Former Governor Sends Letter to Current Administration Slamming Potential Mining in BWCAW

(KNSI) — Former Governor Arne Carlson is going after current Governor Tim Walz for putting Minnesota waters at risk by potentially doing business with “one of the world’s most corrupt enterprises.”

Carlson fired off a six page letter asking Walz why his administration is “putting the BWCA and Lake Superior at risk doing business with Glencore.” Glencore is a massive foreign multinational commodity trading and mining company employing 135,000 people worldwide. It is the parent company of Polymet Mining which has applied for mining permits near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Carlson says Glencore has repeatedly pled guilty to bribing public officials across the world and has paid $2 billion in fines in just the last year. The letter outlines what Carlson calls a “history of corruption,” adding, “Despite Glencore’s lengthy international rap sheet,” Carlson wrote, the Walz administration “is entrusting them with the BWCAW and Lake Superior, leaving our most obvious question unanswered: Why is the State of Minnesota partnering with a corrupt entity?” Carlson added, “This may be a sensitive topic, but the public’s best interests are not being protected.”

He also repeated the warnings of former Vice President Walter Mondale, who emphatically declared that “sulfide mining has never – never – been undertaken without serious environmental consequences.”

Walz had said that “the only way this [mine] gets built is if it gets built right.”

The Carlson Group sent a list of recommended actions for the project:

A temporary moratorium on the mining permitting process until new laws are enacted
Treating the New Range Copper Nickel venture largely owned and directed by Glencore as one entity, not a continuation of the PolyMet project.
Studying the impact of residue discharges on the waters of the BWCAW and Lake Superior
Conducting a Water Study that would estimate current healthy water supplies to match future supply against demand.
Initiate a comprehensive study on the impact of all proposed mining operations in northern Minnesota, including those in the Iron Range, Bemidji, Brainerd and Detroit Lakes, where the region’s economy is impacted and largely dependent on tourism and vacation spending.
Launch a legislative review of the state’s current campaign disclosure laws to create a transparent system that fully protects the public from unscrupulous behavior and is never compromised by undue corporate influence.

Carlson, who served as Governor from 1991 to 1999, wrote that data from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency noted that in 2019, 56 percent of the state’s rivers, streams and lakes were declared “impaired” and that in 2021 another 305 bodies of water were added to that list. “This is a most serious warning,” Carlson wrote, “because it places human and wildlife in danger and clearly informs us that our supply of drinkable water is diminishing.”

In the letter, the group referenced a University of Minnesota finding that water demand in Minnesota is exceeding supply and that the state needed “to reduce water consumption by 25 percent over the next 35 years.”

In calling for a comprehensive water study, the Carlson group found fault with the current system that “largely depends on local units of government to supply and protect their waters and a defused system on the state level with the result that no one agency is in charge.”

See the letter by clicking here.

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