The Trump administration has cancelled a crucial environmental assessment that could have protected the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota. Is Bald Mountain in Maine next?

Here’s a quote by Tom Tidwell, chief of the U.S. Forest Service from 2009 to 2017, concerning the permitting of a sulfide ore copper mine on the edge of the Boundry Waters Canoe Area Wilderness: “The waterways along the Minnesota-Ontario border would carry pollution from a Twin Metals mine downstream to Voyageurs National Park in the U.S. and to Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario. Trump administration officials announced an abrupt end to the study and proposed ban on sulfide-ore copper mining that would have protected Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Wilderness. Not only did the Trump administration go against their word to complete the Minnesota study, they ignored science, facts and public opinion. In other words, they lied.”

This is the same kind of mining proposed for Bald Mountain by a company with no mining experience. And nothing prevents them from doing the same to our great state of Maine. Although the Bald Mountain proposal has been stalled, Mining Engineering magazine indicates that fight will continue for several years. A similar mine, the Black Hawk Mine in Blue Hill from the 1960s, is still an ugly scar on Maine’s landscape.

Should this type of mining be allowed where it is being proposed in Minnesota, it could pollute all of the waters of northern Minnesota, a dense collection of over 1,000 lakes connected by rushing rivers, some eventually emptying into Lake Superior, holder of approximately one-10th of the world’s fresh water, and from there to the other Great Lakes. The Boundary Waters Wilderness’ northern boundary is Canada’s Quetico Provincial Park, a continuation of the many lakes found in the BWCAW.

Is this what we want for Bald Mountain?

Robert Woodbury

Winslow


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