich copper deposits in this unsullied wilderness should be a matter of national interest not foreign development.
12
Let's assume (beyond all reasonableness) that putting a mining operation into a sensitive wilderness area is a good idea. Why would we want a foreign company to run this mine? Why not an American company? Isn't this what candidate Trump promised us?
And, stating the obvious, isn't it strange (and most likely illegal or, at the very least, presenting an appearance of impropriety and unethical behavior) that a foreign company can put value into the President's family's hands and then get a reversal of an environmental decision?
16
I would encourage anyone who supports this mining effort to play tourist and drive around the area that for decades was a leading source of iron for this country. You will notice hundreds of immense piles of dirt and rock that will likely be there for hundreds of years. Then, canoe into the areas proposed for mining. Compare the two and consider them as before/after depictions of what this area will look like when the copper mines are gone.
Finally, contemplate what you would want your grandchildren to see.
26
The writer’s dislike of President Trump ignores the reality of and the reliance on mining in modern technological life.
Mining has been a part of Minnesotan economy since the late 1800’s. Minerals are also important to sustain a modern economy whether it is the backwoods of Minnesota or the chic streets of Manhattan.
Mining is a dirty business. Nothing sanguine about bringing dirt from the bottom of the pit, washing it and then refining it to get the little bit of minerals that we sift out of the bulk physically and chemically.
The famed 3M Company has not always been about posted notes or scotch tapes. 3M which stands for “Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing” started as a miner for corundum, an abrasive front for sandpaper. Northern Minnesota produces a lot of iron too. The vast iron deposits of the Mesabi Range in Minnesota are still mined from open pits. For the politically correct, Bob Dylan composed North Country Blues lamenting loss of mining jobs in the north woods.
Modern technology cannot exist without mining for iron, gold, silver, copper, and a whole list of specialized metals and minerals. To expect all of them from some unknown and unseen pits of South America or Africa is not realistic.
Many journalists who have just a basic liberal arts education are just as ignorant about the backbone of technology pierced into their ears as they are about the cruelty and grime embedded behind the creation of chicken and stake they devour at lunch.
10
I grew up in on the Mesabi Iron Range. The mining industry there definitely supported the people and towns for as long as it did. People worked hard and in earnest, but as the resources have begun to deplete, life up there has gotten a lot tougher. My hometown used to have a population of 14,000; it has decreased down to around 8,700 since the early 70s. Simply said, mining is never sustainable; the resources are always limited. The mining of iron ore and taconite has left giant open pits where once verdant forests stood, but at least that type of mining was not as filthy as copper mining is. Stats show that copper mining has been fraught with accidents and inability to clean up after itself. There is no way that the pristine Boundary Waters won't become polluted. Eventually those water tables will reach and contaminate Lake Superior, one of our planet's largest fresh water lakes. That risk is NOT worth taking. We have got to stop living in the past and develop alternative, green economies. https://www.savetheboundarywaters.org/updates/science-desk-how-sulfide-ore-copper-mines-pollute
29
So in a nutshell we are going to let a foreign mining company destroy an American national park for profit. I don’t see how this makes America great again.
22
It's heartwarming to know business is good for the Trump/Kushner real estate initiatives while those men slug through their odious days trying to fit in a bit of The People's Business, without impinging on their own. Not so great for Minnesotans, though, is it!
Trump/Kushner/Luksic folks will be long gone by the time good folks of Minnesota discover they've been robbed blind, and fully assess water, soil, and aesthetics have taken a hit by a foreign company hardly concerned with Minnesota's trashed environment, while the Trump/Kirshner duo smirk at a sweet and easy chunk of change from an inflated piece of real estate they hardly had to work at selling. Didn't this work out nicely! Well, except for the trusting (Trump Chumps ) Minnesotans who gain nothing but loss, and Antofagasta folks glances at in the rear view mirror as they drive away and count their money.
9
Here is hoping that the entire Trump clan learn the real meaning of "Minnesota nice" in 2020.
8
Issues such as this need to be looked at in a reasonable logical way. Many worthy projects elicit knee jerk reactions of No..greed, environmental destruction, payoffs. The need for metals is there especially copper. Ironically,, I wonder how those opposing this mine propose to build a solar grid without copper? Let's get back logic and reason.
4
The writer’s dislike of President Trump ignores the reality of and the importance of mining to Minnesota or modern technological life.
Mining has been a part of Minnesotan economy since the late 1800’s. Minerals are also important to sustain a modern economy whether it is the backwoods of Minnesota or the chic streets of Manhattan.
Mining is a dirty business. Nothing sanguine about bringing dirt from the bottom of the pit, washing it and then refining it to get the little bit of minerals that we sift out of the bulk physically and chemically.
The famed 3M Company has not always been about posted notes or scotch tapes. 3M which stands for “Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing” started as a miner for corundum, an abrasive front for sandpaper. Northern Minnesota produces a lot of iron too. The vast iron deposits of the Mesabi Range in Minnesota are still mined from open pits. For the politically correct, Bob Dylan composed North Country Blues lamenting loss of mining jobs in the north woods.
Modern technology cannot exist without mining for iron, gold, silver, copper, nickel and a whole list of specialized metals and minerals. To expect all of them from some unknown and unseen pits of South America or Africa is not realistic.
Many journalists who have just a basic liberal arts education are just as ignorant about the backbone of technology pierced into their ears as they are about the cruelty and grime embedded behind the creation of chicken and stake they devour at lunch.
5
It's a win-win from Trump's point of view...when questions are asked about his failure to "drain the swamp," he will point to the ruination of the Boundary Waters and tell his faithful that he has indeed moved the swamp from DC to Minnesota.
Additionally, where is his faux rhetoric when it comes to national security? Instead he is perfectly happy to turn over a huge copper resource to a foreign conglomerate. Sounds like this is another of his "bigly" mistakes.
6
Too many coincidences to believe this is anything other than the trump family knee deep in corruption. Again.
Mining America’s natural resources seems like a good idea unless something goes wrong. And something always goes wrong. And this particular South American has a history of contaminating spills.
Some jobs would be created, of course. But the profits of what’s mined winds up offshore, right? When the mining rights are given to foreigners, won’t most of the profits go into foreign pockets?
Other than the too coincidental machinations involving trump et al and the South American enterprise, it’s the environmental impact that is probably more important than the smattering of jobs. Contrary to trump’s beliefs, our environment is much more valuable than a mining venture that risks destroying it.
Our environment is finite. And so are natural resources. “Bring back mining jobs” is a very nice campaign chant. But when the trade off to allowing mining in pristine areas is environmental contamination, America is cutting off its nose to spite its face. The risk is too great. Our environment is too valuable.
The GOPs and trumpians need to find other ways to create jobs. Perhaps if they concerned themselves with lining the pockets of regular folks instead of their own, there’d be more progress. Americans used to be the most innovative people on the planet. We can be again if we seek brilliant leaders who’re more interested in solving problems than making a buck.
7
In this environment, I pity any person or persons near resources still intact in large tracts of land. Nothing is sacred to trump.It is all about money, money and more money. I think jobs are just a side issue. Trump is capable of anything for a buck. He has no concept of anything that might have a higher value than mere money. The only thing for trump that might rival money is power.
6
Never mind that this is blatant conflict of interest with Trumps own family members, but if you think a couple of hundred jobs that may last 10-20 years is worth permanently destroying pristine wilderness, just look at the ecological disasters that copper mining has wrought in Brazil. Look at the 140 abandoned mine sites that are on EPAs National Priorities List as leading candidates for Superfund Cleanup dollars. Large companies like Alcoa and Anaconda have walked away from their old mines and left ecological messes for the tax payers to clean up. What makes you think a large foreign owned mining company won't do the same thing?
29
I don't think anything can be done until Trump is finished his Presidency. The next election will be the most important in the last 100 yrs and will show what America is about. If Trump is not defeated the far right will elect another President with the same game plan and we will not be a respected nation and forget about being a world power.
16
I have been a dogsled guide with Wintergreen Dogsled Lodge (on White Iron Lake, directly downstream the Kawishiwi River from the proposed Twin Metals mine site on Birch Lake) for 4 winters, guided canoe trips with Northern Tier (a national BSA camp on Moose Lake) for 2 summers, and grew up going on canoe trips in the BWCA. I also studied Geology at North Dakota State University in Fargo, ND.
I can say without a doubt that I would not be the same person I am today if the BWCA did not exist. I have many friends from all over the world that have had life-changing experiences in the Boundary Waters as well. Living in Ely, it can be easy to get caught up in local politics. We have to remember that the BWCA is NATIONAL treasure that is a much larger issue than our small town. Sometimes it is hard to remember that outside of Ely, being able to drink straight from the lakes is an amazingly precious thing. We need precious metals for modern society, but we have to evaluate what is worth protecting and what the risks are before we proceed with large-scale industrial mining projects. To me, the risks posed by this mine are not worth the rewards.
PS: The two Inuit sled dogs featured in a photo in this article are two Wintergreen dogs, Gabe and Alice.
26
We, the ordinary people of Minnesota, do not want this environmental disaster in our state. We value our clean water, air and land and will fight to keep it from turning into a poisonous swamp where nothing can live.
30
For well over 200 years, one of the great freedoms in America has been the right to abuse the environment. Here in the 21st Century it is time to really become conservationist. We have to quit squandering our natural resources and encourage others to do the same. We need to clean up the messes that our lust for wealth beyond prosperity have created. Would have many if not most of the super wealthy reached their financial stations if they had cleaned up after themselves? I don't think so but the common good would have been much better off. Pollution is everyone's early death sentence.
Notice, when you talk about cleaning up and keep the environment clean, you will hear all sorts of nonsense; its too hard, its not cost efficient, it will put people out of work,.....
The truth is we are smarter than that, people find away. However, the entrench robber barons and their shills, will use every form of misinformation, collusion, extorsion, bribery, obstruction, violence to maintain the status quo or to improve their stations.
Trump has used every minute of his Presidency to improve his station using these tactics regardless of what is good for the country or overwhelming majority its citizens. He has been aided and abetted by the GOP at every turn.
The Democrats have failed the American people for a very long time. There most grievous failure is their allowance and abetment of the GOP destruction of the portfolio of financial law resulting from the Great Depression.
19
I'm just shocked, I tell you, about the apparent lack of ethics here.
13
These people don't have a real crazy look in their eyes because copper is going into solar. Copper mines produced about a hundred valuable minerals ,gold, brass and bronze being some. Often a lot of gold.The copper mines in AZ are owned by Mexico as is the refinery in TX. Oddly enough the gold goes to Mexico,big surprise ,Mexico is very ,very rich at least the many billionaires are .Yet as in the US ,billionaires do not share wealth well and wages,well. Find out what the Chile owners pay first,,,,nothing like building a mine and finding out nobody wants to work for 8 $ per hr.
3
When one reads that as many as 100 million India residents may soon have no access to clean water, it becomes even more urgent to protect America's own sources of this increasingly valuable resource. However, to the grifters, thieves, and liars in the Trump family and administration, a dollar in the pocket today is far more important than ensuring a safe, healthy future for our children and grandchildren.
17
Minnesota has plenty of Democrats among its elected officials. What do they say? The authors interview folks from all over country but have strangely omitted the views of Democrats closely associated with area, specifically Amy Klobuchar, who comes from there! Why? Because their views don't fit the article's billionaire-Kushner-Trump thesis.
7
@Hemingway, that is interesting! hope someone will ask A.K. about it at debate. what a tragedy if this area is destroyed.
1
To the old admonition, "Follow the money", I would add, "Follow the thieves." and "Follow the bribes". It cannot be too soon for the greatest hustler in American history to leave the scene.
14
This is far from a coincidence. The Chilean knows exactly what he’s doing and he, like Trump Sr., uses plausible deniability as a screen from prosecution for bribery and other illegal acts.
Were I looking at this, since I expect a definite quid pro quo from the likes of the Trump/Kushner team, I would look VERY carefully at money laundering by the couple. What, exactly, is happening to the 15k/month that they pay in “rent”? How much remains accessible to them overseas in a Chilean bank account?
To make matters worse, a foreign concern is ruining OUR pristine environment and taking OUR copper. They may be employing American labor, but that only makes Americans more complicit in ruining America. What happened to the Hypocrite-in-Chief’s fake policy of keeping America American? We will need OUR copper for hi-tech products in the future. Why should we buy it back from Chile?
10
“Both Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump follow the ethics advice they received when they entered government service,” said Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Mr. Kushner’s lawyer,
So, what was the "advice" they received?
11
What responsibility do companies especially foreign companies have to take care of the land from which they mine their profits? In oil terms they are wild caters who come into an area take what hey want them leave the land a mess of discarded machinery and open pits. And the feds have little ability to control this process especially when Trump related family members have a stake in the operations. Trump fights tooth and nail the admission of asylum seekers from Latino countries, but allows a Chilean Company the right to do its worst to pristine American lands. Something is definitely wrong with this picture.
8
It is unclear why Trump is given the benefit of the doubt in the framing business-friendly bent
3
How could this possibly be a surprising development from a President and lock-step Republican Senate dedicated to repealing every bit a legislation put into place by the Obama administration -- especially when it involves making a buck off of this country's vast natural resources, regardless of the detrimental effects it might have on the population and the environment?
And as über-wealthy billionaires continue to buy up vast tracts of land in the mid-West as was recently reported in the New York Times, Americans can expect to see more of the great wild outdoors disappearing under "NO TRESPASSING" signs.
Better go see it now while you can,
9
Bringing mining back is like bringing back 8-track tapes or the Betamax.
4
@Goahead
And yet here we are, posting on computers which need rare earth metals -- mined -- and using electricity which needs copper -- mined -- not to mention driving around in metal vehicles and flying in metal airplanes and you get the picture. We are an industrial culture dependent on -- mined -- metals. That's not going to change anytime soon. As a first world nation, we can cry NIMBY while we benefit from metals mined from other lands, with less protection, often at the expense
of the peasants and indigenous of said 'other lands'.
Everyone posting here should be very much in favor of well-funded space exploration with the goal of mining asteroids. Perhaps that would be 'exploiting' asteroids, but I would rather they be exploited than end up randomly smacking into our home planet with devastating results . . .
4
The Trump family considers the USA to be their property at their disposal without any questions asked. Trump is the absolute ruler and above the law.
7
How is it possible for this corruption to go unchecked?
11
I used to be shocked that things like this slipped past... now it’s something new every couple days. Strange, sad times we’re living in!
1
The House should block this ASAP based on some technicalities if not on the substance else we are normalizing this. The brazen and open corruption of this administration and the GOP is just unbelievable each and every day! What has this country become!
6
This would be more scandalous if deregulation and elimination of environmental protections wasn't the Trump administration's modus operandi. Allowing mining in this pristine wilderness seems consistent with Trump's rapacious environmental policy independent of anything to do with Jared and Ivanka, making this less of a news story and more of another silly pile-on for readers to post comments.
3
Maybe the NYT readers should also read the WSJ opinion piece on this “scandal”. Appears that Senator Klobuchar had a very different take on how well the Obama Administration was handling this situation.
1
Work enough for a few generations of investigative reporters, continuing long after Trump and cult are long gone.
1
Why is a foreign conglomerate going to take all the profits from USA /Canada land , so much for USA , all the wealth transferred out ... but no mention on nightly news casts ...
4
When will there be, even a feeble sign, of any 'winning' for most Americans?
4
Another example of the corrupt and destructive spread of grifter mentality—-let me take what I want, as stealthily as I can, and con you into thinking this scheme is what you really wanted. A reader asked if environmentally minded (or ethically-minded) Americans will turn out to vote—-watch.
5
"The letter said the two departments’ actions “blatantly ignored scientific and economic evidence.” It also mentioned the “interesting coincidence” surrounding the rental of the Luksic house to Mr. Trump’s relatives. Separately, a group in Minnesota opposed to the mining, Save the Boundary Waters, has called the rental arrangement “deeply troubling” and has seized on it to cast doubt on the administration’s actions." - Hmm, let's see...Destroy something associated w/Pres. Obama, (If only indirectly), create serious ethical & legal questions about the whole proceeding & destroy some pristine environment!? Sounds exceptionally Trumplian to me!
4
Anyone who has ever canoed, camped and fished in the Boundary Waters would be appalled at this story.
6
How much information of this corrupt family does the House need before we start Impeachment Proceedings? Stop worrying about your polls and do the right thing, your jobs! Trump is going to be voted out in a massive tsunami regardless of what McConnell's corrupt and criminal senate does. But we need accountability today. Hearings will educate the public and open up their eyes and ears.
4
All you trump chanters, “drain the swamp” of this family and either get another candidate or vote democratic. Please cite ANY administration that has been as ethically derelict as this one.
5
The GOP only cares about ONE thing:
Getting more conservative judges confirmed through the Senate.
Trump could nuke New York City and McConnell wouldn’t even blink.
3
The Boundary Waters were doomed the moment Trump learned what Obama had done. If there is one constant in this administration of corruption and incompetence, it is the desire of Donald Trump to erase everything Obama accomplished.
4
I wish you wouldn't call it a "pro-industry agenda." Call it an anti-environment agenda. That's what it is -- willingness to turn the environment into a sewer so rich dudes can get more rich.
5
If the lack of ethics and corruption of this administration are not reason enough to impeach this president, then that implies that our elected representatives are okay with this behavior and continue to place party above country. Trump promised to drain the swamp but instead got down on his belly and slithered in ! America deserves better than Trump !
4
Who has Twin Metals hired to manage the environmental impact? Will that person be over-ruled at every turn?
4
What's the rent?
One dollar per month?
2
Article says $15,000 per month which would NEVER pay off the $5,500,000 purchase price. This is an obvious bribe to the trump family to push thru the mining permits. Disgusting...!!!
3
Trump domestic policy: I am the CEO of the USA, it is my company, and I will manage it for my own profit. Congress: Fine, as long as you stop any woman doing what she wants with her body after men do what they want with her body.
Trump foreign policy: I have all the military toys in the world, a psychotic narcissistic temper and I like to bully everyone every single day. Guess how I will behave towards other sovereign states?
5
Another example of power, money and materialism combining under the Trumps, who do not know right from wrong and certainly are not guided by any sense of spirituality, to recklessly provide a questionable mining company from a foreign nation access to valuable metals in a place where there are serious environmental issues. The wreckage inflicted upon the nation when the Trumps, in all of their avariciousness and greed, depart will take decades to heal and repair. The time has come for change!
2
Grifters destroy environment for cash. A fine American tradition. #Shame
3
oligarchy at work....
3
And this man, a man who whatever is good for his business and family is fine with him; this man whose ‘justification” of no sexual harassment to many women was, that they are not of his “aste”; this man who sent (with the GOP subservients) Gorsuch and angry Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court; this man full of lie and hate, and in great relationship with dictators, is our president.
2
The Trump swamp stinks more than ever. What are the voters thinking?
2
Antofagasta is a mining town in Chile. I've been there. It's basically a hellscape.
4
Corruption, my friend, corruption.....
For how long
and how bad...
Disgrace ..
is it what we are paying our Taxes for?
For Dirty games of Dirty family.
SAD.
2
DT, once a crook, always a crook !
3
I have canoed in the BWCA over 25 times in my lifetime. It is one of the most beautiful places I know on earth and I have travelled the world over. Jobs for a few over quality of life for many. It would be less expensive in the end to give several thousand people in the north the same amount of money they would get working those mines even for the rest of their lives, then what we will eventually have to pay to reverse the destruction that this will cause. Please Minnesota, do not let this happen. Love your land and water.
5
"Short term gain... and forget about the long-term pain." This has been the Royal Road to Riches for many, since time began. However, in a "civilized society" (or something approaching or approximating such a mythical beast), the worst instances of this understandable but usually VERY regrettable side of human nature, should be nixed by the "representatives" of the average person in the street - you know, the ones who usually suffer the consequences of the powerful, greedy crowd responsible for most of the suffering on the planet. In this and many other cases unfolding or unravelling in the USA (and elsewhere), the "people" must sit up, take notice, then take action for themselves, if their elected non-representatives refuse to act in their best interests, as opposed to the best interests of those who give them the most money and benefits.
4
I was raised in Winnipeg. We often vacationed in these waters, starting from Kenora, then south through Lake of the Woods shores, into Minnesota. It is serenely beautiful.
It must be kept pristine.
13
is anyone else as frustrated as I am with the democrats in congress over the last two years? The impeachment process should have started Trump's first day in office for his violations of the emolument clause. It never ends with this president, his family, and this administration, and yet THERE HAVE BEEN NO CONSEQUENCES. If the tables were turned and this was a Democratic President the GOP would have impeached him within 6 months. GET WITH IT DEMS- start fighting like Republicans- ours lives may depend on it...
6
The GOP controls the Congress. Impeachment would go nowhere. I feel the pain as well...
Where there's smoke... No clear answer on whether the rental of the house was vetted and approved by ethics advisors in the White House.
I was going to ask what payoff the Trumps got but now we know it was the house, at least in part.
9
There are ethics advisors in the White House...???
1
More than thirty years after our impressive and unforgettable tour through the BWCA we have to read this article about a fantastic nature reserve in Minnesota and are shocked. But what can we do to mitigate the huge anticipated demand for copper and other material?
If we as a society are smarter with handling of all the material we have dug up already, professional recycling will be a valid economical option and not just ethically correct.
There will be more and more young people who understand that transporting a person with two or three tons of car is not smart enough and needs disruptive change.
Our basic needs for intelligent mobility will be covered by a new designed public transit, with fleets of light electric vehicles of various kinds on rail and road. Managed by digital platforms, we will see shared vehicles and rides pooled with fellow citicens. Consequently, we will be able to make our daily journeys based on much less energy, raw materials, quietly, cleanly and with less overall environmental impact. This is not rocket science a long way to go: the trams of the last century were an excellent example of long-lasting engineering with maximum efficiency, and today even more options are on the table!
So, as citizens, let's set smart sustainable frame conditions and key performance indicators for our well-being, start reducing our consumption of resources again and hand over to our children nature as we took it from our parents - or better yet.
7
I don’t agree with mining copper or nickel. Copper mines do irreversible damage to not just the immediate but also surrounding areas. That said, if this was such a prized resource, why are allowing outside interests to mine it? If it is an AMERICAN resource, I have a hard time just opening up my pristine waterways to foreign interests and hope they treat our land right. Btw, there is no clean way to mine copper. It should be illegal.
19
Please no! I am about 3 years away from a trip there with my sons. They are too young now or I would go sooner. I have been fantasizing about it ever since I first learned of the area about 5 years ago. Once you contaminate the place there really is no fixing it.
9
I really hope you get to go there. We need to vote this [ ] out of office and then there might be a chance!
1
Before that area was a wilderness it was inhabited by people who hunted, trapped and gathered wild rice and such. Those people were then moved out and put on reservations. That wilderness is a modern construction.
Anyway. that liberals now favor playgrounds over industrial jobs is one reason Trump is in office. Working class people who voted Democrat for generations are now being told "tough luck" by the elites of the Democratic party as well as by the Republican elites who always told them that.
Wilderness is not a man made construct, regardless of who occupies the land. The first people were and today’s trappers, hunters, and paddlers are stewards of an increasingly rare commodity. Foreign mining companies not so much, and when the land is destroyed and the money is elsewhere have fun justifying it to your grandkids.
11
@Walleye
People in need don't have the luxury to play the long game. But then businessmen don't play the long game either--they get while the getting is good and tell workers to be patient and responsible. Well, I'm for getting while the getting is good too. If a generation or two can make out mining that's aces with me. And I justify nothing to my grandkids; they are their parents business not mine and I did right by their parents--my job is done.
@Thomas B I live in the Midwest and know a lot of liberals but the Boundary Waters being a liberal playground is news to me. It is the playground (ie. home) to gray wolves and Canada lynx and many other species that can't readily adapt to new habitat. Last I checked, working class people are human and humans are much more adaptable. Maybe those that cannot quit whining and adapt should go the way that the wildlife (and clean water) will go if the Almighty Dollar always wins these types of battles.
2
Maybe the relationship between the Kushner’s and the billionaire owner of the mine company is just a coincidence. They may not be getting a very special deal on this rental property. Rent money is a relatively trivial thing here anyway, I would think. Nevertheless, it seems that the billionaire purchased the property in the hope of gaining access to powerful political entities, and successfully gained that access. Trump has always talked about the importance of personal relationships for making deals, and I suppose this is another example of that. It seems that there is so little respect for Americans by the Trump family, that they don’t even care about how things look. This isn’t an isolated example of that, and by far not the worst.
Is this company going to be able to extract these ores without damaging the wetlands? We all know that the number one priority of corporations is to make money for the shareholders, with everything else a distant second. Extracting resources from water creates a potential for pollution greater than on land and can be prohibitively expensive to fix, as we have seen many examples of. Do we have to leave no stone unturned in our quest for riches? Is risking such a valuable resource like water really a good idea?
4
"The company said in a statement then that the [Obama] administration’s move threatened jobs and would 'hinder access to one of the world’s largest sources of copper, nickel and platinum — resources of strategic importance to the U.S. economy and national defense.;'”
To those who know something about mining, the above statement is unusual in two respects. First, in the list of minerals to be produced by this large copper mine there is no mention of GOLD or silver. Almost all large copper mines in the world produce a significant amount of gold (e.g. the Bingham Canyon mine in Utah) and silver. But to produce gold economically, invariably bleaching has to be deployed. There are no question about the high environmental cost of "bleaching" techniques any more, which explains why gold is missing from the minerals list here.
Second, connecting the mine to the U.S. national defense is a huge "stretch". There are already several large copper mines operating in the US. Additionally, Canada, and Mexico also operate large copper mines that, according to the old and new NAFTA agreement, the US has access to their productions. And the fact that the owner of this mine is a Chilean with international connections does add much to the US "national defense" or national security.
7
The Department of the Interior and EPA under this President have been completely sold to the highest bidder and stripped completely of functioning in the public interest as originally intended.
20
I notice a lot of Minnesotan's are commenting on this story - perfectly understandable.
Perhaps this story will make some readers re-think the concept of Federal ownership of land, and realize that State ownership of land has advantages that Federal ownership does not?
7
@DennisG - and the opposite. Many states would happily trade away land for exploitation for short-term gain. Federal control has protected more lands than it harmed.
This article (from a source inclined to resist destroying what's on the surface to get what's underneath) provides some discussion of the push to give our federal land to individual states. The point I found most convincing was that states typically can't afford management as well as the federal government, and would therefore be inclined to sell off parcels - I'd say that would happen double-quick in those states that see taxation as something they avoid.
https://www.outdoorlife.com/fact-checking-debate-on-federal-land-transfer/
7
@DennisG
Compared to Federal government, chances for having corrupt governments at state level are much higher. Also, even when the Federal government turns out to be corrupt - current administration included - there are career Federal employees who resist selling out and, when pressured, chose to go public instead of going "with the flow".
3
You make solar panels and rebuild the electric grid without copper. You can't make electric cars without copper. Your can build wind farms without copper. You are evil if you mine copper. Unless you do it in Brazil so we can all pretend to be Green.
5
@Mkm - I wonder if you know the nickname for the State of Arizona? We're the Copper State. Have been for quite a while now, since oh, 1912 or so. We've got a lot of copper. Lot of copper mines.
2
Bought and paid for. Cheap at twice the price. So many all-American marketing slogans, all new again with this crowd of 1920s-style corrupt parvenus, so aggressively ignorant they are unaware that everything they're doing has been done before and better. 1929 cannot come soon enough.
7
Just to be clear, I am a committed environmentalist and I despise our current president. I would hate to see this mine go forward, and agree that this appears to be another case of what another comment referred to as "third world corruption."
However, I also dislike sloppy reporting. As a lawyer, my first question on reading this was how is it even possible to mine in a Wilderness area, which is the most protected category of federal land outside of national parks. It turns out that's not what's being proposed.
As a bit of online research revealed, the proposed mine is not in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (the full name), but in national forest near the Wilderness boundary. Nothing in the article reveals that, and in fact it leaves the reader with the distinct impression that the proposed mine would be in the Wilderness.
While it may still be (most likely is) a bad idea, the Times needs to be more careful to get the facts straight. This kind of careless reporting just feeds into the right-wing narrative of liberal media bias.
12
240 thousand acres of the national forest that abuts the BWCA to the South has been opened up to mining. The currently proposed underground mine is 440 yards south of the boundary. And as they say, the water run through it. Hard rock mining produces an acid when exposed to air and water that leaches toxic heavy metals from rock. When that leaching contaminates the lakes and streams in the water-rich area of northern Minnesota, it will cause significant damage to aquatic life.
5
The first sentence says the mine would be near, not in, a pristine wilderness.
@Jim Heard
Thank you for that clarification, your comment should be a 'NYT pick' ! In fairness, the NYT should also research and publish an article about the many ways copper is indispensable to us in our daily lives (for example, posting here . . . )
We want all the benefits of an industrialized world without acknowledging the costs. I'm guessing it takes a considerable amount of a variety of both metals and fossil fuels to allow recreationists to access the BWCA.
1
If you think this is a potential rape of our most pristine and protected environs, and it is, I urge you to research the Pebble Mine in Alaska and the risks to the Bristol Bay fishery. The greed of these oligarchs has no bounds.
21
Why does everything this family does reek of impropriety? This was obviously a well orchestrated scheme with just enough layers in between the Kushners and Luksic so they could claim ignorance of the other’s participation.
19
Trump & Co at it again - lining their pockets and those of their friends with tax payer dollars. Vote this most corrupt administration ever out of office.
16
Usually the Minneaolis StarTribune jumps at the chance to reprint something from the Times if the story has anything to do with Minnesota. Last August, however, the StarTrib passed up on an article about Congressman (now state AG) Keith Ellison that was somewhat favorable to the Congressman. Let's see if the Strib picks up this article. I'm not holding my breath.
1
So why a Chilean billionaire.with ties to Trump. I am telling you America these guys are ripping you off.
7
It's about time that WE, the people of the USA, drain the swamp that Washington has become with its corrupt and contemptible circus clown of a president and his court jester syncophants of greed. It is truly disgusting to watch the manipulations and intermingling of government work and personal business breaches of all known norms of emolument separation.
The thieves have become so complacent in their arrogance of disdain that they do not even attempt to cover the transgressions of their office impropriety.
All semblance of integrity has vanished and unless we undertake strong and immediate steps to rectify the “corruptible swamp” that Washington has become, this will be known in history as the century of the Fall of the American Empire.
As Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote:
Pity the nation whose people are sheep
And whose shepherds mislead them
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
Whose sages are silenced
And whose bigots haunt the airwaves
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
Except to praise conquerers
And acclaim the bully as hero
And aims to rule the world
By force and by torture
Pity the nation that knows
No other language but its own
And no other culture but its own
Pity the nation whose breath is money
And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed
Pity the nation, oh, pity the people
Who allow their rights to erode
And their freedoms to be washed away
My country, tears of thee,
Sweet land of liberty!
15
Two things every normal person knows: 1) Never ever underestimate the Trump family predilection for corruption and 2) Never EVER trust ANYTHING a mining company says. Born liars everyone one of them. Greed is their ONLY "value."
14
Right, a foreign owned company extracting and selling a "strategic" element for the benefit and security of the US. The amount of gaslight being generated by this "administration" must itself be contributing to global warming.
13
It all smacks of The Gilded Age. Forests were cut down, lakes were polluted, and rivers despoiled; all for the almighty dollar. At the same time politicians were bribed, judges were corrupted, and the Republican Party ruled. History is repeating itself.
15
For Pete's sake, mining today is nothing like it was in the past. We have numerous mines in Idaho and the miners today are all well educated and ecologically inclined, plus the licensing process today is strict and requires safeguards and bonding. The knee-jerk reaction from environmentalists is just tedious. The mine will produce good paying jobs, the U.S. will have a dependable source of a valuable mineral, and the land will be restored when the mine ends.
Your reporters were very unethical in their efforts to suggest that the permitting was politically motivated. In fact, it was the Obama Administration that was trying to kill the mine (which had been licensed for years) in it's closing moments. Your reporters cited the earlier Wall Street Journal story about this issue so they knew that fact, and they also knew that Senator Klobuchar was very scornful of the underhanded way that the govt. tried to kill the mine just to please the green left. When the Times reporters omit key facts, then they are censoring the news and that feeds into the perception of Fake News. Similarly, trying to tie the permitting of the mine to a sweetheart deal on a house rental on the "high side" for rental payments is just another example of Trump bashing based on innuendo.
3
Idaho has had many problems with the permanent damage done by mining, despite the propaganda paid for by large corporations.
4
Nice try. Lots of smoke, no fire. The Kushner are paying above retail rent for the home, if they were not, then you would have a case.
You do not.
5
@Sparky
Most fire deaths are caused by smoke inhalation.
It's hard to imagine, even for extractive industries, a deal that smells as foul as this one.
The Boundary Waters and Voyageurs National Park are Minnesota's Yellowstone, and even some Republicans here will acknowledge that they too smell a rat.
From the job creation canard to the sleight of hand with the DNR, the mining forces and their serfs have twisted and spun without shame. If they believe that Minnesotans will stand still for this, they shoud prepare for serious protests.
The end game is simple; after profits are banked, shareholders enriched, the heirs to the fortunes will still be counting the money when water too toxic for use is spread far, wide, and permanently over the most precious natural resource in Minnesota.
7
You forgot to mention that the heirs will find a way to declare bankruptcy....
Are there any indigenous communities nearby? Why is the animal wildlife mentioned and not the human communities? Again, the invisible Native Americans- never mentioned in terms of land use, resource extraction, and the toxic effects on their communities? We have learned nothing from Standing Rock??
4
@moonmom
One thing that I learned from Standing Rock was that people were more than happy to fly / and or drive in from all over the country to protest the transport of fossil fuels. No disconnect there whatsoever, between how they got there and what they were protesting.
1
Lets wait a few years, after mining begins, to take a before and after photo of the lake in the night sky (last image shown on this article) to reflect the aftermath. As often happens in these scenarios...disaster!
4
Who really cares about a few wolves and polluted water for a village of only a few thousands. They'll be glad to make the sacrifice for a better future. There is money to be made by the wealthy and grifters in our government.
4
The BWCA is the only National Wilderness Area Minnesota has. We do not need to drill and mine everywhere in the world. Isn't anything worth taking care of? There is nowhere else like it in North America. In addition, the threat posed to the Great Lakes by this proposed mine should be enough for anyone and everyone to be against it.
9
Before AL sticks a shovel in the ground, they may wish to assess the risks to their venture if a Democratic administration, not to mention Senate, takes power in 2021.
4
Somehow whenever Jared Kushner is photographed he appears to be giving someone you can’t see a knowing smirk that says “Nice job, we pulled it off.” The idea that he and Ivanka are a moderating ethical influence on Trump should scare every American to death.
7
"It says the project will generate hundreds of mining jobs."
There might (MIGHT) be a hundred jobs for miners (more like heavy equipment operators) for the first 15 or 20 years. Then there will be lots of jobs cleaning up after this disaster, paid for by the citizens of Minnesota. The runout on the clean-up for this mine and the Polymet is something like 500(!) years. All these heavy metal mines produce an acid runoff that permeates the soil and rock and pollutes the water for much longer than the lifetimes of the miners and their children. Just remember, when it is gone (and it will be if this goes through) it will NEVER be recovered.
9
I'm no economist, but perhaps the story is much more complicated than the typical jobs vs. the environment trope.
In 2018, Harvard economists published a thorough analysis* on the impact of opening public lands adjacent to the Boundary Waters to copper mining. Under the majority of scenarios the study considers, the economists predicted more robust long-term economic growth from protecting the Boundary Waters. The study predicts 4,500 more local jobs and up to $900 million in personal income over a 20-year horizon if copper mining is banned.
This are our public lands and we'll be culturally, spiritually and financially wealthier for protecting them. #publiclandowner
* Source: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/stock/files/snf_withdrawal_ea_stock_and_bradt_aug6_2018.pdf
10
@Beanito - thanks for the reference.
I’m wondering why a foreign company may mine copper in our country. Shouldn’t this be an American interest, led by an American mining company? It is US land!
1
That logic doesn’t make any sense: “these minerals are strategic, therefore let’s extract and sell them”. If these minerals are strategic, aren’t you supposed to save them for when you can’t find them elsewhere? Same goes for oil and even coal: why extracting them now when you can just buy as much as you want on the markets?
Even if you don’t care about environmental impacts, this is all short-term profit vs long-term security.
9
There are many who agitate for us to start doing what we must to fight global warming.
There are many who agitate against disturbing protected areas for things like mining and rights-of-way for transmission lines.
Often these agitators for the environment are the same people. They are examples of the principal that the less you know about something, the more likely you hold inconsistent beliefs about it.
Fighting global warming will require that much of the world's infrastructure will have to be redone. All serious studies show that it will take vast resources--we will strain to have enough water, agricultural land, metals and other things we get out of the ground. Either you get prepared to accept things like mining on an unprecedented scale or you relent on fighting global warming.
Those who demand urgent action on global warming don't seem to have a clue that one of the biggest obstacles is the array of environmental laws in the US that constrain land use. Every endangered species, every wetland and water course, all conserved lands, all culturally significant lands--they all are entitled to their day in court and their environmental protectors frequently use the courts to tie up land use projects endlessly. And people use the courts to protect their civil rights against eminent domain.
What global warming activists realize that their demands will require sweeping aside much of the edifice of environmental and civil right protections that they hold so dear?
3
@Leonard Miller
Correct.
Proponents of eliminating man made carbon by driving electric cars, by eliminating fossil fuels, etc. don't seem to realize that will require electricity - electricity to heat homes, electricity to charge electric vehicles, etc.
That will be true even with solar panels on every building.
That will require building electric transmission lines.
Try running an electric transmission line today, and see what happens.
Endless litigation, protests, etc.
3
@DennisG
And don't forget the copper that will also be needed for a vast expansion of our electrification, perhaps copper from this mine.
1
I fail to see how copper will save us from the effects of global warming. Please, educate us further.
2
I live on Cape Cod, and I would love to see mining, oil drilling, offshore oil drilling, fracking, etc. here.
And, no, I am not kidding or being sarcastic.
In a modern world, energy is needed, metals are needed, resources are needed.
I do not believe any area should be off limits, and that includes my backyard.
2
@DennisG
When you so cavalierly advocate for the mining industry's unavoidable utter destruction of the natural beauty, air, land, water and peace and quiet near where you live, one wonders whether you have sufficient respect for yourself, and the health of children and the community.
3
You must also believe human extinction is needed.
4
You say this because you know it will never happen.
4
The pervasive corruption of this Administration is mind boggling. What has happened to this country that we are allowing this to continue?
19
@Susan Antonius I wish I knew. I have an overwhelming feeling of fatigue and disappointment. I thought I knew this country and the people in it. I would never in my wildest dreams thought we could allow anything like this to happen. Even with all the knowledge of the Trump family corruption, his admitting to sexual assaults, petty, mean spirited comments he still gets over 40% approval. How can this be?
I count the trips I have had in the pristine wilderness of the BWCA as transformative and utterly sacred. Immersed in this vast wilderness, drinking in the pure water, paddling past pictographs along the rocky shores, the fragrance of the pines and beauty of the birch, one cannot help but be filled with awe, and a sense of our pre-historic origins on this planet.
Because of the purity of the water, the fish are plentiful as is an entire ecosystem of rare creatures. I have been privileged to behold moose, bears, and wolves frolicking in the wild.
I wish every person could experience the rhythm of paddling a canoe there. Foraging for wild berries and mushrooms, swimming in the clear water by day, surrounded by the symphony of the loons at night and, if lucky, witnessing the aurora borealis overhead...it is spectacular. Before long, you feel cleansed, at one with the universe.
I have waited for my children to be old enough to share this experience - which in it's fullest expression involves considerable stamina - portaging a canoe and all one's gear.
That the greed of distant billionaires can rob my children and all future generations of experiencing their own one-ness with the natural world via this pristine wilderness, is sickening beyond words. No one should have the right to exploit this ancient gift for their own short-term profit.
On our planet, this is a unique landscape and a singular preserve. It is holy ground and holy water. I urge more in-depth coverage.
27
I can’t say it any better than you did. There must be a way to stop this. What can we do?
1
@Jen Thank you so much. I called my senators - Amy Klobuchar (612-727-5220) and Tina Smith (651-221-1016). Sent a message to congress via Save the Boundary Waters dot org & donated. I encourage everyone to sign the petition and for those who can, to donate as well. https://www.savetheboundarywaters.org/message-congress
Rape the planet and make big bucks while everyone else drinks tainted water and the forests burn. That should be the motto of this administration. The US is in the grip of grasping selfish nouveau riche that make the Robber Barons pale by comparison.
26
We are lulled to sleep with the “how many jobs?” facto that so often is asked when an organization is poised to make a killing on a development project. As capital does not fund wages, it is not a LABOR issue, but rather it is a LAND issue – land as our common birthright, the quality of the environment that we all enjoy and are stewards of, and the minerals stored below ground that we all own. Despoiling nature cannot be an externality to a process we all have a stake in; if widespread pollution were an externality, it means we have no stake. There are three possible scenarios: 1) the project is defeated and everything stays as it has been for 1,000s of years; 2) the project moves forward in the typical fashion with grand corporate profits, widespread pollution, and non-recoverable ecosystem impacts; or 3) land values are recovered and reused by assuring pollution abatement and a just distribution of wealth happen from the mined copper, nickel, and platinum. It’s really stupid that we have to find a foreign company to be involved at all, but, why wouldn’t we lease this land out for extraction at a modest to high percentage of created/processed wealth (like 25-60%)? Where 100% pollution recovery is enforced and the locals and nation benefit from wealth we have given up? Why do we settle for options 1 or 2? Have we no imagination?
5
What to do when a greedy family of parasites installed in government by a foreign dictator declare war on your country? Whatcha gonna do about it, 'Murica?
12
Drain the swamp. Get nepotism out of the White House!
5
Minnesota should change its motto to read "the land of ten thousand polluted lakes" if they are serious about taking on the Trump juggernaut. Otherwise, they can expect to pay more for bottled water sales as a form of wealth transfer to foreign corporations, and watch their property values decline. Depressing!
4
The copper mine also pollutes Canadian water, so this corrupt deal has international consequences too.
11
The thing that I don't understand...that feels almost "Black Mirror-ish" is this trope, on an endless playbook loop, that President Obama wasn't "drilling all over the place" (Obama's own words about what he was doing). That the Obama Administration, under the Dept. of the Interior et al, weren't trying to access every drop, nugget and vein of America's natural resources (think: LNG export approvals when no one was "looking") in any way possible. It's as if all of us are being "played" to act and RE-ACT to set pieces and actors, always in their predictable places, pretending that Republicans always demand oil and gas extraction and Democrats are always trying to protect the environment. As a lifelong Democrat, it was shocking and saddening to realize that my own party was in on this playbook. I'd ask people to watch Obama speaking in Cushing, Oklahoma in 2012 (this video was on the Obama White House's YouTube channel, by the way) as an exercise in critical thinking in order to see that this (seemingly) "Us vs. Them" set up is a) is entirely contrived, and b) continues to do us all harm. Back when I used to write about climate change and energy policy, I also tried to get people to think critically and to try and spot (what is now called) fake news and false information. The rotten fruits of our lack of critical thinking are now "home to roost" and stink to high hell.
https://schatziesearthproject.com/2016/11/21/we-are-drilling-all-over-the-place-right-now-barack-obama-2012/
4
Where does MN Senator and WH aspirant Amy Klobucher stand on this project?
5
@Patricia Kurtzmiller Klobuchar's views on the Twin Metals project are unclear. But she is a supporter of the controversial and probably disastrous Polymet project.
Her stance on Polymet is revealing. In 2018, Klobucher and her MN colleague Sen. Tina Smith introduced an amendment to the annual federal defense spending bill to expedite an exchange of Minnesota land between the federal government and the mining company PolyMet. Since the House had already passed a bill mandating the exchange, Klobuchar and Smith's amendment, if approved, would have circumvented judicial review of the exchange. Fortunately, the amendment was removed when the budget bill went to conference committee, and the PolyMet land exchange cases can be heard on their merits in court.
Although Klobuchar is a lawyer and former county attorney, she wasn't bothered about circumventing judicial review in the Polymet case.
3
Last I heard, against it.
And the grift goes on.
The grift goes on....
Ta Ta Da da Da.... (Apologies to S. Bono)
6
Just another example of the most corrupt administration in history: Pruitt, DeVos, Elaine Chow, Kushner. Making the corrupt richer sgain.
7
The Chilean copper connection goes back decades. Two giant Mining companies controlled much of copper production, Kennecott and Anaconda. Anaconda ran huge open pits in Montana, Mexico and Chile. In 1971 a Marxist, Salvador Allende, was elected President of Chile. He nationalized Anaconda's open pit mines, the world's largest at Chuquicamata. The United States (and AT&T) did not take kindly to a communist appropriating Anaconda's properties. The government of Allende was overthrown in a military coup, with covert assistance from the U.S. The military dictator Pinochet was installed and the people suffered mightily for years under his rule.
Now we have come full circle. A Chilean billionaire is in the process of appropriating large tracks of land in Minnesota to dig what will probably be the largest open pit extraction ever. I guess you could call that payback with little payoff (cool rental in D.C.) thrown in. If you don't know what an open pit copper/nickel mine looks like research Chuqicamata in Chile. You can clearly see it from space.
That's not the end, a mountains worth of spoils will have to be disposed of somewhere. The ore will have to be hauled away to be smelted. If you want to see the impacts of living downwind of a smelting operation look up the history of Sudbury, Ontario. Improvements have been made to "clean up" such operations but significant damage will be done. Make America Great Again with Chilean mining.
6
“In 100 years, this water is going to be far more valuable a resource here than copper,” Suellen Sack, a wilderness educator, said.
Water is *the* most precious natural resource and more people need to give that more serious thought.
15
That 45! He sure is draining the swamp, isn't he?
3
If allowed, the toxic runoff from this mine will affect the watershed leading to the great lakes, which will poison some the largest freshwater stores in the world. The toxic run off will flow, unimpeded, through the great lakes chain and compromise the drinking water for millions of Americans and Canadians. If you are not worried about this one, you should be. This isn't some little podunk woodsy area that no one goes to and a little mine--so what, this is OUR water. This is turning northern pristine wilderness into a Superfund Site. We Minnesotans need all the help we can get fighting this. Please, Americans, New Yorkers, Everyone.... get involved. Search on google under "save the BWCA" or "Friends of the BWCA"
14
Sickening and appalling that there are no bounds to the destructive greed of this administration.
7
It's sickening that this could happen. Heartbreaking. This industry will most likely poison the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and the Superior National Forest.
The ultra wealthy will make out big on this deal, average folks won't gain much (and many will, in fact, be hurt), and a uniquely healthy, beautiful and important wilderness will be damaged long-term.
The below website provides thorough background on this issue, forecasted impacts, and ways to take action. You can even see a map of exactly where the water drains and the path of pollution across this pristine land:
https://www.savetheboundarywaters.org
https://www.savetheboundarywaters.org/sites/default/files/attachments/updated_path_of_pollution.pdf
4
He uses the poor, disenfranchised, un and underemployed and low information voter to increase the wealth of his family and their associates.
He is a master con man with no regard for anyone but himself.
When are the 42% of the people of America who support him going to wake up to the fact that he could not care less about you.
He only wants your adoration!
6
@rich
correction- closer to 30% of voters were duped into supporting Don the Con.
1
From Sig Olson’s Testimony at a Congressional Field Hearing held in Ely, MN
July 8, 1977
My name is Sigurd F. Olson, my home Ely, Minnesota.
I have worked for some 50 years toward building an appreciation and understanding of what wilderness really means.
Many threats have plagued the area over the years, road programs, power dams, airplane and fly-in resort developments, the acquisition of private land, logging and mining, and I realize now that had any of these issues been lost there would be no wilderness in the BWCA today.
The BWCA and Quetico Provincial Park across the border comprise over two and a quarter million acres, the largest area of its kind in the world. People come from all over the U.S. and even foreign countries to enjoy the tranquility, beauty, and peace of this unique Lakeland wilderness.
President Carter in his Environmental Message to Congress said, “The National Wilderness Preservation System must be expanded promptly before the most deserving areas of federal lands are opened up to other uses and lost as wilderness forever.”
This is the most beautiful lake country on the continent. We can afford to cherish and protect it. Some places should be preserved from development or exploitation for they satisfy a human need for solace, belonging and perspective. In the end we turn to nature in a frenzied chaotic world, there to find silence—oneness—wholeness—spiritual release.
Please make this statement a part of the record.
Sincerely, Sigurd F. Olson
14
Money talks folks and y'all know what walks. Live with it. The fox is in the hen house and taking all the eggs to his "cronies"!
4
Make the 1700’s great again? Even if this was good for the economy— and it’s not— it’s not good for the planet. Can we have decisions made by anyone other than the plutocracy? They are playing with our survival.
5
This cannot happen. I love the comment that we should instead randomly pick 300 Minnesotans and give them $40,000 each. That is the better trade off for Americans, not a rich man from Chile getting to pillage the land and make billions without paying a cent for the permanent destruction. You can never ever ever go back in time after a mine, that is forever. 4.5 billion years to get to where it got and then destroyed forever in a year.
9
We fought against tyranny, nepotism, taxation without representation, exploitation in our The Revolutionary War.
We won. Now, 243 years later, it's all back. Re-read the Declaration of Independence and substitute Trump for references to King George III. You'll see how far we've fallen as a nation.
9
We have a self dealing kleptocracy with the Trump/Kushner families cashing in as fast as they can forming close ties with billionaires like MSB to Chilean billionaires with business before the govt . There is probably more financial ties between foreign billionaires and the Trump/Kushner families and we may never know until investigative journalists expose this corrupt administration before Trump's re-election.
6
Even in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, there is not a heck of a lot that one could truly call "pristine." In fact, the word should be annotated in the AP Stylebook as one for journalists to avoid using. I am reminded of this fact every time I head out for a hike on public land here in southwestern Idaho as grazing cattle got there before me.
@Alan C Gregory, I curious, have you actually been to the Boundary Waters? "Pristine wilderness" describes it pretty well.
2
So very sad to see the beloved Boundary Waters under siege. Spent many summers portaging among the loons, moose and black bears. So many fond and peaceful memories when I lived in Minnesota.
3
What about Amy Klobuchar. Where does she and the Governor of Minnesota stand on this mining disaster waiting to ruin their state?
2
@Jacquie
Sent from my copper sucking computer thing.
4
When Trump "drains a swamp"; he fills it in with toxic waste.
What else did you expect from "The Thing" in the White House.
4
One more disaster brought to you by the Electoral college.
6
Tabuchi and Eder are an excellent reporting team who can explain, inspire and agitate.They have done us all a service by explaining this attempt to invade our wilderness. Obviously many people care deeply abut this-please have them write follow up articles.This power grab of our wilderness must not be permitted!
2
When this hits the Minnesota media, and it will, Trump can kiss his chances of winning Minnesota in 2020 goodby.
3
It’s not a coincidence that my handle name is BWCA. It is one of the most beautiful and pristine places I’ve been in this planet. There is no money that will ever repair the damage of toxic spills. Minnesota and the US will lose the waters of the BWCA forever and the cleanup cost, if ever possible, will be in the order of tens of billions of dollars that taxpayers will pay.
As a member of Save the Boundary Waters I appreciate the NYT publishing this piece in its first page. There is still time to reverse this criminal act against nature, but time is running out.
7
What can we do?
We are all at a Dead End with the level of public uncaring from Trump and his cronies. Vote them out and while at it get rid of the penny if copper is a problem.
This is just one more example of Donald, Jared and Ivanka’s extremely sketchy use of power with no regard for the environment. It’s crazy that we have an imperial President complete with unqualified and unfit family members as “Senior Presidential Advisor’s”.
47
It’s about jobs. Can a mine be run clean. It is possible??? And the companies reputation would go up. It may be worth it to go over board to do a clean mine and set new standards. As one of the richest families anywhere it may be a feather in their cap to do everything the right way and but millions in escrow to insure they do the right thing.
@Richard
The Red Dog zinc mine in Northwestern Alaska is doing a pretty good job of 'running clean' in a remote area. The proposed Pebble copper mine in the Bristol Bay area is still an item of considerable contention and complicated process.
As usual the NYT has delivered yet another nothing burger. Environmentalists get upset when any human element changes the environment, nothing new there. If there are minerals in the ground chances are great that someone is going to mine them. It doesn't make any difference if it' a Chilean billionaire or a US mining firm. But the Times wants to purport that since Mr. Luksic is renting his house to Ivanka and Jared, he's got a special in with the President and the Republicans. Hardly. Let's look at the real facts: Before the Obama's bought their 8,200 square foot house in DC's Kalorama neighborhood they were paying an estimated $22 thousand a month in rent. That works out to $.37 a square foot. The Kushner's, in the same neighborhood, are paying $15 thousand a month for 6780 square feet, which works out to $.45 a square foot. So who was getting a deal? The Kushner's aren't getting a Scott Pruitt deal by any stretch of the immagination. Again, the Times serves up a nothing burger.
2
Luksic, a Croatian last name... interesting how almost everyone in trump’s flim-flammy orbit is somehow connected to either Russia or some former Soviet satellite nation... sure they are nationals of other countries, but always with “strong family ties” to those mother countries... and alway dedicated to all sorts of charity work in the old country... especially buying up huge amounts of real estate.
Well, I guess it’s always just coincidence... right?
1
surprisingly sketchy for the Trump WH, there must be a misunderstanding somewhere.
Terms like conflict of interest come to mind here: the good, below market rental of a choice D.C. property, in exchange for access to power and influence. If not a direct conflict of interest, then this deal certainly has the appearance of a conflict of interest. I leave it to the ethics experts to determine which terms are most appropriate. Surely there are many other, less environmentally sensitive areas, to locate copper mines. Rooting for the local and regional environmental interests to tout the value of preserving this beautiful area.
Yes, mining is important and is highly regulated. We need the ores and metals that are in the ground.
But do we need all of them? Are there no places that are off-limits? It can be difficult to draw a line since NIMBY principles often make these discussions charged.
Some areas shouldn't require difficult decisions because they are everyone's backyard. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) is, and must remain, unsullied. An accident here would be catastrophic, not just because it is one of the few large-volume systems in the world where you can drink the unfiltered water directly from the lakes, but because certain places should unquestionably be protected. As a society we must be able to say, "Here. This is a place where we draw a line and say 'no' to exploiting the earth." If the BWCA is not such a place than I don't know one.
312
@Jason - I absolutely agree with your statement: 'As a society we must be able to say, "Here. This is a place where we draw a line and say 'no' to exploiting the earth."'
I think that a lot of people don't really understand what a wilderness area is, and either don't understand or just don't care why we need to protect them. I would like to know how much experience Trump has with backpacking, camping, or hiking in a wilderness area. If he has done so, was he able to just enjoy nature for its beauty and wonder, and not it's exploitation value? Or does he see nature as yucky and dirty, and full of bugs, so why not turn it into a mine?
The Wilderness Act of 1964 defines wilderness as "an area where the earth and community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain" and "an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions."
The earth needs these wilderness spaces to allow for the protection of her flora, fauna, and other non-Homo sapiens, i.e. to protect our dear mother earth herself.
Because of "development" throughout our world, we are slowly losing our wilderness areas, and we humans will someday be a society without a natural planet. Thanks to us, Earth will just be a really big, over-exploited ball of rock.
30
@Jason
Agreed
8
@LockHimUp2021
Considering how ridiculous he looks in his "visiting a disaster area" costume, I have a hard time imagining Trump in hiking gear. That and the fact that he won't walk any distance without taking a golf cart. I doubt he considers any square inch of land should be off limits from being developed or exploited for profit. Joni Mitchell wrote about his type.
15
I grew up on the Iron Range just south of the Twin Metals and the Polymet proposed mines.
I am opposed to both of these mines.
I also have compassion for those who look to mining for work. It pays well (so far) and includes benefits. For the most part, alternative work (e.g., tourism) pays little and provides few benefits.
The problem for the locals is that the number of mining jobs has been declining. I have looked into the economy of the area. Median household incomes have declined dramatically relative to the state as a whole since 1970 when iron mining was still booming. That with an influx of wealthy outsiders who have retired to the area to live on the lakes. The old towns (like Ely) where the locals (including miners) live are very poor.
However, the overall economy is not important to a family looking for a mining job to replace a service industry position.
I am against the copper mines because of the huge environmental risks. I also believe that iron mining is no longer providing many local residents a good life. These new mines would not help much.
182
@Thomas Legg
Thank you
5
I live a few miles from the proposed mine. It's a very bad idea. The jobs will be few and most likely Twin Metals will fight unionization and favor robots over humans at every opportunity. Twin metals has no local connections or loyalties.
This is a bitter local issue with many old timers still sore about the wilderness designation. This is their revenge.
Jobs are not needed now but will be with the next bust in taconite (iron). This will only add another boom and bust industry with all the economic problems they cause. It will cause far more problems than it solves.
What is needed is sustainable, clean employment. Look just west for ideas: Digi-Key, Polaris, Arctic Cat, Marvin Windows. All of these offer good steady employment with great benefits. The Range can and should do likewise.
233
@Gut Shot
Costa Rica has perfected the eco-tourism industry, with expert guides that know what the interesting fauna and floura are. That may be one way to make the best off pristine wilderness.
20
@Gut Shot
Import those raw materials from another person's backyard I guess.
4
@Nathan 40
yup. Preferably someones backyard that isn't anywhere near the Great Lakes.
15
It certainly gets tiring having to clean up after these types of people. Let's hope that scenario does not materialize. NYT, Rep. Grijalva and environmentalists, please keep on this, even though the average citizen cares more about what Ivanka's house looks like inside than what a pristine wilderness area looks like outside. Frustrating stuff and very painful it seems to be a politician, journalist or activist of wisdom in this era.
3
Yes, mining is important and is highly regulated. We need the ores and metals that are in the ground.
But do we need all of them? Are there no places that are off-limits? It can be difficult to draw a line since NIMBY principles often make these discussions charged, despite the obvious greater good to the public of doing a project.
Some areas shouldn't require difficult decisions because they are everyone's backyard. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) is, and must remain, unsullied. An accident here would be catastrophic, not just because it is one of the few large-volume systems in the world where you can drink the unfiltered water directly from the lakes, but because certain places should unquestionably be protected. As a society we must be able to say, "Here. This is a place where we draw a line and say 'no' to exploiting the earth." If the BWCA is not such a place then I don't know one.
109
Many of us in Minnesota are aghast at the thought of this mine opening...the BWCA (Boundary Waters) is a National Park! It is frequently visited by many families. The eco-systems in this fragile and pristine area are NOT worth destroying and this company, along with many others, does NOT have a good record of environmental compliance. Furthermore, our commodities, like copper and other rare earth minerals, will be mined by a foreign company that has pillaged its own lands--why should they care what happens in Minnesota if they can't even keep their own areas clean? The problem is that with this President in office and his Republican apologists and enablers, we get railroaded. Everyone knows it is only a matter of when not if leakage occurs, and once it does this area will be destroyed forever. The promise of jobs is an empty one at best--they cannot guarantee how many, how long they'll last, and even more ironically, this part of Minnesota now relies far more heavily on tourism dollars from people who want to camp, canoe, hike, mountain bike, cross country ski, fish, kayak and simply see this beautiful land amidst lakes so pure that one can drink the water directly off the canoe paddle. When a terrible thing happens, (and it will) don't blame us--we environmentalists have been telling people this for years. But in our rampant, hyper-toxic destroy everything in our path in order to make a quick buck capitalist mind set, we only seem to learn when it is too late.
297
@ Eva Lockhart If dollars from tourism are a main source of support for the area, that is a big stick in a fight to stop the mining.
A small valley in northeast Washington put up a big fight to derail a Canadian company’s efforts to pursue a copper mine. It took a coalition of groups who typically don’t play well together: hunters, hikers, ranchers, skiers, small business owners, tribes, environmentalists working together and involving senators and representatives who, both Republican and Democrats, supported withdrawing this area from new mining claims. The Forest Service supported the mineral withdrawal. There was lots of publicity, local and national, fund raising, rallies. The focus of the campaign was clean water, economic benefits from tourism and salmon recovery efforts. After years of activism, disappointment when the clock ran out under Zinke who did nothing, the mineral withdrawal made it into a public lands package that was signed by trump in 2019, permanently withdrawing over 300,000 acres from industrial scale mining. It can be done! Google Methow Headwaters Campaign.
24
@Eva Lockhart "Wilderness Area", not National Park. But, that provides some pretty great protection, or at least it did when the laws were enforced.
18
@Eva Lockhart Trump and his crime syndicate would "accommodate" the devil if the devil spewed unmarked bills into an offshore bank account. This entire proposition is obscene. We have a metal mine here on the Maine coast that has been a superfund site since the second time it opened, and it has been closed now for half a century. Toxins will leach out of that site for the next millennium. The vein of lead-zinc goes under our woodlot, forty miles away and across two bays from the old mine. I'd sooner see the country disappear than see a metal mine opened up anywhere in America's wilderness territories.
11
On the billionaire side, all this is just business as usual. Nothing shocking. On the U.S. side, most Americans would surely agree that the daughter and son-in-law of a sitting U.S. president, and especially if they each have jobs in the White House (!), should not be renting from someone who wants U.S. government policy changed to favor his business. Now...how many of those Americans will turn out and vote next year?
172
Exactly why are we destroying our wilderness so that a foreign company can reap profits. Does not sound like MAGA to me. And what about the outdoor tourism jobs that are lost? And the hunting and fishing in this pristine wilderness?
We were sold out for a paltry 900,000 contribution and a below market rental.
225
@Judy
I guess the trump crime family would stand to benefit in many other ways over time- maybe kickbacks and cozy relationships with the oligarchs, private contracts, etc.
15
I have canoed in the Boundary Waters for nearly 40 years, taking nearly 100 canoe trips, 23 of them solo, into the region. I was a volunteer wilderness ranger in 1992 for the US Forest Service, and it was the most content I have been on my life, spending 100 days in the woods that summer, cleaning campsites, and educating campers. I can drink out of the lake and travel for days without seeing another person. I'm 70 now, and while I no longer travel as far, I have a deep love for the lakes and rivers of this country.
I also give three scholarships to Vermillion Community College students every year, plus another one jointly with the Friends of the Boundary Waters, because I believe those of us who love this country should say NO to mining but a resounding YES to education.
One year, a recipient of my scholarship had her parents come to the annual banquet in Ely. Her father was a miner on the Iron Range. He was thrilled his daughter would not have to go into the mines the way he did. A century ago, people wanted their children not to go into the mines. We are going backward. The world is rapidly changing, and the only way to survive in it is to become educated enough to recognize the changes and to adapt.
America first does not mean Chile.
712
@Mike S.I remember picking up taconite on an ore carrier back in the 60s.I am 70 also.I admire what you have done, Thx
41
@Mike S.
Hypocrites,
Why all the hate towards mining? Whose children will mine your goods for you if not your own?
I would not support the project near the BWCAW either as the risks to exploit the mineral resource do not equate the potential loss of the environmental resource.
But...as a member of the leading consumer population on Earth, I find that people need to consider where their materials come from and the methods used to acquire them before they take on the industry.
Stop the fear tactics, hate language and hypocrisy.
1
@Nathan 40
"fear tactics, hate language and hypocrisy."
Try telling that to the parents of Flint MI who were lied to for years while their children were damaged for life for drinking water tainted with lead.
Or to the people of South Louisiana dying of cancer from the petroleum plants.
Or the people of Alaska along the Pebble and Copper Rivers who will watch their land water and Salmon destroyed also.
With voices like yours we can be assured of destroying our entire planet at an ever faster rate every day.
39
Is there an excise tax on copper? If not there should be by tonnage. Either that or a net worth tax on the mine. We citizens need to recover some environmental fee. We also need to ensure that this company pays Federal income Taxes. Does Antofagasta pay any US Federal Income taxes?
From their annual report
" CORRUPTION The Group’s operations or projects around the world could be affected by risks related to corruption or bribery, including operating disruptions or delays resulting from a refusal to make “facilitation payments”. Such risks depend on the economic or political stability of the country in which the Group is operating."
2
When a economic landscape becomes as deeply divided and uneven as ours. The yearning masses will do anything for the promise of prosperity but little will they remember if it was delivered as they toil for their daily bread. Nor few will note the damage this activity created that could eventually cause a calamity. What amounts to little more then pocket change from the wealthiest becomes the life changing amounts for the masses corruption epands its tentacles long and deep
3
If Trump gets a second term I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re digging in the Grand Canyon!
13
@Lisa. absolutely....so very sad. Greed with no respect for our world.
1
@LisaActually they would probably fill it in with tailings from this and other mining projects
So this is what President Trump meant when he said he would drain the swamp.....
4
it'a all about the dollar for his friends at the cost of human life. look at rollback on the coal sector. 3000 more deaths by 2030. not to far away. hope i get the olympics back here before i die from dirty air. and it will be everywhere. the more foreign companies dig in , what do they care about the rest of 1 percent.
5
Emoluments and Mendacity -- the key attributes of the Trump Administration. The people of Minnesota and the whole nation need to see how corrupt this Trump administration really is. How could Americans have elected such a corrupt failed lying businessman to be the leader of the country?
11
Luksic's environmental record in Chile is shady at best. Caveat emptor.
7
There is no wilderness area, no pristine National Monument land, and no beautiful forest area that the Trump administration will not rape and pillage.
This will be his legacy, one that will be difficult to forget.
15
So what do Teslas, solar panels and wind turbines all have in common? Copper! Where are the future supplies of copper coming from? Mines. Yo can't have "clean" energy without mining copper.
3
@Hopefully Clear thoughts, whats not so clear to me is your willingness to exchange "clean energy" for polluted water and land. Regardless, when copper recycling is the required then you can preach the value of mining. The amount of copper going into landfills is significant while copper is the most recyclable metal we use. It retains up to 90% of its original value and costs less to recycle then mining the ore. If mining companies were forced to protect and restore the land damaged by them then the cost difference would be even more extreme. Now that seems pretty clear don't you think?
4
@Hopefully Clear thoughts
This is a Trumpian level of simplicity.
@Hopefully Clear thoughts There is plenty of copper in the world. We don't need to ruin another wilderness go get even more.
It is a sad situation when your children are as corrupt as you are. Top notch parenting.
7
What a happy coincidence for the Kushners to score this great rental from a realtor who just happened to have sold that very property to the savvy Mr. Luksic weeks before. Wow! And no, $15,000/mo is not abnormally high for a 6 bedroom, 7,000-square-foot home in the Kalorama neighborhood of DC. Gosh, great things just fall from the sky for this lucky and talented couple.
And don't worry, folks, it's all above board: “Both Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump follow the ethics advice they received when they entered government service,” said Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Mr. Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell."
And you know that the Trump family is famous for always following ethics "advice" to avoid any conflicts or the appearance of impropriety...
6
Congress should stop writing letters and demanding more investigations. March up to the White House and impeach Trump NOW. How much more evidence do you need? Does he have to walk down 5th Avenue and shoot someone before you act?
4
Face facts the US is a dictatorship with even a Democratic House of Representatives beats their cheat and does nothing. This is like 1968 when if you read back I lived it there were demonstrations and anger not just in the US, but France also and other countries. One push and we would have found out what a new World Order would have been. But, it did not come to pass and so here we are in 2019 and look at what has happened. The Democrats have no guts to impeach the Manchild and so it goes on day after day. I lived under Nixon in times that we thought were corrupt. but I look at the past 3 years and there it is and at least they don't try to hide it. Here it is right in your face and what will you do about it. NOTHING! Think there won't be a war with Iran think again it is coming and this fake Jared Peace Plan, what it is nothing for the Palestiaians for a few crumbs give us the rest of your land. Check out the details I am sure there is a Trump Hotel in there somewhere and lots of ways to make the investors very rich. Glad at 73 my life cycle is coming to an end for even if Trump loses like that Hollies song The Road is Long for which there is no return. Says it all about the US, the Congress and the people who did nothing. I remember that saying Evil flourishes when good people do nothing. Jim Trautman
9
Everything this family touches withers under their ignorance, greed and arrogance. Please people let's get rid of them but PLEASE, PLEASE do not send them back to New York. They were the laughing stock before and will be again. Pure poison.
5
Once again Ivanka shown as “adviser” to the SCOTUS looking like a make up doll with smiling husband “SCOTUS Adviser” behind her. Ivanka’s face revealing not a care in the world, all is well what could possibly be wrong. Zero embarrassment. Infuriating to those of us who think, read, and care about our land, which is a national park. They don’t seem to understand their responsibilities.
3
Can we buy this land back?
2
Make America go to the 1920s Again.
2
Just imagine the outrage on TV if 0.000001% of this was done under a Democrat administration. :-)
1
President Of Transactional United States
And by the way, I got mine and "you" can pay for cleaning up my mess.
3
Come on now, he's not even American!
1
Just another third-world dictatorship engaging in corruption with foreign resource extraction companies.
2
"It says the project will generate hundreds of mining jobs."
Maybe, for a decade or two, and then the company and its jobs will be gone and our precious northern Minnesota will never be the same - no matter how many assurances the company and the politicians give to those who love Minnesota and the pristine BWCA. A pristine wilderness damaged for the sake of greed and the almighty dollar.
This greed is absolutely something one would expect of Republicans; unfortunately, some Democrats have joined them in supporting this mine.
117
"Put America First!"
How does giving a Chillean Conglomerate and billionaire from Chile the right to mine in Minnesota put America first? Trump couldn't find an American company to mine in Minnesota?
How does ripping up and poisoning pristine American wilderness to make a Chilean billionaire even richer do anything for America? Most likely the process will be highly automated, creating few local jobs and little local spending. Most likely the cost to the local community will be greater than the benefits.
First the USA began by helping American corporations profit by extracting resources from other countries, even when the citizens of those countries opposed it. I can understand why the right would like that.
Then the USA began helping global corporations, even those headquartered in foreign countries, profit from extracting resources from foreign countries even when the citizens opposed it. I kinda see why the right would like that.
Now Trump is helping a foreign corporation make profits by extracting resources from the USA.
I really don't see how the right does not oppose it. Why does the right say, "put America first," then proceed to put Americans last?
Merit Based Immigration would good high paying tech jobs to foreigners.
The job of Commander in Chief is to coordinate all of our defense and intelligence agencies to defend the USA. Our intelligence agencies have testified that Russia hacked into our ELECTION SYSTEMS. Trump attacks THEM.
TRUMP PUTS AMERICA LAST!
5
This we don't need. If you have ever been to the area, you'd be devastated by the proposed ruination.
7
Pence was quoted saying that the United States has the cleanest air and the cleanest water on planet earth. Obviously, a bold faced lie. The nihilists don't care about the future of the planet, the health and welfare of it's inhabitants, or the pain and suffering destroying our habitat will ensure. They care about money and power. In whichever order they can get it.
3
@Devin Greco Pence is to Christianity what Cheney is to Peace.
2
The House of Representatives can stop this project. All it has to do is insert a clause in the appropriations bills for the Departments of Interior and Agriculture that no appropriated money shall be used in any way for licensing or permitting this mine. Then, it has to stick to its guns when the Senate's majority of Republican polluters tries to remove it.
8
There is a huge toxic waste holding basin in Lyon County, 70 miles south of Reno, NV. The basin and 3,400 acre mine were abandoned in 1977 by Anaconda Copper Co. The site, which has been on and off the Super Fund list, has recently been handled over by the Feds to the State of Nevada to worry about. The nearby "Indian Reservations" are concerned about their water supply. Unlike "the land of sky blue water" and "10,000 lakes", only a few thousand inhabitant are concerned, not like, 20 % of the fresh water supply.
For beautiful photos of the lake-size toxic pit, google Anaconda Copper Mine Lyon County.
3
This is infuriating and so sad. It’s hard not to feel powerless, but we are not. We can all stand up and fight this.
For more info on the Boundary Waters, this planned mine, and the fight to stop it, check out “A Year in the Wilderness” by Amy and Dave Freeman. The Freemans documented their year in the BWCA to raise awareness about the area and the work of savetheboundarywaters.org.
Once you understand what’s at stake here, you can’t turn your back on it. We have to fight.
5
Ever since I moved into my hundred year old house years ago plumbing companies have been pitching me copper pipes. Where else is all that copper supposed to come from if not mines? The old house by the way has become kind of a pain to keep up so I respect all of Obama’s environmental regulation efforts designed to return me to living in an ecologically friendly cave that I never have to repaint and reroof.
Pristine land is going to be forever changed. Trump, who has a record of being a lying rip off, assures the public that it will all go well. One of his billionaire cronies sees a bonanza. Too often pristine land has been sold on the promise of jobs. Then a colossal irredeemable mess is created.
1
Took all the trees, put em in a tree museum. Charged all the people a dollar and a half just to see em...Joni Mitchell as Nostradamus...who knew?
3
I think it's clear that Democrats, once they have the power, should put in place additional hurdles to protect our environment from greedy special interests.
It's madness that one reverse Midas touch by a mercurial President is enough to endanger our strategic sweet water supplies and unique habitats forever.
2
Just get rid of pennies. The copper is worth more than the penny itself. All change can be debited onto debit cards for loose coins, plastic. Then there is no copper shortage. We know that there are greedy people that would rather spoil the environment, but * them. Sounds like a winning solution to me.
2
@Cliff R
yeah unfortunately currently minted pennies are only like 2.5% Cu (mostly zinc).
@T
Remembering that zinc (also, too) must be mined . . .
This so-called President who cares nothing for protecting natural areas that are precious to many Americans went ballistic when someone proposed windmills that would be visible from his Scottish golf course.
This is Trump in a nutshell.
3
There isn't anything that the Trump family can touch without despoiling it. Their entire lives seem to revolve around ignoring laws, morals or anything else that reeks to them of decency. There is no such thing as conscience with this family in any aspect. They are the Corleones legalized, without fear of prosecution because they know there are other corrupt politicians that have their backs. They are the Anti-Obamas, complete reversals of a decent law abiding family.
3
Is there a Trump administration decision - any decision - that hasn't been made either to ensure Trump's election to a second term or to enrich someone in Trumpworld?
4
More proof of the blatant corruption of the Trump administration. Got a dollar? Let's make a deal.
Mine Trump, not copper. Think of the biomass.
2
Fellow Minnesotans, you need to call your Senators, Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith!
They both back this copper mining nonsense and they need to hear from you. I just called. Everyone should.
5
Jared and Ivanka are purportedly worth over a half billion dollars. It's simply disgusting and despicable that a good rental deal could lead to such political favor at such great cost to public resources. Will there be anything left by November 2020? Certainly not by 2024, god forbid. This is war on our future health and well-being. It's time to take off the kid gloves and eradicate the menace before it's too late.
1
Make Chilean Billionaires Great Again!
Selling out America’s irreplaceable natural beauty and resources, in exchange for a few hundred dirty, dangerous jobs and profits for a coterie of sleazy South American flim flam artists. And in the process, destroying an economy mostly driven by fishing, hunting and hiking tourists.
It’s been true since the Vikings learned to sail: plunder knows no borders. And collaborators have no morality other than personal gain. They’ll sell out their compatriots in a heartbeat. Just as the Trump regime and its enablers are doing now, all the while beating the phony ‘America First’ drum.
3
How many government workers would be moving their families to DC who could also afford to lease a $5.5M home? This "bad dude" from Chile with a pathetic ethical history certainly targeted this particular Trumpian couple who clearly share his lack of ethical dealing.
The Boundary Waters is a shared national treasure that should not be thrown to these nefarious players and their foolishly greedy goals.
To the investigative journalists and government staff with dignity, please keep following the money, the meetings, the emails, etc!
2
Trump is corrupt?
I'm shocked.
Bobby: It's true, Lewis, what you said. There's somethin' in the woods and in the water that we have lost in the city.
Lewis: We didn't lose it. We sold it.
Deliverance
2
"Going, going ... gone!"
That could be an auctioneer reporting:
1. another corrupt sale at the Trumpian White House.
2. another Trumpian act to destroy the environment.
3
The thing with these mining corporation is that they are voracious and stop at nothing to get what they want. We have a similar case here in Quebec in the town of La Motte, Abitibi. Sayona a mining conglomerate from Australia wants to extract Lithium from the ground witch will generate 5.5 million tons of residue per year for 14 years witch comes to 80 million tons at the end, but the most horrifying thing is that they want to do this right beside the esker Saint-Mathieu-Berry witch won "Best water in the World" a couple of years ago. It hasn't been approved yet but it might, we'll see where the authority's stand in the end.
4
@Siegfried
They (mining companies) get everything they want to provide you with everything you want.
1
In 8 years with Quantum Computers A.I. will have self awareness....the smartest people on Earth will be like uneducated newborns to it / the biggest challenge everyone should think of is how they can improve themselves and be Happy for there are some issues that are way beyond our vision or understanding about to unfold...and it will be for the better are mere existence at this point in time has already become a permanent infinite part of the universe and beyond....as the song goes " don't worry be happy'
Everyone: Go to the Save The Boundary Waters website and donate funds, sign the petition, and sign up for updates! I just did! We can help save our environment, our country, our soul. We can't just shake our heads and act like we have no power. We do! If we can tie this up until this evil administration is out of office, we can save this and other pristine places in our country. We did it in the 70s. We can do it today!
8
I know this area well through canoeing since the 1980s. it will be a vast toxic wasteland if this mine goes through. A beautiful. wild water world will be lost forever.
6
"When the Obama administration moved to block the project in 2016, Twin Metals sued. The company said in a statement then that the administration’s move threatened jobs and would “hinder access to one of the world’s largest sources of copper, nickel and platinum — resources of strategic importance to the U.S. economy and national defense.”"
Wouldn't the long-term strategic interests of the United States be better served by keeping a large, known reserve of these metals in the ground for future need?
As for jobs, that is a sensitive issue, but can be used to justify any number of bad decisions - like banning use of climate data when deciding on new development along flood zones and shores. "Gee, we coulda had some jobs building more homes, and then repairing them, then rebuilding them again, and again....". If you don't think that's a problem, Houston's construction workforce was very highly employed with three 500 year floods in a row from 2015-2017.
2
This foreign company said denying leases would “hinder access to one of the world’s largest sources of copper, nickel and platinum — resources of strategic importance to the U.S. economy and national defense.”
If mining these minerals and destroying a pristine system of forest and lakes is critical to national defense, why is the project being gifted to a billionaire from Chile?
Is Chile now a national defense contractor?
How does extracting the profits of these minerals, and exporting that wealth to a billionaire in Chile aid our national defense?
Is this how draining the swamp works? Export the profits from natural resources belonging to the collective citizens of the US to a Chilean billionaire?
33
Is it illegal on the face of it for Jared and Invanka to be paying less than others would pay for the same item, or only if there is a provable quid pro quo? Here are two possible scenarios on how they benefit from this deal:
A $5.5 million dollar house:
0% down payment
$5.5 million 4% 30 year mortgage
Monthly Payments = $26,258
(no fees, insurance or taxes are included)
They are paying $15,000/month, so in effect would be receiving $11,258/month in subsidy from the Luksic family.
Or to look at it in a perhaps more generous way, if they had purchased the house outright themselves, no mortgage, their $5.5 million would be unavailable to invest in a CD at 3%. They did not so the $5.5 is available to be earning interest. Thus, in 2.5 years of them occupying the house it looks like this:
$5.5 million x 3% x 2.5 years = $412,500.
$15,000/month x 2.5 years = $450,000.
So this result means if effect they only pay $450,000 - $412,500 or a total rent of $37,500/2.5 years, or $1250/month.
13
"The mine still faces a years long permitting and approval process." In other words: there's still time to vote straight Democratic in 2020; that's the one thing that will stop this destruction.
28
@gshalb
Except when both your democrat senators support copper mining... I voted for this without even knowing. So sad.
2
@ghsalb Don't be so sure! We have short memories; perhaps the Animas River in the southwest will jar a few memories of those of us that follow such items. During the Obama Administration the EPA was coming to an end of work surrounding mines in Colorado when an EPA contracted crew released millions of gallons of heavy metal laden sludge into the Animas River.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gold-king-mine-spill-colorado-rivers-epa-claims/.
Interestingly enough, a semi-retired geologist had written an editorial in the local paper just prior to the catastrophe predicting EXACTLY how the EPA was going to great a Superfund.
https://www.borregosun.com/story/2015/08/13/news/geologist-suggests-epa-poisoned-river-on-purpose/807.html.
So, those guilty of this horrible environmental disaster are rewarded with a lifetime of government wages, benefits and retirement most Americans can only dream about.
"The EPA has designated the area a Superfund site to pay for a broad cleanup. Initial research is underway."
And whom within the EPA, Interior, DEQ, Army Corp, etc were punished? Not a soul. Imagine these comment sections if a private mining company had caused just a fraction of this disaster? Jail time for the perps NYT readers would be asking for!!! But this was the EPA itself, the powerful Obama EPA. So not a peep. And, not one government employee was reprimanded or lost a job. In fact, they were rewarded and enjoy the fruits of their disaster to this day.
2
@ghsalb yup vote them out and lock him up
Very sad and brings tears to my eyes as I have canoed the Boundary Waters many times. It is a beautiful, pristine wilderness. In the future, clean water will be critical.
The Trump family is selling America to the highest bidder.
What will be left by the time they are gone?
58
@Jacquie
Same here. My wife and I canoed there and it's beautiful beyond words. Trump is truly selling America to whoever from wherever. Too bad his believers don't realize this. It's an environmental nightmare from which this country may never wake up.
5
Will it be a clean mine? No chance. That would cost money and sap profits making the project unsustainable. There are as yet no clean mines. There will be no clean mining until governments (i.e., the people) take over and require it.
This, and similar projects need to be stopped. Markets could handle stopping all such projects until clean mining became the only alternative, except that people who have attained power no longer believe in markets. Power is the ability to go ahead in the face of opposition, in the face of reason, in the face of the public good.
15
I first fell in love with the BWCA when I was 14 years old at a summer camp that took us there for 10 days. That was 50 years ago and I have been back at least 40 times with my own family and many friends. This is one of the most pristine wilderness on the planet and it is a moral imperative to exercise " maximum pressure" to oppose any mining interest in this watershed.
41
If this is a Chilean company, how does this mining benefit the US? How does any international corporation benefit the US? What is the point of selling our resources to foreign interests, please?
39
@American
Many Canadians have been asking the same question. American corporations have taken our resources only to close the mills and factories
leaving a mess behind them when they leave. It's
no consolation knowing there are other countries all over the world in the same boat.
21
@American
It's called corporate hegemony:
Corporate Hegemony. The term hegemony is associated with the work of theorist Antonio Gramsci. He studied the ways in which dominant states secured their position through force, coercion, powers of persuasion, and the construction of consent
7
@Devin Greco
Many many Canadian communities
welcomed the "investment". Sold on the jobs created. They never banked on the fact the jobs would go where labor was cheaper or when the resources were
depleted. The cycle continues today.
6
The real estate issue - even if a truly corrupt quid pro quo - is not even close to the bigger issues of: 1) destruction and permanent poisoning of a unique and irreplaceable wilderness; and 2) the corruption of government, science, environmental regulation and the concept of the public interest.
57
Brilliant. And we can store the mine waste in the Grand Canyon so there's more land to build condo towers on for the wealthy.
It's a win-win!
60
Third world corruption in the first world.
51
Deeply, deeply sickening. Newspaper stories do not often make me cry but this one did.
38
Thanks for not publishing my post detailing the horrible track record the company has had in Chile.
I know it’s more fun for you to play the “both sides” game as if we just can’t know whether the company is trustworthy or not instead of actually reporting on the clear damage they have caused to the environment and surrounding communities.
27
More sleaze by the trump administration and family who only care about money
39
This presidency is for sale!
30
Man is the moral ideal. Nature is merely our tool and nothing more. Leftists are nature mystics, not humanists.
@Sammy Azalea
Depends on what you mean by "tool." If you mean it's for our use in some way, that still means we might want to use parts of our environment---the animals, plants, land, water, etc. in some locale---to use as beautiful places to visit. So we would take care of, and try to preserve, these places because we value them. But if by "tool" you mean something we can do whatever we want to with, then you might quickly get pushed into a corner unless you have no problem with a person torturing his dogs to death because it gives him pleasure.
1
@Sammy Azalea
How’s that “mystical” sea level rise treating ya down in Miami?
2
@Sammy Azalea No nature is not our tool and nothing more. Nature is nature. You have absolutely no proof beyond the ego that we are the moral ideal. I believe you may be reading too much into the Old Testament.
1
The State of Minnesota can block this mine by denying a State Water Quality Certificate under Section 401 of the federal Clean Water Act.
Activist opposing this project should focus all their efforts on that regulatory tool and publicly pressure and lobby the Minnesota Governor.
The federal permitting and NEPA environmental review are a total waste of time - the Trump administration is corrupt and backing the project.
I see the same issue with pipelines, where activists get sucked in federal reviews by FERC and NEPA. Just look how NY Gov. Cuomo killed pipelines in NY State using Section 401 WQC.
70
Oh my God. Is there anything this family does that isn’t unethical, corrupt, and bad for the planet? What a disgrace. We must do everything possible to remove them and all their Republican enablers in 2020.
82
It's just weird to me that anyone who actually lives in this country can continue to support this guy. Well, unless you're very rich. Then the guy is your new best friend. But what about the rest of you.
'The company said in a statement then that the administration’s move threatened jobs and would “hinder access to one of the world’s largest sources of copper, nickel and platinum — resources of strategic importance to the U.S. economy and national defense.”'
'...........resources of strategic importance to the U.S. economy and national defense.”'. Ah, there's the dog whistle. 'national defense'. Isn't that what they're selling on the southern border as well ? These guys, Trump, Kushner and the rest of Trump's crew are crooks. Simple as that. They're enriching themselves and their friends at your expense. One of these days you'll wake up and realize that you sold out your country just so you could clap with your buddies when the black guy's accomplishments were kicked over.
45
The Kushners probably couldn't find a house suitable to rent and the one they really wanted to live in was only for sale. So they get this rich mine owner to buy it then rent it to them in exchange for favors. Duh! They are getting something out of this deal. They get to live in the house they really liked without having to buy it and risk losing money when they sell. This isn't a story about conservation or about one party being more corrupt than the other. This is about corruption pure and simple. They should both be fired.
23
Still waiting for that swampy drainy thing to happen. Oh wait - that would be Warren 2020.
27
BWCA is a big tourist draw for Minnesota, and it's the place most Minnesotans think of when they ponder the value of the natural beauty they are heir to.
C'm on Minnesotans. Don't take this lying down.
46
Corruption personified.
15
Really - who needs pristine wilderness? Lets destroy everything as fast as possible - usa usa usa !!!!!!!!!!
18
Suggest readers google "In the Valley of the Shadow of Death" by London Mining Network, May 2017 to get a clearer picture of what Mr. Lusik is all about.
In this detailed report you will learn of multiple allegations of corruption involving his businesses' interaction with Chilean politicians. In addition, you will learn of multiple toxic mine spillages, unfettered destruction of archaeological sites and repeated failures to comply with regulations of the Chilean Environmental Regulatory Commission.
Now Mr. Lusik brings his modus operandi to the USA... as foreign entity with dubious background coming to profit off of American resources with the expectation of serious environmental damage to the land....courtesy of Trump. This is Trump's vision for America. This is Trump's version of patriotism.
42
Seems like there’s a quid pro quo scandal under every rock. The Trumps may be suffering real estate losses on their traditional properties, but shady deals seem to be making up the difference.
The Trumps have taken a page from Putin’s playbook… you can become far richer through shadow transactions and kickbacks than through traditional business. And they probably don't even have to put it on their tax returns. What could be better!
We used to insist that our presidents (and their families) be above suspicion regarding quid pro quo deals. It’s kind of quaint to think how much effort was put into investigating Clinton for his connection to Whitewater.
20
Actually, you can make more money by legitimate business but you have to have a lot more smarts than either Trump or Kushner can ever develop.
We need to get Trump out! The damage he has done has reached critical Mass.
Every day brings more grief.
21
When does a privately held Chilean company determine what Federal resources are of "strategic importance...to our national defense"? In 2019 , during the Trump Administration.
And what does it say about the US law firms that do the bidding of companies like this? I would like to see NYT make public the firms and their lead lawyers for this company. For starters did these firms register as lobbyists?
19
@JL Where were you when the Clinton's were collecting 1.6B for GIVING away our Uranium to Russia? What did the US taxpayer get in return? I've been to the BWCA numerous times in my tree hugging days. I agree, Chile should have nothing to do with our resources; in fact how does this not fly in President Trumps face about America first? And as far as the BWCA goes; the impact on the environment must be nil or no project.
1
@Kevin
If someone received 1.6B, how is that giving away? How are the Clintons not billionaires?
Doesn't somebody want to look for copper under Mar-a-Lago?
29
And Trump is pushing another big mine in Alaska in the Pebble mine. If it goes through it will destroy Bristol Bay and the world famous salmon fishing those waters support. One of the other famous mines in McCarthy, AK, the Kennecott mine, was funded by JP Morgan, and was viable mainly because it supplied copper for bullets in WWI. JUST SAY "NO!" to more mines.
19
America, the continent, has been seen as a land open for exploitation of anyone who may come from somewhere else on the planet. This is a continent of immigrants for immigrants. That explains how Trump and his family became so wealthy, messing up the land that welcomes them. But, there are today millions who feel attached to the land as their mother and who want to protect it. We, the Americans who want our continent great, unpolluted and beautiful must fight against those who consider America open for exploitation, rapine, and devastation. Public lands in the US must remain within the public domain and the great Amazon region, the "lungs" of the planet, must be protected by all means. Bolsonaro, where is he from? Luksiç, is he really Chilean?
7
@Lara >messing up the land .........
.......
Leftists are anti-humanist nihilists who evade mans survival need to adapt nature. Nature is no more than a hammer to a carpenter.
@Sammy Azalea
Read up on the 6th mass extinction and the P-T extinction Mr. carpenter
2
@Sammy Azalea without nature we all die. I guess you did not get the memo in science class.
I'm super confused: weren't republicans irate over some natural resource deal with a foreign company that was approved while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State? Wasn't she accused of "selling our resources" in some shady way?
This sounds a lot like that. But worse.
9
@Jason Hmm, perhaps but HRC as Secretary of State wouldn't have much to do with state business. But hey, she's Hillary so let's just make some stuff up and blame her!
1
As usual, our Democratic leadership will do nothing. They'll just roll over and let Trump do whatever he wants..
Great job Chuck and Nancy!
6
@Aaron
Aaron, what exactly is the Republican leadership doing about this?
Sound of crickets.
@Aaron Now that is not true. The Dems are bad at showing how they are holding the wretched Trump at bay as much as they can...they did the same thing with W.
Things could have been even worse and that is saying a lot. The idea that the Dems do nothing isn't true but they are hampered by only having one branch of government.
Iron mining is a messy tradition on da range, but copper mining is poison. The two should not be confused.
14
@charles Mining benefits man. End of story.
Maybe the Trump Administration should change its campaign promise to "Drain the Boundary Waters".
10
I though this comment made by wilderness educator Sullen Sack (which appears under her picture) said it all: “In 100 years, this water is going to be far more valuable a resource here than copper." We need to protect our water for our livable future.
17
"Excessively precise economic analysis can lead to assessing everything in terms of its easily measurable melt value – the value that thieves get from stealing copper wiring from isolated houses, that vandals got from tearing down Greek temples for the lead joints holding the marble blocks together, that shortsighted timber companies get from liquidating their forests. The standard to insist on is live value. What is something worth when it's working?" Stewart Brand
6
@DC Reade >shortsighted timber companies get from liquidating their forests.
Private forests require replanting for future profits. There is more forest in the US now than in the past.
Theree
@Sammy Azalea
It depends on where and how it's done.
I think Brand was referring to cases like the redwood groves of northern California owned by Pacific Lumber, where the rate of timber harvest TRIPLED in the 1980s in order to raise fast cash after the company was purchased by Charles Hurwitz in an acquisition financed by a junk-bond transaction (a speculative bond paying high interest that, when used to fund acquisitions, very often requires immediate asset liquidations and/or a massive reduction in payroll in order to raise the cash required to pay off the bondholders while ensuring a profit for for the new owner. A popular 1980s tactic- see the 1991 book America: What Went Wrong? for many more details http://www.americawhatwentwrong.org/ )
I also think that Brand was probably referring to the massive over-harvest of rainforest hardwoods like teak, mahogany, and rosewood that devastated so much acreage in the ecosystems of Amazonia, Indonesia, and SouthEast Asia.
I realize that it's possible to manage woodlands for sustainable harvest. Some species are more amenable to the process than others, though. And while I don't consider tree plantations to be barren ecosystems, they can't be considered on par with old-growth forests in that respect. There's also more to responsible forest management than sustainable harvest. It's imperative to respect headwaters watersheds, minimizing erosion impacts by limiting road building and maintaining effective riparian buffer zones.
Trump promised to “Drain the swamp” during his campaign for presidency. Seems like he actually meant to “make bigger swamps”. What else is new - Typical Trump - making a deal at the expense of the environment. 👎
6
Corruption at its finest! Welcome to the third world America!
9
Great reporting on greed, corruption and the slash and burn politics of the new Republican Party. The new titular head has no compassion or understanding of the natural world. To him and his party such denigration of our cherished natural resources is no more than a laundering scheme of power. Solution for him and his party to stop this destruction is at the polls.
5
Another example of the greed, stupidity, ignorance and total disregard for saving our wilderness. Our primary concern in this century should be nurturing and preserving our wilderness areas that so many endangered animals, people, and communities depend upon. Look at the statistics in this link. MN can't afford to lose any more habitats, ecosystems, clean water, and forests!
https://www.wilderness.net/NWPS/chartResults?chartType=AcreageByStateMost
4
When American minds are polluted with so much propaganda and bigotry, it's only appropriate that their lands should be too.
8
I'm going to be looking for a house to rent next month. I'll contact a real estate broker and look for a house of my liking. Is anyone interested to buy the house and let me live in it for a reasonable rent. Of course I may skip on my rental payments as I will be doing you a big favor for your business as I have big government connection.
7
OK, the appearance of corruption doesn't mean there was a quid pro quo transaction going on, but the constant appearance of corruption with the Trump administration, in everything from his Washington hotel, Mar a Lago guest list, to this just stinks to high heaven. Can any of us imagine what would happen if this were Hillary....or the Obamas? My God, heads would roll and the Congress would be up in arms. I am so sick of all of this and the utter failure of anyone associated with the Republican Party to do anything, anything at all to put the brakes on Trump et al. Can we please elect someone who is honest, transparent, and trustworthy? Someone who might get through their term in office without a scandal every other day? Like BO.
8
Big surprise? My bet is we see a dozen or two similar "deals" come to light in the coming years. Money, greed and power knows no bounds.
6
The only thing I say is, "If there is a major pollution of the water or land" don't expect the taxpayers to foot the bill. Only those who live on or near this land should be responsible. No crying. No asking public help. You've made your bed. Lie in it.
3
@JDW"If there is a major pollution of the water or land" don't expect the taxpayers to foot the bill. Only those who live on or near this land should be responsible" "If" there is pollution? Copper mining uses vast amounts of water to process the ore and so where will this water come from and where will it end up? Also, just because you live near a place that get sold to vampire corporations that come in a ruin the area and then leave with all the profits does not mean it was your fault for living there in the first place. Montana has 50,000 federal toxic waste sites that the tax payers are paying to clean up and many local residents have been suffering from for decades and not all of them worked in the mine(s).
1
Copper could end up being used in one of the most efficient power storage solutions ever invented, the Prieto copper foam battery. If it lives up to its potential, it would solve the long-term storage problem of wind and solar, making them reliable, not intermittent power sources, and do away with the need for fossil fuels altogether. Copper deposits are found throughout the Rockies and Andes ranges, most in friendly countries that don't sponsor terrorism with our dollars, unlike Saudi Arabia. I'm not a fan of mining, or pollution of any kind. But if it's a choice between a few relatively small areas that if managed correctly the damage can be limited, versus the entire planet cooking to death, surely the former is preferable.
6
@Bill...In the Boundary Waters the water table is about 2 feet deep. You can't manage a mine "correctly" in that kind of environment.
1
@Bill Copper mining uses vast amounts of water and releases vast amounts of tainted poison water afterwards. The natural area has water running all over it's boundaries and is a gigantic area that will get ruined even if only a tiny portion of it gets polluted with the universal flow of agua. The area is worth more than the copper and there is plenty of other places with just as much copper that will not destroy pristine wilderness to make some fat Chilean richer.
1
Five hundred years ago, nature overwhelmed us. Life was a constant struggle with it. Modern science did not exist. Mining was very dangerous but the only way to get the metals which gave us an edge in dealing with challenges and could be done far from where we lived, mostly. There was no real understanding of natural life and how it exists. God did it.
Well today, we are able to alter nature just by living and we now understand that we and the life in this planet are all integrated into systems which support our lives. Chemicals used in part of the planet get into the water or air and become part of living things on the other side. We cannot separate ourselves from the effects of upon nature.
Money is not wealth. Money is not anything that provides anything that we need. It’s a means of exchange, that’s all. Destroy a great natural ecosystem, it’s gone, nobody can buy another. Money will be taken in exchange for anything other people can offer, but they cannot offer what is good and unadulterated once there are no more good and unadulterated things to provide. The jobs argument is nonsense when it means depleting the quality of the lives of all.
13
I have gone camping through that part of Minnesota. It is wonderful.
This article however misses a lot of the issues about mining there.
First, the overwhelming issue is iron mining, to produce the taconite pellets that are essential to US steel making. The tailings of mining and turning ore to taconite are massively polluting. They polluted Lake Superior too.
They've also gone a long way in cleaning that up. Minnesota has now developed a track record for cleaner mining. Lake Superior is very much cleaner now. Would that apply to copper mining, or not?
Second, the Minnesota state web site says of copper mining, "Manganese, copper, nickel, and titanium have also been discovered in the state in minable quantities, but are not of high enough quality under today's prices to mine profitably."
Thus, if these copper mines are economically viable at all, they are only marginal. Is there some new process, or some short cut intended that would make this profitable? Would that process or shortcut be polluting?
Third, why Chile? They have the world's largest copper mines. They certainly know all about mining copper. But why do they want these marginal reserves? They are mining endless mountains of much better ore.
Finally, what would be the employment impact? The regional jobs now are based on tourism. Mining would not hire in the off seasons. It might well conflict, peaking at the wrong time for locals and tourists.
12
Mark, I also have camped and traveled the Lake Superior region since childhood. My maternal family is from the Michigan and Ontario Canada sides of the St. Mary’s river so I know the history of the region and the lakes. I also have experience before retirement as a water / sewer utility professional and some background in pollution issues. That being said I must respectfully disagree with the idea that Minnesota’s improvements in mining are significant enough to trust the welfare of the Boundary Waters and the Lake Superior watershed to either state government oversight or the Chilean mining conglomerate Antofagasta. The risk is to great, the reward of jobs and economic benefits are short term and exaggerated and the wealth generated goes out of the state and in this case out of the country. To trust this process and the people pushing it is a bet I for one am not willing to take. That being said I too would like a more thorough examination of background behind this mine and who really benefits from it going forward. History shows that extractive industry poisons the land, air, waters and people everywhere it goes while the economic benefits flow to a few. One does not become a billionaire without leaving a trail of corpses both figuratively and literally behind, I would prefer that the Lake Superior watershed not be one of them.
233
Democrats should already announce their intention of an immediate revocation of licenses or creation of environmental protection at the first available opportunity, whatever it takes, which would make the continuation of a mining operation in that location illegal.
That should render the expected net present value of the project negative.
6
The mining operation as proposed for the Boundary Waters will produce toxic slurry ponds that will be contained behind earthen coffer dams. The dams will have to be maintained for hundreds of years, long after the mining is done and the South American billionaire has left the earth. One analysis found that required maintenance must continue for as long as the time that has elapsed since Michelangelo painted the Mona Lisa. Another said that they will have to maintained "essentially forever".
Similar slurry dams regularly collapse near mines in South America. It is a moral certainty that the proposed project will result will poison the Boundary Waters.
39
@Charles Tiege ......Preventing a mine from contaminating ground water in the desert of Chile is one thing. Preventing a mine from contaminating ground water in the Boundary Waters under the very best practices is not possible.
2
All those foreign multinationals polluting our environment and taking advantage of our raw materials. Tsk tsk.
How the tables have turned! The same thing could have been said of American mining conglomerates digging mines in Chile in the 1960s. You reap what you sow.
I am not defending Trump or Luksic or Kushner, by any means - two wrongs do not make a right. Just pointing out the historical irony.
In Chile we eventually realized how wrong this was and nationalized the copper industry in 1973. The biggest mining company is now state-owned, and provides much of our government's funding for social programs. Private actors like the Luksics are allowed, but they are much smaller than state-owned Codelco, and foreign companies pay a heavy royalty tax. Perhaps that's a path forward for America?
16
@Diego Salvatierra
Yeah, what's life like in Chile these days? All hunky-dory?
@Diego Salvatierra
That explains their interest in foreign projects, less regulation and taxes. We don't believe in heavy taxes on our wealthy here in U.S..
2
@Bill
Well, no country is perfect and we have many problems, but we are the most developed country in Latin America by almost any measure: educational outcomes, low corruption, drinkable water, GDP per capita, life expectancy, etc. And unlike the US, we have a public option for health care and free higher education. A lot of that financed through copper money!
An unresolved problem both of our countries face is strengthening environmental regulation and making sure mining does not destroy sites that are worth preserving, like this one in Minnesota. Our environmental regulations are generally well enforced, and we have a lot of protected land in the south, but more could certainly be done.
2
Decades ago while solo canoeing in Quetico, the adjacent Canadian counterpart to the Boundary Waters, a bear got my food while I was portaging gear over a portage trail. A couple days without food but a great adventure, and honestly, my stomach never complained. The beauty and the silence of the land fills one's mind with awe and peace. Time has a different nature, one enjoys the natural world without rushing or having any deadlines except finding a campsite near the end of the day. Improves one's health and eases the soul. No gold-plating necessary. But I wonder if Trump or his family are of a frame of mind to be aware of or appreciate that kind of beauty.
The Boundary Waters is also an ecosystem not drastically altered by men for profit. In Michigan the rivers were once braided streams, choked with large trees that had fallen in the river, rich in beaver who built dams that transformed the streamflows into braided streams and ponds rich in beaver, marten, otter, lynx, fowl, fish, amphibians, etc. The lumbermen cleared out the logs and beaver dams to send logs downstream, scraping the life out of the rivers. Easy for canoeing today but a drastic reduction of life. The canoeist is fortunate to see fish, a beaver, marten, etc. Men who desire power and wealth will destroy any natural places if allowed, but the Boundary Waters should be preserved. Leave at least some of these beautiful places for others who love the land.
15
One point is that the boundary waters area is protected and the risk of the mine contaminating is probably not that small. Most mine residue is at best bad for the environment and often also poisonous.
The second point, that goes under a bit in the article, is the mine operator is not only dealing with his private land but also requires a lease of public BLM land for the mine. This is BLM land is often leased much too cheaply compared to the profits a mine can make. This is where the corruption of administration officials and the bribery by the mine operator would come together as many $$$.
If the mine operator wants to mine his own land, fine. But public land bordering on a wilderness area should not be leased to him for a polluting mine and certainly not for profits that will flow out of the USA.
25
While this article is primarily about crony capitalism it attempts and fails like most national publications to properly represents the facts on the ground.
Ely is the gateway to the BWCA and the mines there are closed but nearby iron ore is very much an ongoing business and the primary employer on the Mesabi range. The wilderness of northern Minnesota is truly beautiful and a national treasure, but this article should have provided a few pictures of the open pits and tailing dumps which are also nearby and within the Superior National Forest.
Just south of the of the BWCA is the Laurentian Divide. Water which falls north of this divide will flow through the wilderness either east into Lake Superior or north to Hudson Bay. My understanding of the geography is that all of the current mines are south of this divide and water travels to the Mississippi.
On a recent trip to visit family, I attempt and failed to understand where exactly this cooper mine would be located and a sequence of events which would cause harm to the wilderness. A proper environmental assessment needs to be done and I do not trust the Trump Administration to properly conduct that assessment.
25
another story based on nothing but innuendo. As far as I know, it's not illegal to rent a house from someone. Or is to progressives if the person renting is someone you don't like and you can write a story that suggests maybe there was some impropriety -- without any evidence of course. So please provide some information that shows this was an unusual transaction that somehow benefits Kushner and Trump. If they were willing to pay more for something else in DC, and if the rent is high for the area, then what possible benefit do Kushner and Ivanka get? This is nothing but -- let's finding to slander someone (the closer to president Trump the better) in the Trump admin.
As for the wilderness lands. That's always a tough call. But if the copper is needed for, gasp, renewables, then it looks to me like, as with everything else, there is no free lunch. Moreover, it appears to be an economic boon for the area.
If environmentalists had their way, would any of wilderness be available for development? I'm all for protecting the environment but there has to be a balance between providing for economic opportunity and the requirements of modern day life, and protecting the environment. I don't hear anything about protecting the environment when wealthy Californians decide they want to build communities in the middle of pristine forest. No man, because that's really cool. Back to nature. Just because it increases fire hazards, well you know dude, we just put it out.
4
@Ralphie Of all the houses Ivanka and Jared could have rented, why this one? Sorry, I’m not buying a coincidence.
50
@Ralphie Ethics is not just about the improper, it’s about the appearance of impropriety. But why would we give the benefit of the doubt to a family of money launderers and tax evaders anyway?
42
@Ralphie
While the rent may be $15k, we don’t know if the rent is actually paid or perhaps refunded in some way. We don’t know if extra amenities are part of the deal, perhaps high end furnishings. There are lots of ways to grease palms in DC. Or maybe the Kushner’s are just a friendly conduit to the Oval Office. Landlords and tenants can converse whenever they want without raising suspicions.
7
Risk all that clean water and wilderness to enrich a Chilean company and their international share holders? Crazy. If anyone should profit off the minerals it should be the people of MN who must bear the risk and burden of such a project.
27
Trying to understand the “ financial” root of this real estate investment.
5 mil plus to buy
Rents 180,000 a year.
Less
27,000 realtors commission 15%
45,000 real estate tax ( rate .85% on assessed value.)
15, 000 est minimum maintenance. No upgrades just landscape, paint, ac and heat maintenance.
92, 000 max cash flow. 1.4% Assuming neverempty
Know the play is in the sale.
Hard to find info. On comparable rents.
Let’s be clear eyed,
A billionaire buys fancy upscale real estate to rent. As he is buying it knows Trump family renting. This billionaire is not in real estate, in mining.
He needs government largess to the tune of 10s of millions plus.
Yup, this doesn’t smell and look like a buy out?
I do have a very nice bridge connecting brooklynn to the city for sale? Want a piece of the action?
42
I'm a disabled war vet in MN who finds true sanctuary only in these Boundary Waters with my fellow vet buds several times per year. With the inevitable acid water drainage flowing into the boundary waters, we won't be able to stay out as long or live off of the fish. Our filters will not be able to filter out this type of acid drainage.
Sulfide ore mining has historically always resulted in contamination spills and acid water drainage, which will in this case flow into the largest wilderness area in the US.
Also, protecting public lands near the Boundary Waters generates greater long-term gain for the region (more employment and income) than copper mining. - Harvard.
98
@James -- For the benefit of readers, I'll expand on this comment.
Metallic sulfide mining (aka hard rock mining) is the practice of extracting metals such as nickel, gold and copper from a sulfide-rich ore body. Sulfides are a geologic byproduct of mining in this area. By exposing sulfides to the air and water in our atmosphere, sulfuric acid can be created — threatening to poison the nearby water, environment, and communities.
If sulfide ore or sulfide tailings are exposed to water and air during mining, a chemical reaction creates sulfuric acid – basically battery acid.
Pollution from sulfide mining is very expensive to fix, and a burden for taxpayers.
The legacy of sulfide mining is called Acid Mine Drainage.
The same issues are common to mining in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. This is not a new concern.
19
I live in southern Arizona and Alaska. Since this administration has taken office both places have seen mining applications reconsidered even when regulators have given the mines a NO because of environmental dangers. We seem to have no recourse with our legislators. They are owned by money interests.
51
@Donna Lee: I agree with you re the dangers to the environment, but I cannot think of either party not being amenable to large bribes from billionaires, whatever the nature of the hazards posed. Is said that fracking can contribute to earthquakes, but it goes on anyway. Those who celebrate clean energy solutions like windmills, turbines, ignore the danger to wildlife, since these wind turbines kill over a million birds yearly.Rachel Maddow is a vociferous, fervent supporter of wind power.Avarice crosses party lines. Did Obama cancel sales of billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars to the "Mamlaka" based in Ryhad because Saudi forces had embarked on a civil war in Yemen which continues to this day.As Dr. Doolittle was wont to remark, money is the mother's milk of politics.
@Alexander Harrison wind turbines arent perfect BUT I dont see any pics of dead birds near them,,I do see dead birds at the bottom of skyscrapers.
We can put solar power on top of every warehouse & shopping center parking lot .The metals needed already exist in garbage dumps & recycling yards across the world,,,It just raises the cost so Billionaires & millionaires pay out more to get it.
1
@Peter S.Mulshine: Estimated that wind turbines, otherwise known as bird traps, kill over 400,000 birds per year.Check it out. Many myths surrounding benefits of "clean energy," including the exaggeration that solar energy is always effective, which it is not unless u r willing to pay sky rocket prices. Left wing millionaire, Tom Stirer, convert to Espicopalianism,and who is financing an expensive campaign to get president impeached, was a huge donor to Obama, and recipient of many green energy contracts in reurn, has been ostracized by Trump admin., which explains his ongoing campaign to get the chief of state impeached!
1
It would have been preferable to keep this story strictly about the attempt to mine near the Boundary Waters, and left the side issue of the Washington rental out of it. There are few details about the "scientific and economic evidence" allegedly ignored by the Interior that gets mentioned early in the article, and instead a lot about this rental, which might be news if Trump's relatives were getting it for free, but instead it appears they're paying top dollar for it. This is an important issue for northern Minnesota, and the details deserve careful examination, but this article misses the opportunity for that in favor of scandal-mongering.
5
@David Godinez You ignorantly missed the point that this is about international corruption& the purchase of DC influence that leads to the destruction & looting of America
3
@David Godinez
You ever heard of “follow the money”?
It is very important to understand the WHY AND HOW when these things occur.
2
@David Godinez. The point is, what they are paying is not “ top dollar” in DC.
2
This would be a great topic for the upcoming presidential debates. Where does Minnesota's senior senator, a "granddaughter of an iron ore miner", stand on this issue?
13
@Cornstalk Bob
She unequivocally supported/supports the effort. Always has.
What is so "unusual" about the connection between the Chilean billionaire and Trump's son-in-law and daughter? This seems to be standard operating procedure in the current morally and ethically bankrupt administration. Not to mention outwardly hostile towards efforts to protect the environment.
30
@Steve Collins You've done my work for me!
Andrónico Luksic, who is in the mining business, expressly buys a house "with the intention of renting it to a wealthy new arrival to Mr. Trump’s Washington"
Why? That's a mighty specific investment were the only purposes to make a buck.
And then it is rented to the President's closest advisers, let alone his daughter and son-in-law.
How anyone can say that it is just independent, coincidental is beyond the pale. Can I just ignore the ethics courses I am required to take in business now?
21
Both US Senators from Minnesota,
Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith,
alleged to be Democrats
supported this project going forward
though many more jobs depend on that wilderness remaining pristine, a tourism natural wonder, than copper mining will produce.
There's never been a "clean" copper mining operation. This will poison the water shed for even those few lucky enough to get copper mining jobs.
This Minnesota citizen resents our 2 senators supporting a foreign mining company's exploitation of our wilderness for short term profits sent offshore.
I hope DFL voters call both Senators Klobuchar and Smith onto the carpet for their pro-pollution votes to let this mine go forward
57
@howard
One of several reasons why Klobuchar won’t be winning the nomination in her own state...
1
Once again, another consequence of the 2016 election. Sat home or voted 3rd Party. Women’s Rights, Foreign Policy, Immigration and the environment. All take a hit.
What did you expect to happen?
The goal in 2020 is to get Trump voted out.
30
@Practical Thoughts
i don't understand your criticism. Did you vote third party, or are you condemning others as third party voters. . . ?
I am aware they are mostly responsible for leaving Ms Clinton without the electoral power to cleave through the Trump votes. However, I am in the dark as to Practical Thoughts actions and comments.
1
The times should do an article summarizing all the shady connections and barely concealed corruption that we’ve seen so far. There’s been so much it’s hard to keep a handle on it.
19
Seems likely that the Trumps also have been gifted millions of shares of Antofagasta stock, which they are holding in off-shore shell corporations. Ah for another Panama Papers-style leak. Unfortunately, we'll never know.
14
@Missed the Big Picture
The idea that the Trumps took cash for action is without basis , as yet. It is bad form and bad for the media when people make unsupported accusations in print-even in the comments section-which is notorious for its hot air and personal insults.
Could someone who calls themselves a conservative explain to how destruction of the environment is conservative? What is being conserved?
My feeling is that conservative as used today is nothing but a marketing label that uses the good will that comes with the word to mask the true value which is to take, at whatever the cost to others, whatever I can to make the most amount of money. That is what conservative seems to mean these days based on what those who call themselves conservatives promote and do.
RE: The company said it wanted to reverse the Obama-era decisions, which it said were illegal and inflicted “undue damage.”
Undue damage to what? Their profits?
For Trump who lived in NYC and sees the "environment" as something that is in the way of development of course he would think that its destruction is “really pretty amazing.”
23
There appears to be some deep ethical lapses or even bribery here.
Now the mine itself is located in a giant forest that also happens to contain many operating and abandoned mines. Much of the iron that is in the steel that build America came from this region. I really do not think 1 more mine will be the end of the entire region. There are 30 other giant mines in the area. You probably would not be able to notice 1 more. The US needs copper and it has to come from somewhere. There must be a way in a huge area full of mines and forest to have another mine and not destroy the environment.
@Chris Unless you are a certified geologist without ties to the mining industry your suppositions about the dangers or lack thereof of a copper mine in this area aren't of much value. Sure, the country needs copper, but is the current supply insufficient? I'm sure the federal government has research on that question. The Luksics stand to make a fortune if the mine is approved. Their views must be seen as biased. If this mine poisoned the area, the damage would be permanent. Trump only respects science when it serves his political or personal interests.
8
Trump's god is money. He believes in it and feels everyone else does, too. His Middle East policy is dangling money in front of the Palestinians and Iranians to get them to negotiate. He wants the Europeans to pay up for their defense and the Chinese to "pay us" tariffs. He promised to bring jobs and riches to his supporters, which was very effective in Northern Minnesota, which used to be a Democrat stronghold. Pushing through mining projects, mining jobs, will solidify his base besides making his family money. Trump came close to winning Minnesota in 2016; in his mind all he has to do is buy a few more votes with someone else's money and it's four more years.
13
@DO5 Fortunately, many more people benefit from them not developing this area than 200 mining employees and that fat Chilean owner. The people that work to defend the wilderness and those that visit for generations to come...are in the millions. This vending the country to a foreigner(who will get most of the money) should not be part of his MAGA platform as how does that Make America Great Again? Becoming an export colony for Chilean money? I would hope his supporters or those on the line of voting for him or not would be smart enough to see this...but then again they did vote for him.
1
I do not know whether this proposed mining can be done safely, without harming the environment and polluting the waters.
Perhaps it can. Or maybe it cannot.
But I do know that this administration cannot be trusted to make an honest decision based on a proper evaluation of the data.
This President and his swamp dwellers are untrustworthy. On every issue.
19
As the Trump family continues its pattern of graft and the selling off of America to the highest bidder, don’t expect any pushback from the Republican Party or its base. They are all on board for destroying this country for a buck.
18
Thank you for this reporting. To me, and many of our friends, these boundary water lands are sacred and should not be invaded and mined. It would be another desecration from the Trump family. I will contact Earth Justice to see if they have already assigned lawyers to this potential lawsuit against these "developers." Dear Hiroko Tabuchi and Steve Eder, please don't let your headline editors use the word "environmentalists" for those who oppose this project. This word has been assigned to Democrats and furthers polarization. Instead say that those who oppose this project are Americans who love our precious natural world. We've got to find language that draws us to the middle ground of respect and love for our endangered bio-diverse planet.
4
Is anyone surprised? Uncover any deal to destroy the environment or roll back protections (of any sort) and there will be Trump and Trump Administration Corruption hiding in *plan sight*.
16
Wow, what a tale of inside deals and ethically wrong decisions. So much for there being any kind of oversight into such things in this administration.
The elite get more elite. Still amazing that John and Jane Q. Public (ie- not the elite) voted for this guy, especially in rural 'Merica. His only desire is to get richer, not help anyone outside his clan.
9
Exploitation for profit. That is all Trump and company is about. They have no moral compass whatsoever. Trump's up-for-sale approach is why many Americans easily believe he has, and will continue to sell us out to Russia, Isreal and Saudi Arabia; just to name a few..
6
Why are we permanently selling out our most valuable resource - our pristine land - for the financial benefit of a foreign billionaire and short-term jobs for a couple hundred miners? I despair for my country, and for my fellow Americans who seem to value it so little, all while waving a flag. Despicable.
18
@reader Obama was against the project, I'm sure that alone was enough reason for Trump to support the mining project. Trump was deeply hurt by Obama making fun of him during the White House Correspondents Dinner and will make him pay for the rest of his life.
4
Spend anytime in the sparsely populated wide open places and you will find people who have no use for nature nor how it works, they long for opportunities to become as affluent as the urbanites and suburbanites who pass through. These are the kinds of people who would turn what is left of the natural world that supports the life we know into a a ruined one.
There are many Republicans who respect the natural world and are not like the Trumps who live life in unnatural artificial environments almost exclusively but they never seem to try to oppose those eager to wreck our biosphere for short term gains that will dissipate rapidly.
6
Everything and anything is for sale in MAGA land. The cleanup let someone else. the American Taxpayer in 59 years, foot the bill. American taxpayer seem destine to clean after American Corporate Capitalism. The Trump win, win.
6
When will the New York Times give us a LIST of each official decision and appointment that has caused harm -- or will do so -- to our world?
Enough! Ready? 1., 2., 3., etc.
8
In Chile, the Luksic family has a long, long history of buying up whatever they want, breaking up unions, destroying the environment and bullying their way forward to benefit only their family. The business practices are probably all legal - it's only hyper capitalism, after all.
18
Wake up folks. This is not about Minnesota or mining. This is about selling your future and the future of the next generations. When the land, air, and water around us are no longer safe for consumption, the 'protected places' will belong to those that can afford them. The rest of us will live in polluted, life harming places and have our clean water and air served to us in bottles from companies owned by those that poisoned us. #Flint # KingstonCoal #Hanford #ThreeMileIsland #LoveCanal #ExxonValdez #BunkerHIll
31
You have got to be kidding me! Call your representatives state, local and federal and stop this travesty!
10
Can't we just give 300 random people in Babbitt, MN $33,000 per year?
It's a much better deal for America than environmental damage by a copper mine whose profits go to Chile.
49
Where do some of you think the metals come from that are in the device you wrote your comments here with?
The same metals that you will find in your appliances, the car you drive, the bus you take, the airplane you boarded, the bike you ride, the office you work in and the house you live in.
Should we stop mining all together in North America and just designate remotes area in South America and Asia for the metals we need?
The area in question has been mining nickel, copper, gold and other metals for decades. Mining operations have to provide reclamation plans that span into the future decades often 100 year plans. Not many other industries are held to such standards.
The existence and development of places in the far North have been brought about by responsible mining and forestry. Metals are a vital important part of our future that allow us to develop technologies like zero emissions cars and solar power.
As to the conflict of interest, the facts are there. The house is being rented at above market value and transparency in the transaction was disclosed.
@Bart Guthrie sidetone, the transparency in the rental money is not disclosed. There is now an open channel between these Kushner and the mine for money to flow between.
9
@Bart Guthrie Agree we need to mine. But we also need water. As the earth warms we may find water sources more important than minerals. I don't trust the mining company - but I also don't trust this administration.
19
Your points are well taken, and we do need metals. The presence of commercial quantities of metals does not become automatic justification for extraction. And certainly it does not justify corruption in government to avoid environmental reviews. I have no idea whether the mine should be approved, but Trump’s fast and loose approach isn’t the way to make this determination anymore than Obama’s automatic denial.
8
Great reporting.
5
Considering a copper mine in the Boundary Waters is insane. You might as well discuss coal mining in Yellowstone. Either there are natural areas that you protect, or you don't protect anything. There is no middle ground.
68
@W.A. Spitzer. Please don’t give the Trump cabal any ideas about Yellowstone. Nothing, I mean nothing, matters to them as much as money.
3
It’s not just a productive part of our biosphere that Trump and the Republican want to destroy to increase the wealth in their bank accounts, it’s a concerted effort to subvert our government that serves everyone’s interests from stopping them. Trump’s administration is ignoring laws and oversight by Congress to act with impunity against the interest of all to enable some licenses indulge themselves. Make no mistake the people will pay all the costs of this egregiously corrupt conduct. The land will be ruined and the effects ripple across the ecosystems that had been integrated with it.
Luksic found the soft core in the corruption infested Trump administration the Kushners. But Trump and his family are not the exception but the rule in the Republican Party, which has become a throwback to the most egregiously base selfishness of the post Civil War U.S. era.
Republicans were the whining critics of Obama, accusing him of acting like a dictator, when he used his limited powers to try to help our common good. When they get into office, they work hard to sell off our republic and our Earth to their greediest and their truest haters of democracy and of liberty among their prized constituents. The entire Party is devoted to undoing our liberal democracy to replace it with an oligarchy of plutocrats like Trump and the Kushners, and theocratic religionists like Pence. They fight against serving the common good because they think that limits what they can take for themselves.
19
Decisions like this make me wonder if there is anymore analysis or thought given to it than Obama prohibited it or my core supporters will love it, therefore let's do it. There doesn't seem to be any consideration to the environmental impact. I suppose the repercussions will be dealt with long after Trump is out of office and he can blame who ever inherited it and had to deal with the problems. I would also suggest a rational person who takes a long term view would question the economics of - and i don't know the situation all that well, providing for a relatively few jobs and having to clean up the mess in future vs the cost of re-training or up-skilling these individuals and the long term benefits of this. In addition, with Trump and his family, there is always the suspicion that they are benefitting somehow, whether directly or indirectly.
8
Has ANYONE ever heard of a landlord shopping for houses with their future tenants?
The purchase of a house to then rent out is a specific below-cost favor. Kinda like a free down payment. On this house- half a million dollars?
The real question- why can you buy these billionaires so cheap??
10
While this all sounds very ominous, I scanned the article in vain attempting to find a clear-headed analysis as to what, exactly, the 'evil' international 'conglomerate' has done wrong to date. Putting aside, for a moment, the continuing unseemly business matters of Trump, Inc. (which I concur are shameless), a more serious analysis of the mining application process is sorely missing from this article.
As a person who works in the industry, the average reader (and clearly the authors of this piece) are largely unaware of the nearly inconceivable amount of time, money, and patience is needed to find resources that might ultimately be developed into an economically viable mining project. They are rare beasts.
Assuming for a moment that mining leases and permits were properly and legally applied for, the issue seems to be (hard to tell from the way this was written) that permits were not approved (why?), and then approved under the Trump administration.
No sane company will invest 100's of millions of dollars investing in something that is either apriori unfeasible and/or environmentally untenable. If everything was done correctly, a government refusing to allow action on a legal government lease is called a 'taking' -- another word for stealing. Communist/socialist countries (think Hugo Chavez or the nationalization of Mexican oil fields in the 1930's) do it.
If mining can be done responsibly, allow it. It is a lie that ecotourism (=low pay) provides the same benefits.
3
Mineral extraction costs a lot and until all the saleable minerals have been sold, how successful an endeavor might be is unknown.
That’s probably why mining leaves great wrecked landscapes across the Earth. Why the advantages of exploiting a rich deposit must be measured against what will take many centuries to replace. In this case, the copper is of lesser value to the common good.
So go find some other cache of it in the great mantle surrounding our fiery cored planet.
5
@dmckj Save the Boundary Waters, a dedicated organization has done extensive work to answer some of your questions. The risks mining expose in this sensitive environment are too dangerous. At some point soon we will see the vital importance of the need to protect this watershed as sources of clean water disappear. We must not be shortsighted.
2
@dmckj - "government refusing to allow action on a legal government lease is called a 'taking' "
As if the company is entitled to take what it wants. And, of course, it's a "taking" from the owner's point of view. Taking the profits I am entitled to.
When you make an application there is no guarantee that what is being sought will be granted. Otherwise it wouldn't be an application that requires an approval, it would be a form to complete. That there is no guarantee their application would be accepted is something that the parents caught in the recent college admissions scandal understood. That is why they took measures to guarantee their children's applications would be accepted. It would seem Mr. Luksic and his company have done the same.
From the people's point of view not granting an application to destroy what is there would be called a "keeping". That is the people's prerogative. You may apply, you may feel it is great, but we can so no, we don't agree.
2
Is this how we make America great again? Trade our natural resources -- including our pristine environment, which benefits generations indefinitely -- to a foreign billionaire in exchange for a few pieces of silver, in this case, in the form of a hundred mining jobs, until our resources run out, at which time we'll get stuck with the clean up bill? So. Much. Winning.
19
It would be bad enough if the sulfide-ore mining process were confined to the Atacama Desert of Chile or our Sonoran Desert. The Boundary Waters? A pristine wilderness holding a high percentage of our fresh water? Think again.
12
As someone who has canoe camped numerous times in this uniquely beautiful wilderness, it sickens me that the Boundary Waters is being threatened by corporate greed. The BWCAW and the wildlife that live there have survived wildfires and catastrophic wind storms, but they cannot survive toxic waste that will poison its very life source: the water. And the article neglects to mention the expansive tourism industry that has taken hold from Lake Superior north to the Boundary Waters. These locally owned businesses - from outfitters to lakeside resorts - will also not survive the environmental damage that will be done by a huge multinational foreign-owned corporation. And no, it does not surprise me that Donald Trump will be the one who will be the architect of this environmental disaster. A greedy germaphobe who has never had a pet, he is inherently incapable of understanding the importance of a place as beautiful as the Boundary Waters.
20
Reminds me of the proposed Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay, AK. The potential for untold environmental damage to irreplaceable watersheds is heart wrenching. What is wrong with these people? The greed and callousness is beyond stunning.
23
Trashing iconic pristine environment, making a mockery of ethics regulations, greed...
When will Americans wake up to the reality that everything is for sale under trump and his GoP lackeys. That there is a conspiracy to trash the environment in the name of myopic self aggrandizement. That a millions of years' project to create an iconic wilderness can be destroyed in a momentary paroxysm of greed by obscenely wealthy enviropaths for whom the leather and plush interiors of a stretch limousine mean more than a national monument.
The extraordinary beauty of the Boundary Wilderness is that if one tree falls no one will know. But if one billionaire falls in a corrupt scheme to devastate that forest it will be heard, noted and applauded throughout the land.
'This land is OUR land'...let's keep it that way!...
19
Trump and his crooks can stay as far away from Minnesota's Boundary Waters as possible. We don't want him here.
18
People may not agree on much these days but underestimating Minnesotan's collective love and sense of responsibility for and stewardship of the Boundary Waters will be a mistake. Everyone wants a great future for the Iron Range but the people actually living there know what costs will be worth bearing.
14
@JKvam The people living on the Iron Range are the ones demanding this project, and the northeastern MN DFLers are all in bed with this mess. We must demand accountability from our own too.
4
"An Interior Department spokeswoman said that neither Mr. Kushner nor Ms. Trump been involved in discussions about the mine."
That like saying Al Capone was not directly involved in gangland murders. That is what the DoI people were chosen for.
19
The frightening pace at which this administration is rolling back all the federal regulations that are in place to protect our air, water and natural environment from degradation is nothing short of appalling. That the Trump administration would green light this mining project, disregarding all the warnings of toxins that could forever pollute this watershed is simply par for the course. Couple this with Trump's dismantling of President Obama's initiatives to decrease carbon emissions, to increase milage standards for cars, to promote renewable energy while decreasing our dependence on coal, to protect our extensive coastlines from a free-for-all of off shore drilling, and you get a clear understanding of how little concern he has for our future generations that will be living in an increasingly hostile environment.
The short term profits gained by this totally de-regulated economy will push this planet to it's limit. Trump is like a bull in a china shop, and the china shop is Earth.
18
Same ole, same ole. And of course, we are to accept the nonsensical excuse offered. In other words, in your face, try to do something about it!
8
This may seem childish, but I just have to say it out loud: I hate Trump and his family for their greed and selfishness. This is one more reason why Americans need to stop idolizing the wealthy and equating wealth with success and happiness.
34
Who is paying the rent for the Kushners? The tax payer? And why has the United States sold off so much of it's country to foreign businesses? Finally, what's trump's cut?
15
A couple hundred jobs in trade for a spoiled wilderness. Sounds like a plan right out of the trump playbook. I grew up amid the iron mines of northern MN and all the ruin they left behind. But they provided thousands of jobs in a depressed area of the country that held no alternative. The economy of northern MN has changed since then. It is more diverse now. Tourism is what holds towns like Ely at the edge of the Boundary Waters together. Trump and his buddy from South America should take a hike. No, not that kind of hike. I mean they should put on backpacks and hike and canoe through the Boundary Waters. But that wouldn't be something Trump would do, is it. No golf. Sad.
329
Ely just lost Shopko and the Dollar store. Over 300 resorts have closed in MN in the last 10 years, many of them in NE MN. The Harvard “study” claims 6K jobs in tourism in the tri county area. That area includes the North Shore and Duluth, so I suspect the jobs in and around Ely are probably more like 1,000. Tourism is a minimum wage, part time job serving the 150K people that claim to visit. Many days, no one actually goes in a canoe on the lakes. People come from Duluth and the twin cities and Chicago fully loaded, buying nothing but gasoline in Virginia to avoid “the high cost” of gas at the end of the trail. And with the upcoming generation, the visitors to the area will become less and less.
If the permits are filled out correctly, the state PCA approves, and the company meets the requirements, why should the process be stopped? Otherwise, we need to start prosecuting repeat offenders before they commit the next crime. At least they have a proven track record.
3
@George There's no 'proven track record' for this company. This article states an example of a polluting mine by this very same company. Furthermore, in history there has not been a single sulfide-ore copper mine that has not polluted the surrounding area. In this case, the pristine source of water that without disturbance can last generations, is way more valuable than a temporary source of copper. What happens to these towns when the mine goes bust and abandons MN in 20 years?
30
@George
"Many days, no one actually goes in a canoe on the lakes."
Have you actually ever been to the BWCA? I've been going there for over 25 years, my brother and uncle for nearly 60. There was a time, MANY years ago, when you could go there in the shoulder season (September) and not see many people, but those days are long gone. My brother and his son were there last September and could barely find a place to camp - and that's not even "high" season.
As far as I'm concerned, we should be VERY wary and skeptical about anything involving the environment with the Trump administration, which has sold itself out to big energy and industry lobbyists -- not to mention that Trump cares only about reversing anything President Obama favored. Allowing this company to go in there and wreck the BWCA would be a monumental mistake, and one from which the area would never recover. Once it's gone, it's gone.
26
That man Trump is going to destroy everything.
15
I appreciate that the NYT is covering this but must disagree that this is a “local” issue. The boundary waters are adjacent to Lake Superior, one of the largest bodies of fresh water in North America. It is one of the premier wilderness areas in the world and it is being threatened by Chilean mining conglomerate Antofagasta whose environmental record is questionable at best. The damage that this mine will do (they always do damage, implying otherwise is simply dishonest) is considerable and will long outlast the temporary and exaggerated employment benefits promised. Also the wealth generated will not go to Americans but to a Chilean billionaire, how is this “America first”? The connection between the corrupt Trump family and another wealthy foreign plutocrat may be interesting in DC and New York but is only a minor note in a drama of duplicity and cupidity threatening a significant portion of the Great Lakes. This is part of a larger issue involving America’s land, air and waters by an extractive industry with a history of environmental pollution and degradation that lasts for generations. They will promise jobs and wealth for local communities, look at the history of mining in the upper Great Lakes basin and you’ll find out how empty that “promise” is. Nothing remains except abandoned mines and communities with significant legacy pollution and the associated costs, this will be no different, its delusional to believe otherwise. So no its not “just” local, it never is.
48
@John Chastain
No, it is not a local issue. Minnesota's Iron Range has a long history of mining. Immigrants from all over Europe settled there to work the mines and their descendants still live there whether they mine or not. The Iron Range has it's own ethos. Any politician who comes in and promises to reopen the mines or open a new mine gets a lot of positive attention. Trump has been well received there for that reason. By seducing the vote of the Iron Range, Trump hopes to turn Minnesota from red to blue. He is using the Rangers as a wedge. It's all politics. What does he care if the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and Lake Superior are polluted if he can turn another blue state to red?
5
I don’t know much but I’m pretty sure I know a bribe when I see one.
17
My takeaway from this story: You got to be kidding me. But then I realize we’re talking about the Trump family.
11
Living in Minnesota I can tell you that once you get outside of the Twin Cities it's not much different than Mississippi. It is Trump country and they're buying whatever he's selling. No matter how reckless or hateful.
9
@David I also live in Minnesota and I would say that our politics are a little more nuanced than that. The Iron Range historically votes Democrat. While Trump has led to some political "weirding" in this state, Minnesotans definitely are more independent and sophisticated than your comment would suggest.
8
@David
There's nothing nuanced about supporting racism and corruption.
1
@David
And further, Minnesotans need good jobs. Not just 'ski town' type minimum wage seasonal ecotourism that only provides a sustainable lifestyle for one group: the owners.
2
Future headline: "Containment Field Barrier Fails: Toxic Tailings Flood Lake Superior and Minnesota Arrowhead Watersheds."
"Containment fields that were put in place by Twin Metals mining, a Chilean mining company with the approval of the Trump Administration, failed yesterday, making much of Minnesota's drinking water unfit for humans and wildlife.
"Who knew? said a Trump spokesman. Meanwhile President Trump says he dosen't recall having anything to do with the mining leases to a Chilean company which owns the leases. Mr. Trump spoke from his new golf resort in Santiago, Chile...."
OK. I made that up. But the BCWA is under threat and is too beautiful for words. We in Minnesota have been down this road before. Massive spills of asbestos-laden taconite tailings flooded into Lake Superior in the 1970's. Judge Miles Lord presided over the trial concerning the clean-up. Look it up on Google. It's real.
12
Love this article and the insight. Part of me is excited about the prospects for the community stemming from the mine, most of me is sick at how this has progressed. I hope cooler heads prevail and a closer look is taken. I also hope a truly US mining firm takes over and not the Chileans. It should be noted that the mine location is south of a Major MN roadway, many tens of miles south of what would be considered the Boundary Waters themselves and, finally, 8.75 miles south of this last photo of Garden Lake.
3
@Tom The entire project does fall within the Superior National Forest, however.
4
@Tom It is true that the proposed mine isn't actually IN the Boundary Waters, but every bit of water flows together. The BWCA is made up of thousands of lakes, rivers, and streams, which all connect with each other. As someone who frequents that area, drinking the crystal clear water out of the lakes is something extremely special and should not be tampered with. In my opinion water and its benefits far outweigh any type of ore.
4
The Boundary Waters and the natural water resources of this Federally Protected Area are invaluable environmental assets that require rigorous protection to ensure humanity and the natural world's survival. WHY our nation would allow a private Chilean business with a disastrous environmental record to develop and threaten this natural resource is disturbing and perplexing. Why we would threaten our peaceful and positive relationship with our Canadian neighbors is appalling. Oh wait... that's right... we have a sociopath living in the White House. "mine, Mine, MINE" in his mind has a small amount to do with envisioning profits from copper and a EVERYTHING to do with ego and unfettered greed. And NO... his motivation and actions have nothing to do finding jobs for unemployed/underemployed taconite miners. He could care less about them... He is motivated and salivates over a real estate deal that provides an ostentatious estate in Washington for his children/trained seals. WAKE UP AMERICA!
24
@Leslie374
So, a few new jobs and millions for Chileans and absolute destruction of that local environment, all done by Republicans. Do they care for America?
13
@Sam Song
"Do they care for America?" No, Sam Song, they only care about personal profits. Their personal profit.
4
The Boundary Waters are one of our greatest natural resources, not the ore that rests beneath them. To despoil them is an unforgivable sin.
31
Here is my problem with ethics offices: They seem to function as counselors, offering advice, establishing guidelines. So employees can simply flout these guidelines, and claim there is nothing unethical in their affairs....it's all in the minds of their detractors. Trump has claimed this as well as so many of the "best people" he has retained. Perhaps we should replace ethics guidelines with ethics laws when it comes to all government officials.
11
I can understand your thoughts, but in response, you have problems codifying every situation. Who would have thought someone would need a law to not rent to the relatives of someone who can influence your decisions? Follow the Golden Rule, not the rule of gold.
1
While I am not surprised by Trumps actions or his denial of any connection, I continue to be surprised that our system has little protections against a tyrant such as Trump. He lies and diverts for his own gain. Trump has never been for anything other than Trump. Yet our government allows his marketing and misleading statements to stand as truth. The only disgraceful thing going on is Trump and his republican leadership. Disgraceful how they are eroding our democracy and the tenets of the United States.
15
@Eafeaf
Well, despoiling of a vast amount of this conservation land would also be disgraceful, would it not?
1
@Eafeaf... "I continue to be surprised that our system has little protections against a tyrant such as Trump."....The protection should come from the Republican control of the Senate. Their absence has been stunning. I guess you have to conclude that absolutely nothing is more important to a politician than their reelection.
If only the Trump administration actually cared about keeping America great. Pristine wilderness areas such as the Boundary Waters are part of what gives this country its great beauty. Despoiling America for Chilean profit is just up the alley of an administration that is willing to accept election help from a hostile foreign power. When will Main Street Republicans get it? The party doesn't care about them--it cares about how much it can steal from them.
22
@Nina RT Main Street Republicans will never get it, not because they are incapable, but because it seems that their votes are cast emotionally. Issues such as abortion, gun control, and taxes rule the day when voting because they are simple and easily understood. One can either be for or against. Looking into an issue such as a Chilean mining company harming a natural resource and the obvious connection to the first family require analysis that may reveal no simple answers. Republicans stopped representing Main Street Americans a long time ago. Maybe they never really represented us at all.
Someone asked the question: what do Jared and Ivanka pay for this place. According to news at the time, that figure is $15,000 a month. Sounds like a lot, but consider the following. A mortgage for that property assuming a 20% downpayment, a very low and interest rate (around 4%) and an unrealistically low property tax of $5000 gets you to a monthly payment of over $28,000. The Trump's spawn got themselves a very sweet deal that absolutely no actual ethics advisor would go for. But corruption is the point. It's a feature, not a bug for the swamp creatures they are.
27
What makes America "exceptional"? No one is held responsible for damage wrought, or transgressions committed - and no one ever apologizes.
12
Selling America’s resources to foreigners without giving a care as to how it might affect the environment. Isn’t this environmental treason? Another example is the Pebble Mine near Bristol Bay. A Canadian company with a bad environmental record would endanger the world’s largest Salmon fishery with toxic metals if the proposed mine tailings pond ruptures like the one that the company operated in Canada did. Trump couldn’t care less. Gotta vote these clowns out 2020!
20
When there's a blatant conflict of interest, the Trumps claim innocence. Their words and actions defy all reason. It's a repeat cycle of deliberate lies and obstruction.
One silver lining? Their newly elected Governor, Tim Walz is strong on carbon free wind and solar. Let's see if he walks the talk...
6
My wife and I were outfitted at Gunflint Northwoods Outfitters in 1967, canoeing on several lakes in the Canadian wilderness. Later we introduced our daughter to the natural beauty of the boundary waters. If this corrupt administration prevails, all we will have are memories and photos. I want more than that for the sake of future generations of adventurers. This project must be stopped.
26
Sad that this barely registers as a scandal anymore.... four years ago, this would have led to resignations.
18
The promise of jobs from mining is always an empty one. There are not many to start with, many are filled by outsiders, and the mine has a lifetime that is limited, sometimes only a decade or two. The boom is always followed by a bust. In the meantime, the act of mining can create an unholy mess that cannot be cleaned up. There are ways to lessen some of the impacts, but the potential for extensive local contamination is always there. Another problem: It is unethical if not immoral to make money in the short term at the long term expense of others, including in this case future generations.
43
Let me get this straight: profits will leave the USA, and after they leave a toxic mess - they’ll run back to Chile & leave taxpayers with the cleanup bill. Corporate welfare.
121
The influence and connections between the Chilean mining company and Trump's family are clear here, even if nothing was "illegal". This is oligarchic behavior at it's finest: subtle influence among members of the .01% clique, without having to pass envelopes of cash under the table (a la Odebrecht). It is also very frustrating and very wrong.
The Boundary Waters area, as wilderness, is priceless and a national treasure. Even if the Liberty Bell were made of the purest gold, would we consider melting it down to access the metal within? Why do we continue to treat Nature's creation this way?
13
Straight up Bribery. Way to go America!
14
Easy solution: let them mine the metals, and watch them like a hawk. The various government agencies that regulate mining, toxic waste, etc. should form a task force -- at the mining company's expense -- to ensure, on a daily basis, that every precaution is being taken to protect the Boundary Waters ecosystem, right up to the last ounce of ore removed from the resource. Then, the same task force should oversee whatever remediation is required to put things back the way they were. And, if necessary, a second task force should be formed to keep an eye on the first task force. This can be done, and it should be done. (I hate the Trumps but really don't believe this project is going forward because those robot-children are renting a house from Luksic.)
3
Fair enough, but consider the risks, and the low probability that Trump's industry captive EPA, inferior Interior, and travesty of Forestry would ever conduct meaningful oversight.
6
@JimBob That's not how the Trump regime operates. They are not only deregulating, but also actively compromising the agencies that monitor air and water quality, like the EPA.
The people who run mining businesses are never personally liable for environmental damage.
5
@ben They're not going to start mining tomorrow. Hopefully by the time they do, Trump will be gone.
My family has vacationed in Ely several times. Camping in the Boundary Waters was an unforgettable experience for my children. Seeing a baby moose and its mother early one quiet morning from our canoes is something we still talk about! The government has tried to destroy this beautiful place once before with hydraulic dams.
13
What can I say?
Democrats are doing nothing except feeding their egos with candidacies for president.
There is only one “solution” – impeachment.
5
@Efraín Ramírez -Torres
No, see, impeachment is no solution.
Because Pelosi, Mistress of Political Equivocation and Damsel of Dithering.
Her political calculations, such as they are, override every concern for the well-being of the nation or its people.
Which is kind of nice because it allows Pelosi to confirm what Trump has been whining about all along - that all this impeachment talk is just a political show and that Democrats, under Pelosi are liars.
Meanwhile, we get over-scripted bon mots like "I don't want to see Trump impeached, I want to see him in jail". Not good enough, Nancy, and not likely ever to happen on your watch.
Act. Act now or kiss your, and our, political future farewell. And our water, too
4
@Efraín Ramírez -Torres - You should do more research on "impeachment" and what the possible outcomes would be if Trump was impeached. Impeachment will not remove Trump from office. The Senate Republicans will not allow it. As of right now impeachment is an empty gesture as long as Mitch McConnell is still the Senate majority leader and until the Republicans grow a spine...not to mention a conscience.
2
@susan et al, puh-lease- democrats right now are like a news media - they keep informing us about Trump’s improprieties and crimes and nothing happens – BTW – I’ve read a little about them. I lived the Nixon and the Clinton impeachments- they made a difference.
Kellyannne Conway announced that she will not go to Congress about the Hatch Act – nothing happens – just another news.
1
Sickening corruption and greed - all round in this saga. One might expect it from a rich mining person, but from the President of the country? I still fail to understand why your citizens' elected him. The most important sentence in this report" “In 100 years, this water is going to be far more valuable a resource here than copper,” Sullen Sack, a wilderness educator.
23
Trump is using US assets like he personally owns them. Following his departure all interior and other department giveaways to Trump buddies contracts and permissions will need to be revoked for the fraud that they are.
Pay attention Trump base: he is giving away YOUR assets.
14
I've read that 20% of the worlds fresh water is in Minnesota. If water is the oil of the future, as they say, it might be best to leave it clean and unpolluted?
14
Oh goody...now we get to put the last and largest reliable source of fresh water on the planet at risak for foreign interests ands our dismally corrupt President.
Should be fun.
Nice to have some clarity, again, on the corruption, the blatant perfidy, of the Forest Service as anything but a Chamber of Commerce with trees (for now).
Honestly, who needs water when you have an endless supply of copper?
Never mind that, thanks to monsters like Trump, Lukisc, the Forest Service and dread Army Corps of Engineers, clean water will be worth many times the price of copper. And we will have wasted ours, given it away to a foreign corporation like everything else of value on this miserable continent.
13
More of Trump's pay to play policies.
14
Conservatives are all for the environment, until someone finds they could make a nickel by trashing it. Mining companies always say "Oh, we'll do all we can to keep it clean", when what they mean is "We'll do what ever doesn't cost us too much". Then there's a disaster, and irreversible damage is done, they say "Oops! Sorry about that!"
Meanwhile, the Trump clan continues to act like the Emoluments Clause doesn't exist, secure in their Senate majority.
21
So, there are no rules regarding ethics, buddy deals, corruption of any kind the the government, anymore. Maybe republicans should just start advertising and sell their votes and influence to the highest bidder.
12
There are no surprises here, only on-going validation of the Trump agenda. First and foremost it is to undo virtually every policy that was initiated under the Obama administration. This action is particularly gratifying for the President because it also allows another attack on the environment. The second piece involves the Emoluments Clause. The Trump Family (including the President) is benefiting financially across a broad range of areas. Lines are not being crossed with this administration, they are being erased. We can only hope that norms and ethics find their way back to Washington following the 2020 election.
32
With Trump it is ALWAYS big business first over the environment. He started it with coal; the dirtiest fuel on the planet and he has been relentless ever since in pulling back a variety of environmental regulations.
Of all our modern day Presidents, he has been the most ruthless capitalist. To think the Republicans once had the great Teddy Roosevelt representing them and even Richard Nixon who set up the EPA.
Once upon a time, we had enlightened people from both Parties that worked to improve our environment. No more. We will be paying for decades for the piggish allegiance of Republicans with their big business cabal.
28
@Babel
TR lived on a sprawling waterfront property in upstate New York and was an avid hunter and outdoorsman. Even Nixon had rural California roots. All Trump has ever known is concrete and steel and building huge towers gouging into the sky. If it's not a golf course, he's openly disdainful of nature. Plus, there's money to be made and upon that altar, everything to him is an acceptable sacrifice. If Trump's not the worst specimen this nation has ever produced, he's in the top 5.
8
How deeply, stunningly sick that we’re ready to destroy our most precious, miraculous assets to dig for materials to make useless junk so a few crooks can buy more useless junk. Two or three more generations on this course and they will curse our legacy.
39
You don't even have to be anywhere near this situation to catch the smell. Coincidence my eye. Of course, who would expect otherwise from the children of two criminal fathers? Their corruption and amorality are so ingrained that I'll bet they even sleep well, unlike the rest of us as we watch our beautiful country wither and die at the hands of the shameless new robber barons.
48
Everything the Trump's and Kushner's touch, smells of corruption.
If their "sponsor" Luksic wants to mine, why not the Berkeley Pit copper mine in Butte, Montana, which has already fouled up the land, instead of the pristine wilderness in Minnesota?
Their local economy needs it.
12
Criminals committing crimes against nature. They would strip mine in Yellowstone and Glacier if they could. John Muir and Aldo Leopold are spinning in their graves. An irreversible travesty unfolds.
19
I've had my own little enfolding into nature and had hoped to share with my granddaughter, but like most environmental plans, did not occur. We Americans are doomed to follow the rest of the world into exploitation, the parasites are just waiting for President Carter to die to rip open what is left of the Alaskan wilderness, pressure is put on the native reservation to open mines, zonings calling for block parks are now totally eliminated in cities, and the early destruction of trollies in cities in favor of cars is now coming back to haunt us all.
4
America is for sale, not much left for the people, get it while you can.
the trickle down of the tax cut for the 1% per centers
8
The reverse Midas in chief touches another piece of pristine America.
A few hundred jobs? Laughable. They didn’t even try to inflate the numbers.
There are thousands of vacancies around our country at the moment. Millions of people move because of their job every year.
14
On a canoe trip down the Dolores River this past weekend I remarked that I could not imagine Trump appreciating the beauty of the canyon that surrounded us. This article confirms my suspicions. The Dolores R. has been a wilderness study area for decades but the possibility of uranium mining in the area keeps the wilderness designation at bay. Just like the Pebble mine in Alaska, some things are just not worth the trade.
10
The problem is not the mining but when the mining is done, mine waste piles and, even worse, drainage from pits or shafts will release toxic heavy metals into surface and ground water for centuries. Once the copper is mined out, who will take care of the site to insure that massive water pollution will not occur?
Will Mr. Antofagasta commit to such a long term expenditure?--I sincerely doubt it as he probably walk away and leave the mess for others to clean up. Out here in the west, there are thousands of abandoned mines whose drainage has polluted thousands of streams and the government is stuck with the tab for the clean up. To think that this will not happen with the Boundary Waters is wishful thinking.
63
Twenty years ago, I spent three consecutive Septembers canoe-tripping in Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario, on the Canadian side of the border adjacent to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota. It was a magical place, little touched by human hands, teeming with wildlife and profoundly peaceful. It is the kind of place where the silence seeps into your bones, and when you come out — the first thing that strikes you is the noise and speed of civilization — you are not quite the same person you were when you went in. Trump and the Kushners, of course, will never understand the value of such a place. But many others do — in the parking lot at the trailhead were cars with licence plates from all over the central United States and as far south as Kansas, Colorado and Texas. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area is unique; there is no other tract of boreal forest in the continental United States like it. Americans need to wake up, or an irreplaceable piece of their natural heritage will be gone forever.
176
@Thomas Morgan Philip
Plus the fresh water. Fracking, cows, and agriculture uses a great amount of water. All pollute the water in one way or another. Fresh water will be needed to carry civilization forward.
14
@Thomas Morgan Philip I lived just north of the Quetico Provincial Park for two months in the 1960s. The place is magical. The sound of the loons in the morning, the serenity and the fishing. The fresh fish cooked on a campfire is both a superb meal and an even better memory. The area must be protected.
8
@Thomas Morgan Philip I too grew up paddling the BWCAW during the summers of my youth. It's been 24 years, but I'm heading back in a few weeks, and putting in near Ely to see the western side once again, before this mine ruins it. (The Gunflint Trail, was always my destination).
Let's face it, it is not the party with "D" behind their names who are issuing the mining permits and leases in wilderness areas. They've done it to southern Utah, with the dismemberment of the Grand Staircase Escalante NM and Bears Ears, and now they are allowing the despoliation of one of the few remaining wild areas within the Canadian Shield. I only hope I'm still around when Karma comes calling.
7
Simply disgusting and wrong to mine here. There is no such thing as a mine that does not harm the environment - especially a copper mine. I say this as a geologist and environmentalist.
Start the impeachment process. This president is corrupt.
190
@Andrew Macdonald
I'd really like to speak with you. Please contact me, if you would, at Save the Boundary Waters.org. Thank you.
-MN
1
Somehow I get the feeling that a lot of Chilean money ended up in Trump's pockets.
29
"Flushing even small amounts of mine waste into the Boundary Waters could quickly acidify the ecosystem and potentially wipe out walleye, bass, trout, and northern pike.
Releasing sulfates would also kill wild rice and feed algal growth, muddying lakes so clear that people now drink from them without filtration.
Twin Metals asserts that preliminary tests show its waste would be non-acid-generating, but declined to offer any proof."
http://www.citypages.com/news/a-chilean-mining-company-lays-claim-to-minnesotas-water/509288371
29
Calling Jared and Ivanka " advisors " is a joke ..... they're completely unqualified in any way. The fact is that Trump has simply brought the "kids" with him instead of finding a qualified team.
44
So the federal government will permit destruction of pristine Minnesota wilderness for the monetary benefit of a foreign corporation because Jared got a screaming deal on a DC rental?
106
@Kevin
Yes exactly right. With the help of the practiced liars and
spinners they employ. What's worse is that if there were
hundreds of thousands in the streets around the country
Trump could be stopped .
7
Under the last administration, the nation's treasures were well guarded; now the vault is open and the looting is non-stop, really quite amazing. How long will the party go on and will it be possible to clean up afterwards or is the whole place going to go down in a conflagration? As our president might say, "You'll see. You'll find out soon enough!"
9
@Soquelly
Well, here's one thing we know for certain.
Whatever Trump and his Corps of Heedless Greed manage to do, it will never be undone.
If we lose these waters, they will be gone forever, and no doubt will become a powerful precedent for more to follow.
In the process we will lose the Great Lakes as a source of useful water.
This is potentially one of the greatest crimes against humanity ever contemplated, all for a relatively wee bit of profit for very, very insignificant people.
4
Coincidence by coincidence the corruption goes forward, step by step. Oligarchs everywhere are not to be trusted.
7
Northern Minnesota has already been gutted with strip mines across the Iron Range from Grand Rapids to Ely. Do a Google Map satellite view of the towns Hibbing and Virginia to get a bird's eye perspective of the destruction that will be the fate of the Boundary Waters if Trump and his family have their way.
And, one question about the "rent" being paid by Ivanka and Jared. The amount is not mentioned. Any bets it is mere pocket change, if not literally then comparatively, given the wealth claims by the Trump and Kushner families?
13
Under Trump, we will destroy everything of beauty for filthy lucre. We'll perch on a golden toilet. But it will still be a toilet.
29
does the greed ever end? what about the changes in the climate and protecting what natural resources we have left. why does greed and power continue to win?
44
@Calleendeoliveira Because we as a nation allow it
Beyond the appearance of impropriety in the relationship between Trump and the Chilean mining magnate, this situation is an example of how the industrial base of our wealth is also the source of the pollution that is destroying our planet. How do we balance our dependence on the mode of production and our future health?
14
Amy Klobuchar's views on this would be useful...
32
@JC
She's been hard to pin down on this issue. That's one reason she's dropped down on my list of Democrats.
7
@617to416 She's the granddaughter of an iron miner and the "Rangers" who live up there consider her one of their own. We love her down here, too, but I'm sure she must feel very conflicted by this.
1
Is it karma that American corporations bribed tin pot dictators to steal a country's wealth and now corporations bribe our own tin pot dictator to steal ours?
Kalorama is an old area in D.C.. It is possible that the service line feeding the house is lead. I have seen lead service lines in D.C. How would Jerod react to his children being poisoned by the water?
15
The earth-killing corporations and their paid-off politicians are accelerating the death of Nature and the biosphere.
They look at beautiful places, clean air and water, trees and animals, and all they see are dollar signs.
They have no souls, conscience, or ethics, and are guilty of the ultimate matricide--the killing of Mother Earth.
The sad thing is, technoindustrial civilization requires copper and other mined materials.
Our entire civilization is based on harming the biosphere and innocent animals!
38
This crooked man is indeed destroying the country in front of our very own eyes.
40
Until Democrats have the majority in the House AND Senate, there is nothing we can do. The government is a corrupt, fascist regime - and the House can't stop it.
Vote for the Democrat in 2020.
114
What is trump's main focus, you got it MONEY. Beyond that, everything is for sale and to be exploited and auctioned off. He is totally clueless and could not care less about the future harm. Let's get a few mining jobs now and worry about the damage later. It's an old familiar tale that continues to happen time after time. Unfortunately, big money interests are in bed with him and love him dearly....spare him the details, just show him the money.
15
destroy beauty that can never be replaced just for a few bucks for folks that already have more money than they know what to do with. Sad. very sad.
33
I have been on canoe trips to BWCA -- its beauty and unspoiled wilderness is truly a treasure. One amazing thing is the sound -- there is none, a sign of true wilderness. You have never heard such silence. What a travesty this would be if it goes through, and the Republican party can take the responsibility for destroying a pristine wilderness - for the sake of Trump's coddled children living in corrupt splendor and wealth.
70
@Jim
Silent until sunset, then you can hear the haunting calls of the state bird, the loon echoing from lake to lake.
5
Heartbreaking.
We went to Ely a number of years ago, all the way from the Green Bay, Wi area, to buy our brand new Souris River canoe, a beauty. It’s given us some of the best memories of our life. Especially now. We took our little dog out in it with us, always. And now he’s just passed away after all those wonderful adventures.
Why oh why, does Donald Trump and his brood have to stick culprit, greedy fingers in everything?
The Boundary Waters have always been a haven for serenity, peace, beauty, nature. There is no comparison of that peace to the selfishness and greed that this mining venture will cost the Boundary Waters. Just plain wrong. As everything Trump touches is - wrong, chaotic, the opposite of peace.
20
Thank you NYT for great reporting. One man's comment that in a few years water will be more valuable than copper stood out. Mines are notorious for requiring millions of dollars in clean up that always falls to the taxpayers and usually doesn't happen. In the 90s, Bill Clinton stopped a gold mine that was adjacent to Yellowstone National Park's boundary and would have polluted the Lamar Valley. Trump, on the other hand, visited Montana four times in the last election cycle, two of those visits one hour from Yellowstone, and never bothered to step foot in our first National Park. Only if it had his name on it would he have come by.
35
It’s time the extremely wealthy fear for their lives. Us commoners should demand 100% tax over a certain income. Foreign companies should not be allowed to strip this country of it’s resources. It’s time to eat the rich.
164
“Unusual connection” is an odd way to describe bribery and corruption.
295
@Laura A Usual is more accurate with this administration!
25
The Trump White House has ethics officials who dispense advice. I just burst out loud laughing, until I wept...
65
I’m getting a little tired of hearing the term ”environmentalists”, as in “upsetting environmentalists”. I understand that there are professionals who work in that sector but a lot of people who care about the environment are simply “citizens”. And the word “upset” sounds pansy, unreflective of the injustices being done to the environment, and is cliche.
There’s a lot here that needs to be retired.
282
@Amelia Excellent comment!
I hadn't thought of that before - that there is something diminishing when you read that 'environmentalists are upset' - the mental image is of a small group of radicals who do not represent the majority, and whose job it is to be "upset". "Citizens" - especially here - is far better for reflecting popular outrage at environmental destruction.
44
@Carrie Yes, it just struck me recently how outmoded the terminology is.
21
@Carrie And thank you!
11
This is terrible. What can we do?
14
@bacrofton Join the Friends of the Boundary Waters and add your voice. Add money if you can.
13
What does Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, running to be the Democratic party's nominee for president in the next election, have to say about sulfide mining in her state? It seems odd she was not quoted in this story, unless she preferred not to comment ... which, in itself, would be telling.
58
@KAR Yes you have pointed to one road block that is very unfortunate. Klobuchar is from the Range and she has had solid wins because of her position on copper mining.
10
@KAR I have heard that Amy Klobachar is pro-mining. I have also read in our papers that at least 70 percent of Minnesotans are against this mine. For many good reasons, not the least among them is that tourism brings in a lot of money for the area. I have also attended many listening sessions in the Twin Cities where it is obvious that this area is valued by all kinds and colors of folks as a true resource that will be destroyed by this mine. Scientists agree. It will be tragic if Trump and his friends prevail. Former DNR Commissioner in Minnesota and now head of Save the Boundary Waters organization, has said that putting this mine adjacent to the Boundary Waters is like putting a mine next to Yellowstone National Park.
33
@Laura S.
Did she now, well i guess that doesn't look to good for her chance being elected.
7
What does Canada have to say about this mining project?
8
@Katrin Trudeau probably loves it..
1
@Katrin - probably the same thing they say about mining in Ontario and elsewhere in Canada: dig, baby, dig!
Do not think Canada is some kind of environmental haven just because we talk a good talk. Our economy is resource-based and we as a nation are as guilty as any for destroying the environment and contributing to climate change. We just have more forest to hide all the holes behind.
7
Journalists, follow the money.
70
Capitalize on your concern -- write to your representatives. Go to websites of groups like NRDC (National Resources Defense Council) and sign their petitions! We can do this!
45
@C we’re past the point of that being an effective approach. Thinking the Trump administration will reverse positions because of a petition is a dangerous level of complacency and a complete lack of understanding of how power is used or influenced.
3
I’m assuming all the R’s outraged about Clinton and Uranium will be equally outraged and vocal about Trump and Copper - not.
NYT, pls keep following the money. Campaign contributions, Trump branding deals in Chile and at Luksic properties, loans to the Kushner family businesses...business as usual for the Trump family.
303
This is EXACTLY why Trump will win again. Americans don't care about anything but making more money to spend on cheap and mediocre things. This shows how Obama didn't care about jobs and Trump is the con, er uh, job man.
Democrats lose because they cannot steer the conversation into what matters - in this case the only thing that matters is jobs.
12
Instead of 'Presidential Libraries', we should have 'Libraries OF Corruption', dedicated to documenting the corrupt actions taking place during every administration.
Historians could spend decades untangling the corruption of the Trump administration.
Or is that just wishful thinking?
Hasn't the Interior department always been open for business in giving away the public's wealth to all the 'pigs at the trough'?
9
Mr. Terré called the lease a simple real estate transaction that happened to involve the incoming president’s family. “I do not believe there was anything unethical or inappropriate about this business transaction,” he said.
____________
Actually, there seems to be nothing ethical or appropriate about anything in this administration. The base dances to the "drain the swamp" tune while the Duck turns it into a cesspool. MAGA in their Chinese made hats.
124
Not a single soul should mourn the loss of a hundred mining jobs, a a million jobs for that matter. Work comes and goes, people migrate. Not long ago my family ran textile mills in Connecticut, which is now a distant memory. Move on, and don’t destroy the environment while claiming you’re not being treated fairly.
867
@Chris McClure
How can it be a loss of jobs if they don't exist in the first place? What of the loss of jobs of those who have jobs because of the wilderness?
133
@Chris McClure Your comment is of great importance to this debate. The problem is that we are all using copper. And that is the comeback from copper mining supporters followed up with "in Minnesota there will be enormous efforts to not pollute and do it copper mining correctly, unlike South America".
11
@Carolyn The copper isn't an infinite resource. In less than one generation the find will be played out, the wealth shipped to Chile and the miners left with no more work. And that's the best-case scenario. The worst is the same as the best with the addition of an accident in the Kiwishiwi River basin that floods the wilderness with sulfuric acid and ruins the tourism business as well.
149
My God! When will the Trumps be held accountable? They are dirty beyond belief. One day, hopefully in the very near future those people will be out of the White House and out of power, I hope that they will at that point start tasting their own venom, because I think that in their case people will not forget.
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@JEH We’re going to need mining equipment to extract them, kicking and screaming!
3
Copper mining is dangerous for the environment and worldwide the mines pose a toxic threat.That one should be located in a protected wilderness area is unthinkable.The Berkeley open pt copper mine in Butte Montana is known as the most toxic copper mine in the world.The waters in it have poisoned thousands of migratory birds.Trump and his greedy cohorts are doing their best to further degrade the environment and make large areas unlivable.The Kalorama house connection is indeed suspicious.There are lovely homes in the DC.district of Kalorama but the one the Kushners rented is not one-it sits right on the street and has neither a front yard nor a back yard where children can play and the Kushners have three young children.There are greener, more private areas they could have chosen.The whole story is another episode of Trump “collusion”!
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Trump may have “visited Minnesota,” but he hasn’t laid eyes on this (or any other) pristine wilderness. He has no clue or care what he’s giving away, and that is the real crime.
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@Val
Whether he values it or not, it's not his to give away.
39
@Val And you can't rake water, either.
1
@Val
Perhaps he should be shown the value of a world-class golf course in the area. I'm afraid $$ are the only things he sees clearly.
1
Little doubt what the end result will be... this Chilean mining company already has the world's largest open-pin copper mine, located in northern Chile.
14
The graft and corruption practiced by the royal family no longer surprises me. However, it does enrage me.
Imagine for a moment if a Democrat was in office, hired family members and engaged in pay-to-play.
28
Do Republicans love their grandchildren more than money? That is the question. The sooner we destroy our habitat, the sooner it will recover without the encumbrance of our species. Or, on the other hand, we could behave as responsible custodians of the terrestrial ecosystem.
10
I find the sign pictured in the piece, "mining supports us," sad. Mining interests don't and have never supported you, but merely exploit and steal. Whether its a foreign company or not makes no difference. Either way the area will be left with a polluted and gutted land.
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@John
You have discerned a common theme, the same theme repeated in Northeastern Minnesota in the 1960 s for taconite mining after the high grade ore was just scooped from the Mesabi, Vermillion, and Cuyana range deposits.
The processing method to extract the ore was to crush it, extract it, and the residual was "tailings." It was in large part done on the shores of Lake Superior and the tallings were dumped into the largest freshwater lake in the world.
However, Judge Miles Lord issued the historic opinion that changed that practice. The paper industries also dumped their chemicals into the St. Louis River watershed which feeds into Lake Superior at Duluth, MN and Superior, WI. Trees did not grow on the banks for miles as the St. Louis made its way to Lake Superior.
However, the politicians and their supporters coined the paper operations the "million dollar smell." I was chlorine gassed one night in the Cloquet paper mill; it was violent but I was young and nimble, made my way back down the man lift and recovered.
What if this project leaks into the groundwater?
10
The Antofagasta 2018 Annual Report reveals in the Notes at page 217 that the parent owns 100 % of Twin Metals Minnesota LLC.
Twin Metals in turn owns 70 % of deposits named Birch Lake, Spruce Road, and Maturi Southwest Deposits. It raises the question, not addressed in the 2018 Annual Report, who owns the remaining 30 %?
The note also addresses that the criteria for Antofagasta to proceed with an underground operation is 0.30 % copper augmented by credits from nickle, platinum, palladium, and gold. It is evident that Antofagasta will persist and given the timeline of the process phases, as disclosed in the Business Model portion they will be around for about two decades.
Sigrud Olson has passed but the passion remains for a cool drink from a canoe paddle. It must be noted that Antofagasta is a huge force and it has established a knob in the Washington Swamp. Who does own the other 30 %?
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@Dale C Korpi
Palladium may be the money metal of the bunch. It also has potential strategic purposes as US becomes a net oil and gas exporter under MAGA. The biggest user of palladium is petroleum refining for catalysts. You could start with the oil and gas business to find out who holds the other 30 percent. Maybe call up Koch Industries' Flint Hills refinery in the twin cities to see what they think. Or not.
9
@Michael Berndtson
Yes sir there is where the rest of the story is. The Limited Liability Company concept, passed sometime in state legislatures in the 90 s provides a veil of secrecy (eg., it was a boom for condominium ownership in New York and note how many the Trump Organization has)
Koch operated in plain sight and Jane Mayer chronicled how the thick Canadian tar sands crude was processed in Minnesota, near the MSP airport.
It is possible it is an oil and gas related owner, but that does not preclude another interest. If/once revealed it will be a tell as to the underlying motive/incentive aspect.
10
I’m very concerned that Twin Metals and PolyMet, who have spent tons of money trying to influence Minnesota, will have long term effects on ruining our state and water supply.
154
The rape of our land by foreign mining interests used to enrage my father. He was right.
516
@Michelle Teas rage is the correct response.
11
@Michelle Teas How does he feel about foreign ownership of the US housing market?
8
@Michelle Teas Foreign interests or domestic interests, this is WRONG either way!
7
This is so depressing. This revolting family corrupts and destroys everything they touch. I just changed my party affiliation from R to D. And yes, I'm one of those suburban, college educated, white women in a swing district. Can't wait to vote as I do in every election.
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@runningmom
Please do not vote alone. Appeal, advocate and reach out to all your eligible voting "sisters" and "brothers" to campaign and vote with you on November 3, 2020.
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@runningmom--Excellent news runningmom--we can get our country back--if we all vote! Thank you on behalf of many, many concerned citizens of Minnesota. (And come visit the Boundary Waters! You will never forget this wonderful National Park!)
43
"On a trip to Minnesota in April, Mr Trump was jubilant about the restoration of mining." I bet he was Jubilant looking at the opportunity for the "Trump" trademark.
66
Spur the growth with our collective look-the-other-way. The systemic corruption of the American Way of living big. It ain't just this sleaze but the demands placed on the earth by you and me.
23
Does anyone doubt that Trump is on his way to winning re-election when even the most blatant, and flagrant, ethics transgressions simply can’t be stopped?
The architects of the constitution, in all their genius, never for a moment considered that an American would so misuse the office for personal gain.
That’s why there is practically no defense in the constitution for Trump. He, it turns out, is the kryptonite the constitution never foresaw.
459
We need to add a long list of items to the Emoluments clause.
65
@Intrepid
The Founding Fathers never anticipated a complicit party, the Republicans, standing by and allowing all this to happen.
151
There IS a defense. We vote him out in record numbers. He only won by the slimmest margin in three states to take the electoral college. Minnesota borders Wisconsin where this has to be news. Trump won't pull an inside straight twice.
35
Why am I not surprised at this latest revelation of Trump’s willingness to endanger our water, wildlife, and ecosystem in the service of big business, in this case a foreign billionaire who, not satisfied with his immense wealth, wants to strip our landscape by mining copper.
The article states that one of Luksic’s business tactics is to lobby governments by dangling inducements like real estate properties as deal sweeteners. After quickly buying up expensive properties in DC in order to rent them out to incoming Trump administration bigwigs in 2016, he lucked out by renting a luxury home he had just bought to Jared and Ivanka. Was it just coincidence that this caught the eye of Trump?
It’s the old story—you grease my palm and I’ll grease yours.
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I'd like to know if the affected area in Boundary Waters is in the Rainy River Watershed Basin that flows into Hudson Bay, or in the Great Lakes Watershed Basin that flows into Lake Superior and from there into the rest of the Great Lakes. Both cases are bad, but one is potentially much more harmful to people in the U.S.
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@MG
It’s in the Rainy River/Hudson Bay watershed. The article fails to mention (along with alot of other things) the Polymet project, a subsidiary of Glencore, which is in the Lake Superior watershed, and which is much further along.
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@AB
If this flows into the Hudson Bay Watershed does Canada have any water rights being violated by treaty?
17