Mining to begin near Boundary Waters Canoe Area

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump and the U.S Department of Agriculture opened up 365 square miles of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area watershed and Superior National Forest to mine for copper and nickel.

The Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, ended an environmental assessment ordered by the Obama administration to determine if mining would harm the Boundary Waters. After 18 months of studies, there was no evidence to conclude that mining would be harmful to this region of Minnesota.

With the ability to begin mining over 365 square miles of land comes many positives. One positive to the mining would be the thousands of jobs created by the Twin Metals Mining. The Center of American Experiment based out of the Twin-Cities predicts that the copper and nickel mining would contribute over $3.7 billion annually to the state’s economy.

Donald Trump and the Department of Agriculture have been receiving a lot of backlash from environmental groups because the environmental study was supposed to take two years, but was finished before that. Environmental groups believe that the Department of Agriculture and President Trump ended the study early benefit large corporations at the expense of the Boundary Waters.