What is behind the push for mining near Minnesota's Boundary Waters?
The road to opening a copper-nickel mine in Minnesota is long and uncertain, but it's a path Twin Metals is exploring every day.
Their exploratory drilling brings them further below the surface than 16 stacked Statues of Liberty, all to refine a plan to mine out the copper and nickel on the land here, if they ever get the proper approvals.
Twin Metals Chief Geologist Kevin Boerst has been working to understand the deposit for 20 years.
"This is not a normal copper deposit. The day that Mother Nature made this deposit, she got up on the right side of the bed. She had all of her ducks in a row," Boerst said.
Twin Metals has invested heavily in capitalizing on it.
"$650 million to date, just to try to get into the environmental review process," Kathy Graul, director of public affairs and communications for Twin Metals, said.
Julie Klinger is an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, specializing in the politics and economics of rare earth elements.
"It is among the largest undeveloped copper-nickel reserves globally," Klinger said. "So copper nickel you might think of as the backbone of electrification, from bombs to EVs to electronic games. Demand over the past five years has definitely increased and dramatically."
Despite being a top user in the world, the U.S. has heavily relied on other countries to source copper and nickel, like Chile or Canada.
But it's not just the resources, they say.
"Growing up here, I've seen the challenges this town has gone through," Twin Metals Vice President Dean DeBeltz said.
DeBeltz says their estimates show a copper-nickel mine here would create hundreds of union jobs.
"We're fortunate to have the Boundary Waters. We're fortunate to have tourism. But we need to keep families here," DeBeltz said. "I see this as a huge opportunity. Family sustaining wages, family sustaining jobs."
DeBeltz says it would also create an estimated 1,400 trickle-down jobs, leading to a wider economic ripple effect on top of taxes and royalties.
"That's a significant revenue stream that's coming into the state when a project like ours becomes operational," Graul said.
Twin Metals' vast core archives in Ely paint a picture of what could be.
It's a project that now hangs in the balance with Gov. Tim Walz's mining ban in the area.
"Ultimately, our goal is to get back into a regulatory process. The time frame for getting there is a little uncertain," Graul said.
The mere possibility of a project here has galvanized people like local fishing guide Matthew Schultz to speak out. He's one of many opponents who say the potential environmental risks to this pristine watershed are not worth the trade-offs. He was in Washington, D.C. this past spring talking to lawmakers on behalf of sportsmen to push back against a future project.
"I recognize the nuance of this conversation, right? That fish finder requires copper. This boat is built out of 100 different minerals that came out of the earth; they had to come from somewhere, so there's no getting around that, but then there's also no getting around the fact that I cherish the Boundary Waters more than any other place in the world," Schultz said. "Just the knowledge that I know that I need critical minerals doesn't necessarily just give a permit to do it anywhere, right? And I know that the question is, 'If not here, then where?' I don't know, but I know for certain that it's not here."
"You can find copper other places, but all the good stuff has been taken," Boerst said. "We can't move it; I wish I could, but that's what it is."
"Our history of mining and our history of tourism, they can coexist; they have throughout our history. That can happen again. We'll be able to figure it out," DeBeltz said.
Twin Metals said it remains committed to a future project, adding the governor's mining ban "unnecessarily hinders the responsible development of Minnesota's natural resources" and is "harmful to the communities that want to see proposed projects given a fair shot."
