The Bois Forte, Grand Portgage, and Fond du Lac tribes, along with GLIFWC and the 1854 Treaty Authority have raised concerns about the impact of this project. The proposed mine exists within territory ceded by the tribes in the 1854 Treaty. The tribes reserved usufructuary rights in the area.

The public comments period began with the release of the document. At least 3 public hearings will be held.

Link to the Environmental Impact Statement here.

Press coverage here.

Excerpt from article:

In September, staff from all three Chippewa bands, the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission and the 1854 Treaty Authority submitted a 100-page “cumulative effects analysis” outlining their objections to the revised environmental-impact statement.

The tribes were included in the process both times as “cooperating agencies,” which meant an advisory role with no direct control over the data collection, writing or editing for the statement. Still, their influence on the latest draft is easy to spot.

This level of tribal engagement is not limited to the PolyMet project or the Minnesota tribes, says Nancy Schuldt, the Fond du Lac water-projects coordinator: “Today, tribes are exercising environmental authorities to a greater extent. There has been a tremendous amount of capacity building in terms of tribal staff and expertise to actually follow up on our request for a seat at the table when decisions like this are being made.” . . .

The mining of iron ore, meanwhile, has been altering northern Minnesota ecosystems for more than a century, and Schuldt wants that to be the starting point for any conversation about the impact of mining what is sometimes called nonferrous, or noniron, metals.

In northern Minnesota, copper, nickel and other nonferrous metals are embedded in rock that also contains sulfide. (That’s why this kind of mining is often called sulfide mining.) When you expose the rock to air and water, sulfuric acid is created. It’s the acid runoff from the exposed rock that somebody will have to be watching and treating for hundreds of years.

In their response to a recent draft, the tribal cooperating agencies write that current and historic mining activities have “profoundly and, in many cases, permanently degraded vast areas of forests, wetlands, air and water resources, wildlife habitat, cultural sites and other critical treaty-protected resources within the 1854 Ceded Territory.”

If the PolyMet proposal promises pollution control, the position of the tribes is, we don’t buy it.

“The State of Minnesota has existed for 155 years,” they write. “The United States of America has existed for 237 years. The notion that a mining company and financial assurance instruments will be available to work on a mine site 500 years from now is not believable.”