The Biden administration blocked plans for a major nickel and cobalt mine in northern Minnesota Thursday while the U.S. remains reliant on overseas supply chains for its critical minerals.
The “Twin Metals Project” would have tapped the Duluth Complex within the Superior National Forest, where 95 percent of the nation’s nickel reserves and 88 percent of American cobalt reserves remain underground.
Now, pending litigation over leases, the Department of the Interior has blocked the nearly $3 billion mine over concerns about the safety of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness inside the national forest.
“The Department of the Interior takes seriously our obligations to steward public lands and waters on behalf of all Americans,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a press release. “Protecting a place like Boundary Waters is key to supporting the health of the watershed and its surrounding wildlife, upholding our Tribal trust and treaty responsibilities, and boosting the local recreation economy.”
The department withdrew more than 225,000 acres of the Superior National Forest from consideration for mining operations, ensuring the Twin Metals project’s demise for the foreseeable future.
The agency’s decision to block the project, however, is a major step back for American mineral independence while the government’s mining regime remains so broken that the administration is shopping in Canada for natural resources.
Debra Struhsacker, a hardrock mining and environmental policy expert who has testified before Congress five times, told The Federalist the administration’s refusal to allow the Twin Metals project to move
