News - Jobs For Minnesotans

A View on Mining: High-Tech Mining Provides Metals Needed to Make Modern Devices

October 4, 2016

Duluth News Tribune
Phillips S. Baker
*Phillips S. Baker is CEO of Hecla Mining Co., the largest silver-mining company in the U.S. It has operations in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and Noxon, Mont.

Here’s a question: What does mining have to do with your cellphone?

The answer, surprisingly, is “a lot.” Whether you know it or not, your smartphone was constructed from a wide array of metals and minerals mined from deep inside the Earth. Smartphones, laptop computers, solar panels, wind turbines and electric cars require significant amounts of gold, silver, platinum, palladium, copper, tin and other metals. In fact, just about every device needed in the 21st-century economy relies on a number of these key metals and minerals.

Duluth Council Declines to Call for PolyMet Hearings

September 13, 2016

Minnesota Public Radio
Dan Kraker
*Click link for audio

After two and a half hours of passionate testimony, the Duluth City Council voted down a resolution Monday night that would have called for another step in the regulatory process for a proposed copper-nickel mine.

The City Council vote was strictly advisory. The proposal would have pushed for so-called “evidentiary hearings” in front of an administrative law judge before the Minnesota DNR decides whether to approve the PolyMet mine.

But the advisory nature of the vote didn’t stop more than 100 residents of Duluth and northeast Minnesota from packing the stuffy council chambers.

David Ross, president of the Duluth Area Chamber of Commerce, called the resolution a last-minute effort to block PolyMet.

Twin Metals Minnesota Sues Feds Over Minerals Lease Renewals

September 12, 2016

Star Tribune
Steve Karnowski

A mining company that hopes to build an underground copper-nickel mine near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness sued the federal government Monday to try to keep the mineral rights leases it needs for the $2.8 billion project to go forward.

Twin Metals Minnesota’s lawsuit seeks to invalidate a recent opinion by the solicitor of the U.S. Department of the Interior that the company doesn’t have an automatic right to renew its two leases, which were first issued in 1966 and last renewed in 2004. The lawsuit said earlier renewals were routinely granted.

The solicitor’s opinion, sent to the federal Bureau of Land Management, has “cast a cloud of uncertainty” over the project, blocking the company from engaging in long-term planning, investment, development and operational decisions, Twin Metals’ Chief Operating Officer Ian Duckworth said in a statement.

PolyMet Submits Application for Air Emissions Permit

August 24, 2016

Duluth News Tribune
Staff

PolyMet Mining Inc. on Wednesday submitted another in a series of applications for state and federal permits needed to build a proposed copper-nickel mine and processing center on the Iron Range.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency said it has received the company’s application for an air-emissions permit.

PolyMet Submits Another Permit Application

August 2, 2016

Duluth News Tribune
John Myers

PolyMet Mining, Inc. on Tuesday submitted another in a series of applications for state and federal permits needed to build a proposed copper-nickel mine and processing center on the Iron Range.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency said it has received the company’s application for so-called 401-certification that involves water and wetlands that will be impacted by the project. The applications also includes the company’s plan to replace wetlands destroyed.