Trump administration cancels detailed review of Obama-era mining ban near Minnesota wilderness

Source: Washington Post

Trump administration cancels detailed review of Obama-era mining ban near Minnesota wilderness

By Dino Grandoni and Juliet Eilperin January 26 at 2:44 PM

The Trump administration on Friday curtailed a detailed review of how cordoning off more than 234,000 acres of U.S. Forest Service land in Minnesota from mining development would affect a neighboring wilderness area.

The decision to convert the study launched in the final days of the Obama administration into a less-stringent environmental assessment could have major policy implications. Last January, the Interior Department blocked mineral extraction for two years in the swath of forest near Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, a glacially carved region west of Lake Superior that is speckled with lakes and popular with canoers.

At the same time last year, the federal government announced it would review whether to bar mining in the U.S. Forest Service-managed land for a longer stretch, the next 20 years. Interior officials decided not to renew existing leases for a copper and nickel mining operation there.

The action launched bureaucrats into completing hundreds of pages of environmental analysis — ultimately meant to produce a comprehensive document called an environmental-impact statement. The study aimed to assess whether a sulfide-ore mine, which can leach toxic metals, could potentially pollute more than 1,200 miles of neighboring streams in an area where the water flows south to north.

Forest Service officials said Friday that they will now conduct an abbreviated review of the Obama-era proposal to withdraw the land from possible mining.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/01/26/trump-administration-cancels-detailed-review-of-obama-era-mining-ban-near-minnesota-wilderness/