Reversal of mining ban in Boundary Waters could impact Montana
Laura Lundquist
(Missoula Current) The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted 50-49 to overturn a 20-year ban on mining near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, using a law that could have ramifications for land protections in other states including Montana.
The Senate spent several hours debating House Joint Resolution 140, which uses the 1996 Congressional Review Act to override a 2023 public lands order issued by former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to ban mining for 20 years in the headwaters of the Boundary Waters Canoe area. Both of Minnesota’s senators opposed the resolution. No Republican Senators rose to speak in support of the resolution.
In the past, Congress has used the Congressional Review Act to overturn agency rules, but never a public land order. But in January, Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Minn., broke that trend when he introduced HJ Res. 140. During the U.S. House debate on Jan. 21, Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., opposed the use of the Congressional Review Act.
“The Trump administration and Republicans have been using the CRA to overturn public lands protections that have never been considered rules,” Huffman said. “If this CRA succeeds, it won’t just open the Boundary Waters to pollution, but it would set a terrible and dangerous precedent for Congress to roll back protections for any of our treasured public lands with little oversight or notice just because Republicans have decided they’d rather pillage them for profit.”
The House passed the resolution on basically a party-line vote of 214-208, with one Democrat and one Republican voting against their parties. Montana’s Reps. Ryan Zinke and Troy Dowling voted in favor.
On Wednesday night, Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., tried to avert a Senate vote by making a point of order that the Congressional Review Act shouldn’t be used to overturn a three-year-old public land order. After the Senate tabled the motion, Smith testified for almost three hours in defense of the mining moratorium in the headwaters of the Boundary Waters.
On Thursday morning, Smith returned to warn her colleagues that Congress would set a bad precedent if it overturned the mining ban using the Congressional Review Act.
“What this would mean is that any public land order that has been done over potentially decades could then be rescinded by some partisan act of Congress, just willy-nilly. Think about what this means. It means mineral leases; it means timber public land orders in North Dakota. It means that any public land order or potentially any administrative action could be undone under a privileged process in the United States Senate,” Smith said. “Not only will it have impacts for my beloved Boundary Waters in my state, but it will have impacts in all of our states.”
Addressing the 70% of polled Minnesotans who opposed the resolution, Smith promised that even if the resolution passes, “we will not stop fighting and we will not stop our work to protect the Boundary Waters.”
In spite of the pleas of Smith and other senators, the Senate voted along mostly party lines to pass HJ Res 140. Both of Montana’s senators - Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy - voted in favor. Only Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Thom Tillis of North Carolina joined Democrats in opposing the resolution. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., didn’t vote.
Land Tawney, American Hunters and Anglers co-chair, said the vast majority of the Senate Republicans sit on the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus, and yet they just voted against all the sportsmen who lobbied for protection of the Boundary Waters.
“This is an indication that politicians would rather lick the boots of a South American billionaire than stand with the people. These mining companies - the majority are owned by foreign entities, and how long are we going to let them take our minerals for basically no benefit to the American people? Does this bode well for the Blackfoot, the Bitterroot, the Cabinets? No,” said Land Tawney, “Sheehy is from Minnesota, and if he can turn his back on the Boundary Waters in his home state, what is he going to do for his adopted state?”
Now that the ban will be overturned - Trump will likely signed HJ Res 140 - what does it look like to “not stop fighting?” Lukas Leaf, Sportsmen for the Boundary Waters executive director, said all options are on the table, including going to court to challenge the use of the Congressional Review Act.
“The use of the Congressional Review Act in this manner is ripe for it, and it has been discussed,” Leaf said. “But while it’s still at the federal level, this administration is going to move to reinstate federal mineral leases to Twin Metals and Antofagasta so (we’ll) oppose that. If that goes through, it goes to the state level and there is a lot of process for this mining company to go through there before anything happens. And we don’t know what the makeup of Congress will be after November elections. There’s something to be said for Republicans really hammering their agenda right now, because all signs point to things not turning in their favor come the elections.”
The history of the proposed copper sulfide mine goes back a few decades. Most recently, Twin Metals, a subsidiary of Antofagasta, a Chilean mining company with close ties to China, has proposed a copper sulfide mine on the Superior National Forest in the Rainy River watershed, headwaters of the hundreds of connected lakes that form the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.
On Thursday, Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., said copper sulfide mines have always eventually polluted surrounding lakes and rivers with acid mine drainage that has to be cleaned in perpetuity. So even though public lands is the one issue that unites constituents, Congress is in essence voting to pollute the Boundary Waters, Heinrich said.
“I know it’s fashionable today to talk about selling off public lands. This place that people like Teddy Roosevelt, Sigurd Olson and so many others fought to preserve. They are the places we are still free. They are not places to sell off to some foreign property for a few years of profit. A few years vs. a century of identity for the people of Minnesota and this country. This is a dark day for this body. This is a stain on what the Senate used to be but is not today.”
President Theodore Roosevelt established the 3-million-acre Superior National Forest, which includes the Boundary Waters Wilderness. In February, after the House passed HJ Res 140, four descendants of Roosevelt wrote a letter to Republican senators asking them to oppose the resolution, to no avail.
In 2016, the Obama administration proposed eliminating mineral resource extraction in three locations: the Rainy River watershed, the Methow Valley in Washington state and the Paradise Valley in Montana, where a proposed gold mine could have potentially polluted the Yellowstone River outside Yellowstone National Park.
The withdrawals were approved for the Methow and Paradise valleys, but the incoming Trump administration didn’t complete the Rainy River study in 2017. When the Biden administration took over in 2021, the study was finally finished and Haaland issued the public land order in 2022 to ban mining in the Rainy River basin for 20 years.
Montana benefitted from the Paradise Valley mineral rights withdrawal, which former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke formalized in a 2018 public lands order that placed a 20-year moratorium on mining outside Yellowstone Park. It was made permanent a year later by the passage of the 2019 Yellowstone Gateway Protection Act, so the Congressional Review Act can’t be used to reverse that.
But several mines are now being explored in Montana, including one in the headwaters of the Blackfoot River and another on federal land in the headwaters of the Bitterroot River. If a public lands order ever withdrew those mineral rights, it might not be guaranteed now.
During the second Trump administration, Congressional Republicans have also used or proposed using the Congressional Review Act to overturn land management plans in Western states, including Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah and Bureau of Land Management resource management plans in Alaska, Montana, and Wyoming.
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.