WASHINGTON — Hold onto your canoe paddles, America, because in a development that has left political observers rubbing their eyes in disbelief, the United States Senate voted Thursday to protect a pristine wilderness area instead of handing it over to a Chilean mining corporation. The vote was 50-49. Democracy, apparently, still works on odd Thursdays.
The resolution permanently bans sulfide-ore copper-nickel mining in the watershed of Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness — a staggeringly beautiful, 3-million-acre natural treasure that Antofagasta, a company based in Santiago, Chile, had generously volunteered to fill with toxic waste in exchange for nickel. The Senate said no thank you. The audacity.
Twin Metals Minnesota, Antofagasta's American subsidiary, has spent since 2019 trying to convince the federal government that what a beloved wilderness really needs is an underground mine. They will now, at long last, be invited to try that pitch somewhere else. Somewhere without treaty-protected wild rice, perhaps.
Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., who has been saying "sulfide mines cause pollution literally every single time" into a void for what must feel like several geological epochs, finally got to be right in a room full of people who voted accordingly. She described the outcome as a "major victory." She looked like someone who deserved a very long nap.
The two-vote margin prompted immediate reflection among political scientists, several of whom noted that the Senate had effectively been one abstention away from green-lit toxic runoff into one of the most-visited wilderness areas in the continental United States. Everyone agreed this was a totally normal way to make decisions about irreplaceable natural ecosystems.
Minnesota's tribal nations — who possess treaty rights to hunt, fish, and harvest wild rice in the Superior National Forest and who had been, with remarkable patience, explaining this to federal officials for years — celebrated alongside environmental groups, sporting organizations, and anyone who has ever looked at a photograph of the Boundary Waters and thought "yes, good, keep that."
Michael Fairbanks, chairman of White Earth Nation, noted that he had promised his people they would prevail. He seemed, impressively, not even slightly smug about it.
Actor Nick Offerman cheered loudly from the sidelines, having apparently spent considerable personal energy trying to prevent a foreign conglomerate from poisoning his favorite canoe destination. He has since been described in certain circles as "an activist," as though caring about clean water is a fringe position.
The U.S. Forest Service, which completed a 675,000-comment environmental review in 2022 in which over 95% of respondents said "please do not do this," will be pleased to know that the Senate has caught up to where the public was four years ago. Better late than a Superfund site.
Supporters of the mine — including Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Minn., who called the vote a "major setback" for workers — continued to push the domestic jobs argument, a talking point that does require setting aside, with some vigor, the fact that all profits were bound for South America. The jobs were real. The beneficiary was always Antofagasta.
Twin Metals still has a federal lawsuit pending, because a company that has been told no by the Forest Service, the Interior Department, the courts, and now the full United States Senate is nothing if not persistent.
Bless their hearts.
Note: This is a fictional, satirical rewrite of a real news story. In reality, the Senate voted 50-49 to overturn the Boundary Waters mining moratorium, opening the door for Twin Metals to pursue federal permits.
The REAL bad news: https://apnews.com/article/mining-moratorium-boundary-waters-senate-vote-3e3f0827d52dd6d37f5e554b804ff27c