Ely Welcome - Battle for the Boundary
PROJIMMY EMERSON, DVM
To get to Ely, Minnesota, you take I-35 to Cloquet, pass the Frank Lloyd Wright gas station, hang a right onto Highway 53, follow signs for Embarrass, and pass through the city of Virginia, the self-proclaimed taconite mining capital of the world, and Soudan, whose defunct iron mine is now a state park.
Once you get to Tower, well after 53 turns into 169, you’re getting close, but you might as well stop for a burger at the Good Ol’ Days Bar and Grill—unless you can’t handle two third-pound beef patties topped with both ham and bacon. Between Tower and Ely, about twenty-five miles, turn the radio dial to 94.5 FM, WELY: End of the Road Radio, a station owned by the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa.
Ely really is the end of the road. It’s the last town on 169 before the road winds into the Superior National Forest and then disappears altogether into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The Boundary Waters are named for their proximity to the U.S./Canada border, but the divisions in this far-north border town are far more complex.
Ely really is the end of the road. It’s the last town on 169 before the road winds into the Superior National Forest and then disappears altogether into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
On Sheridan Street, Ely’s main drag, the Cenex sells both of the newspapers published for this 3,500-person city: The Ely Echo and The Timberjay. There is a local sustainable restaurant, Insula, or the Ely Steak House, which serves “Kick Butt” sirloins. For coffee, there’s the newly restored Northern Grounds (a former VFW hall), which becomes a wine bar at night. Down the street is Zaverl’s, a bar that still serves Pelinkovac (“Plink”) for the self-described Yugoslavs whose ancestors came to this remote outpost in the mid-nineteenth century.
But wherever you go, down on the banks of Miners Lake, an eerily space-agey building decorated with the periodic table will keep the lights on. Twin Metals, the company that owns and operates this building, is currently at the center of a bitter, century-long conflict in Ely. The two poles of the dispute are economic development through high-intensity resource use (mining and federal deregulation) and economic development through lower-intensity resource use (canoeing, camping, and wilderness tourism).
Twin Metals is owned by Antofagasta plc, a multinational, multibillion-dollar corporation based in Chile. (Fun fact: The mining company also owns the house in Washington, D.C., where Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, live as $15,000 per month tenants.) In a community that can be resentful of newcomers, Twin Metals has tried to ingratiate itself, investing in food pantries, the Ely school district, and “acquisition, exploration, technical, environmental, and other project development activities,” according to a press release.
James Devine, the field operations coordinator, is an Ely native, which means something in a place where outsiders joke about exhuming their grandparents and reburying them here to achieve local status. But a multinational, multibillion-dollar corporation doesn’t give away money without expecting a return on its investment.
But a multinational, multibillion-dollar corporation doesn’t give away money without expecting a return on its investment.
Until recently, the return Twin Metals expected was a $2.8-billion underground copper-nickel mine it planned to develop in the Rainy River watershed, inside the Superior National Forest and outside the Boundary Waters. The goal was to extract one of the world’s largest deposits of copper and nickel—$40 billion worth, in fact. Company spokesman Robert McFarlin says the project would generate “thousands of good-paying jobs,” in a city whose median family income is $34,000.
But last December, the federal Bureau of Land Management announced it would not renew Twin Metals’ two mineral leases inside the Superior National Forest. In January, at the tail end of the Obama Administration, the U.S. Forest Service took the decision a step further by requesting that 234,328 acres of National Forest lands, including the areas of these expired leases, be withdrawn for a twenty-year term.
But before such a withdrawal can achieve final approval by Ryan Zinke, President Trump’s Secretary of the Interior, the Forest Service has called for a two-year moratorium on mining exploration in order to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS). As part of its application, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management opened a ninety-day public comment period and scheduled one public meeting. As of this writing, the scoping period, considered part of the EIS preparation, has been extended to 120 days; the meeting in Duluth back in March attracted 1,000 people.
How a private mining company’s reapplication to maintain longstanding mineral leases in 2013 led to a proposed federal land withdrawal three and a half years later is a story of science, stubbornness, sound legalese, and great slogans (“You Have One Chance to Save a National Treasure”).
Led by the indefatigable Becky Rom, the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters has successfully turned the proposed Twin Metals project into a state and national environmental issue. Rom’s encyclopedic knowledge of Boundary Waters history and government regulatory processes comes in part from watching her father, Bill Rom, work with Sigurd Olson and Hubert Humphrey to pass the original Wilderness Act that brought the Boundary Waters under federal protection.
“We have a long history of protecting the Boundary Waters,” Rom told me in early April. “It’s part of our story.”
Armed with peer-reviewed studies, maps, and what Rom calls “polite persistence,” members of the group repeatedly traveled to Washington, D.C., to argue that the Bureau of Land Management was under no legal obligation to renew Twin Metals’ leases. “There’s not a tyranny of the majority, but there is a greater good,” Rom, a retired lawyer, says. “[The Boundary Waters] has enriched people’s lives in ways that cannot be monetized or measured.”
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness attracts more than a quarter of a million visitors per year, many of whom are not native to the region. This easily makes it the most popular wilderness area in the lower forty-eight states. Rom’s group argues that the Twin Metals mine, due to its location, would not only damage the area’s wilderness character as guaranteed by Congress, but inevitably pollute the pristine watershed.
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness attracts more than a quarter of a million visitors per year, many of whom are not native to the region. This easily makes it the most popular wilderness area in the lower forty-eight states
Steve Piragis, owner of a successful outfitter in Ely, Piragis Northwoods Company, is a biologist by training. He originally came to Ely in 1977 to do a state-sponsored study on copper and nickel. Now he advocates for the Boundary Waters as both an ecologist and business owner who employs more than fifty people each summer. “Every business in this town is dependent on a clean Boundary Waters,” he says. “Whether they want to admit it or not.”
Copper mines create terrible kinds of waste. When rain falls on waste from sulfide ore mining, it creates sulfuric acid, which, unlike the rust created from rain and iron ore waste, can have a devastating effect on an ecosystem, turning streams orange and killing aquatic life.
A study by Earthworks, a mining watchdog organization, reported that all fourteen mines under the auspices of the study, or 89 percent of current U.S. copper production, experienced releases of pollution. Thirteen experienced failures that resulted in significant water pollution.
“All copper mines pollute,” Piragis reflects. “Period. There’s not a single one that hasn’t.”
While the mining company dismisses such assertions, pointing to the Flambeau Mine in Wisconsin and the Eagle Mine in Michigan as success stories, potential for hazardous waste in the watershed was serious enough to prompt action by the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service—at least as they operated under President Obama.
Roger Powell, an emeritus professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University, puts the probability of a major spill for the twenty-to-thirty-year lifespan of a copper-nickel mine at the edge of the Boundary Waters “in the 50 to 65 percent range,” based on the available evidence and scientific literature.
But mine supporters argue that a safer mine can be built, and that the nonrenewal of federal leases deprives Twin Metals of the opportunity to do so.
At an April listening session at Vermilion Community College, on the outskirts of Ely, Congressman Rick Nolan, a Democrat, argued in favor of rescinding the proposed mineral withdrawal and allowing the permitting process for Twin Metals to proceed. “We create a standard,” he said, “and the industry rises to meet that standard.”
With his northern accent and easy-to-remember talking points, Nolan was a forceful advocate for about half of the attendees of this listening session: retired miners, blue-hatted members of We Support Minnesota Mining, and residents of Ely whose memories of their town contrast sharply with current conditions.
“The city is dying,” one older gentleman said, his hands trembling as he read from his handwritten index card. “On Saturdays,” another added, “the streets used to be packed bumper-to-bumper. Now you can roll a bowling ball down the sidewalk and not hit anybody.”
In this version of history, the good old days of Ely were when the mines were up and running, the seats at bars filled to capacity, and the wilderness unsullied by park rangers fining motorboats and demanding permits. Chronologically speaking, this lands between 1930 and 1960, when the population of Ely peaked at 6,000, motorboats were allowed, and the Pioneer Mine was still open.
Asked what Ely must do to return to those days, Jeanne Zaverl, owner of Zaverl’s bar, doesn’t hesitate. “Fifty-six hundred people and an industry,” she says. “We need an industry to support us. The extreme environmentalists say we have tourism, but tourism has never been enough.”
Nolan, along with other local Iron Range politicians, tend to use a mix of folksy storytelling and business jargon to appeal to voters like Zaverl. He endeavors to make aligning with a multinational, multibillion-dollar company sound like the populist choice, telling the people at the listening session that mining “is an integral part of our way of life.”
At the public meeting in Duluth, St. Louis County Commissioner Tom Rukavina made a similar point: “Mining is what we do for a living. It’s what we’ve done for 135 years.”
In the estimation of mine proponents, the heroes in this story are the area’s local citizens; the villains are the affluent retirees, wilderness outfitters, and so-called packsackers who use the Boundary Waters as their personal playground. “You’ve already got yours,” Rom recalled Mayor Chuck Novak saying, meaning a comfortable life. “And now you won’t let them get theirs.”
I interviewed Mayor Novak for this article, but after learning that I was also talking to mine opponents he demanded that his comments not be included. At Congressman Nolan’s listening session, he approached me, visibly intoxicated, and jabbed his finger into my chest, claiming people like me always take their side.
The “their side” Novak was referring to can be found at something called the Tuesday Group, a weekly consciousness-raising luncheon at the Grand Ely Lodge. The one I attended in early April was convened to discuss increasing rates of adult moose mortality.
Though many of the attendees were retirees who had not been permanent residents of Ely for long, there were also young families, a scattering of millennials, and at least one working professional.
The atmosphere was quite jovial. When I remarked on the group’s high spirits, a departure from other gatherings I’d seen in town, one older man shook his head. “That’s because half the town is looking backwards,” he said, “while the other half looks forwards.”
In this other half’s version of history, the future is bright, and the best days of Ely are yet to come. They are filled with Internet-related white-collar jobs and historic buildings remodeled with care. The boom-and-bust spikes of a mining economy will give way to a stable economy of tourism and the information sector. The pristine Boundary Waters will remain rightfully preserved. The recreation complex currently in development will provide a place for the community to gather.
“It would be so much better,” Rom said, “if we could identify the real problems [in Ely] and come up with solutions.” Those real problems, she feels, include such community health issues as substance abuse, behavioral health, and access to care, as well as the impact of climate change on the Boundary Waters and the city’s below-average income.
Any city like Ely whose economy was once based on intense resource extraction is bound to experience an economic downturn when that resource usage comes to an end. The good old days of Ely will never return—at least not the way locals wish they would, with every bar seat at Zaverl’s filled after shift change with mine workers making lucrative wages.
The good old days of Ely will never return—at least not the way locals wish they would, with every bar seat at Zaverl’s filled after shift change with mine workers making lucrative wages.
However, Ely is doing far better than many remote towns in northeastern Minnesota. In 2011, Ely’s gross sales receipts totaled nearly $107 million, while nearby Eveleth brought in only about $41 million. Sustainable Ely estimates that tourism-based businesses employ 400 people year-round and 600 in peak months. This group and others, including the Chamber of Commerce and real estate developers John and Tanner Ott, are making an effort to foster entrepreneurship and broadband for white-collar employees working remotely.
Even if approved, a Twin Metals mine won’t be affecting the Ely economy any time soon. The Twin Metals’ field office employed only twenty people at its peak; now it is down to six. As Timberjay editor Marshall Helmberger put it to me: “Best case scenario, Twin Metals is fifteen to twenty years away.” In the meantime, Helmberger feels, local leaders are “gonna destroy this town.” Though the University of Minnesota–Duluth estimated the project would create 1,300 jobs, the number seems overly optimistic in light of automation. Employment in copper mining across the U.S. has decreased by 70 percent since 1972, even though production decreased only by 30 percent.
But it’s hard to take the long view when you’re broke. It’s also hard to reach people who are just trying to put one foot in front of the other. The people of Ely want jobs, and the mining company’s promises to deliver them are appealing to many.
The more I spoke to people in Ely, the more dismayed I became by the bitter timbre of the debate. At one point, Rom confided in me that those of her side plan to win the argument “one funeral at a time.” In other words, the community’s fault lines will be repaired as old-timers die off and newer residents take their place.
I might have succumbed to despair, were it not for the youngsters and outsiders and oddballs I spoke to in Ely. These included local resident Tom Kroupa, a Trump-supporting conservationist who works as a conductor on the Soo Line railroad. When I asked him why a conservative like him was against the Twin Metals project, he looked at me like I was nuts.
“The facts are the facts. They are undisputed.” He shook his head. “There has never been a single instance where they’ve done copper-nickel mining without an ecological disaster.”