Biden admin bans mining on 225k acres of Minnesota land for 20 YEARS, prohibiting Americans from accessing valuable resources

02/02/2023 / By Belle Carter

The Biden administration, through the Department of the Interior (DOI), imposed a ban on mining in 225,000 acres of land in Minnesota.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland signed Public Land Order 7917, which prohibited mining for a 20-year period on federal land in the Superior National Forest, near the Boundary Waters on Minnesota’s Duluth Complex. The order withdraws the land from disposition under the United States mineral and geothermal leasing laws for the said period, subject to valid existing rights.

“The Department of the Interior takes seriously our obligations to steward public lands and waters on behalf of all Americans. 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,” she said in a statement.

Haaland’s order served a knockout blow to mining firm Twin Metals Minnesota (TMM), a U.S. subsidiary of the Chilean multinational Antofagasta PLC. The company was reported to have been deeply “disappointed and stunned” over the decision as their project is located just south of the Boundary Waters and within the new withdrawal area. TMM first proposed the development of a $1.7 billion underground project to mine copper, nickel, cobalt and other platinum-group metals in the area.

The company has invested more than $550 million in the development of the project over the past 12 years. According to TMM, the area holds 95 percent of the nation’s nickel reserves, 88 percent of cobalt, 51 percent of platinum, 48 percent of palladium and 34 percent of the country’s copper.

“This region sits on top of one of the world’s largest deposits of critical minerals that are vital in meeting our nation’s goals to transition to a clean energy future, to create American jobs, to strengthen our national security and to bolster domestic supply chains,” the company said in a statement. “We believe our project plays a critical role in addressing all of these priorities, and we remain committed to enforcing [TMM’s] rights.”

US will rely on outside sources for rare metals without domestic mining

Without domestic mining for rare earth minerals, the U.S. must rely on countries with few labor or environmental laws. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is one such nation, with 75 percent of the world’s cobalt supply mined there. The metal extracted from the country’s mines is then processed to make lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.

According to Rep. Pete Stauber (R-MN), the moratorium on mining could be related to an agreement President Joe Biden signed with communist China. (Related: Biden’s climate agenda benefits communist China, not the Americans he supposedly represents.)

“Biden signed an agreement to fund mining projects in Chinese-owned mines in the [DRC] where over 40,000 children work as slaves in forced labor and inhumane conditions with no environmental protections,” Stauber said. “Meanwhile, today’s mining ban nullifies a Project Labor Agreement with the local building and construction trade unions.”

The lawmaker for the Gopher State added that America needs to develop vast mineral wealth right here at home with high-wage, union-protected jobs instead of continuing to send American taxpayer dollars to countries like the DRC that use child slave labor.

Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR), who chairs the House Committee on Natural Resources, also emphasized the need for America to mine rare earth minerals domestically.

“If Democrats were serious about developing renewable energy sources and breaking China’s stranglehold on the global market, they would be flinging open the doors to responsible mineral development here in the U.S.,” he said.

“We cannot have a future of renewable energy without minerals, period – not to mention their necessity to our defense systems, satellites, cell phones and virtually every other advanced technology.”

Metals.news has more stories about the mining of rare earth metals.

Watch this video that expounds on the use of slave labor to mine cobalt.

This video is from the GalacticStorm channel on Brighteon.com.