On February 3, 2025, the Minnesota Court of Appeals issued a unanimous decision reversing and remanding the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) decision denying an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for expansion of the Mile Post 7 tailings basin and dams. Mile Post 7 tailings dams are Class 1 hazard level dams located directly above the cities of Beaver Bay and Silver Bay and less than three miles from Lake Superior.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) announced that their review of PolyMet’s copper-nickel sulfide ore permit to mine will be suspended until August 2025. This decision delays final briefing on whether the DNR should adopt Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) James LaFave’s November 2023 recommendation to deny PolyMet’s permit to mine since the proposed tailings basin storage plan would violate Minnesota’s Reactive Mine Waste Rule.

An informal group of environmental organizations has cataloged a pattern of unwillingness by the Walz Administration to enforce environmental laws. The People Not Polluters website includes twelve examples of agency failures from all around the state including state responses to nitrate pollution from agriculture in southern Minnesota, destruction caused by the Line 3 pipeline in northern Minnesota and air pollution from Smith Foundry in Minneapolis.

Join the call to ask State Legislators to hold oversight hearings and protect people, not polluters.

LEARN WHY SCIENTISTS who worked on the 1970s Copper-Nickel Study are now calling for a NEW Tamarack Region Sulfide Ore Study. A Regional Study, rather than just site-specific environmental review is needed to protect the Tamarack area, the downstream St. Croix and Mississippi River watersheds, and the Minneapolis-St. Paul Twin Cities Area from pollution and environmental effects resulting from Talon Metals/Rio Tinto “district-scale” sulfide ore mining.

The ”present deposit” proposed by Talon for environmental review is only one-tenth of 1% of the total mining area.

Ask Governor Tim Walz and DNR Commissioner Sarah Strommen to require that the Environmental Impact Statement evaluate the full and cumulative impacts of mining the entire “district scale” Tamarack Mineral Intrusion.