House GOP advances measures reversing Biden block on mining in Minnesota
Jeremy Beaman
The House Natural Resources Committee advanced two measures Wednesday designed to rebuke and reverse Biden administration actions blocking new mineral development in Minnesota‘s Superior National Forest.
Both bills, introduced by Rep. Pete Stauber (R-MN), come in response to the Interior Department’s rescission of two mineral leases for the Twin Metals mining project and subsequent land withdrawal covering approximately 225,504 acres in the Superior National Forest. The withdrawal blocks new mineral leasing in the area for 20 years.
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One of the resolutions would express disapproval of the land withdrawal under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. If the Senate were to pass the same resolution, the land withdrawal would be nullified without needing President Joe Biden’s signature.
The other measure would rescind the withdrawal via a different legislative means while also reinstating the two mineral leases withdrawn by the Biden administration, without which Twin Metals’s developers cannot move forward.
Both passed without support from the committee’s Democrats.
Republicans have criticized the Biden administration for blocking certain domestic mining projects, which would allow developers to exploit the nation’s reserves of key minerals of the sort needed in large quantities to build electric vehicle batteries and other technologies upon which the Biden administration is staking its climate change policy.
“Producing minerals domestically is critical to meeting the administration’s own renewable energy goals, yet the Biden administration has fought these safe American mining opportunities at every turn,” said Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-AR).
Twin Metals’s developers seek to construct and operate a mine in the Superior National Forest to extract copper, nickel, cobalt, and platinum group metals, but the Biden administration has thwarted the mine in order to protect the nearby Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
Critics of the mine remain unconvinced that the Boundary Waters can be protected from acid mine drainage and contamination, even if operators have a mitigation plan in place.
“Some of us believe that there are places in our country that are simply too unique, too pristine, too special to be put at risk by extraction industry or other industrial uses that would threaten those values,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), who opposed Stauber’s resolutions, said during the hearing.
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Stauber, who leads the committee’s Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee, sought to lure critics away from their opposition by emphasizing that the mine would not be constructed within the Boundary Waters and that modern technology and methods could prevent contamination.
He also argued that the proposed mine, which is located within his district, would be an economic boon for the region.