In Minnesota, fight between mining and environment gets personal - Al Jazeera America
Puffball clouds float in a blue sky and daisies sprout under stately pines lining Spruce Road, the main artery of an old logging network deep in the Superior National Forest about 15 miles southeast of Ely. Paul Schurke is bumping down a dirt road in a Dodge Ram pickup truck. He owns Wintergreen Dogsled Lodge with his wife, Susan, and is famous in these parts as the explorer who co-led the first dogsled expedition to the North Pole without re-supply in 1986. The dirt track ends before it reaches the Boundary Waters... Occasionally an emerald display of Northern Lights flickers in a sky entirely free of light pollution. “Just beyond those trees is Gabbro Lake, one of the holiest of holy walleye lakes in the Boundary Waters,” says Schurke. It’s where Twin Metals Minnesota , owned by the Chilean company Antofagasta , proposes to build the largest underground mine in the state’s history. Ely’s first iron-ore mine opened in 1888. But Twin Metals plans to mine copper sulfide ore and other precious metals, which has never been done in Minnesota. To mine copper sulfide in such a water-rich. Source: america.aljazeera.com
