H.J. Res. 140

Floor Speech

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Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Minnesota for her endless advocacy for this special place, one of America's true gems.

I do hope to make it to the Boundary Waters this summer. Last July, I was supposed to be in the Boundary Waters. I had long planned a trip with my family. It was to be our first time exploring the Boundary Waters.

My family made it; I did not. My wife Julie and my sons Micah and Carter had an incredible time that they will always remember. They paddled their canoes across lakes. They portaged from lake to lake. They slept under a blanket of stars that most people in Washington, DC, could never imagine because they can't see it.

I was supposed to be part of that trip. I was stuck here, fighting to strip out the public land selloff language from the Republican budget bill. They sent me lots of pictures afterwards, pictures of the northern pike here that my son caught--my son Micah.

My wife Julie was able to spend some really quality wilderness time with both of our sons before they went off to their respective colleges for the year. She basically told me that they ate more food on this trip than most rugby teams.

Like my family, millions--literally millions--of Americans have hunted and fished and paddled and traversed the Boundary Waters. In fact, it has an almost religious connotation among sportsmen in particular.

It is somewhat amazing to me to see a Republican Party that used to have such fidelity to hunters and anglers basically roll all of the organizations that my colleague from Minnesota rattled off which said this is not the right place for this--organizations like Pheasants Forever, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, and Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and on and on and on--but that is where we are today.

You know, stories from the Boundary Waters, stories of stalking whitetail and grouse are passed down from generation to generation in the Midwest. Legendary stories of lake trout and northern pike and walleye abound, sometimes with the fish actually getting bigger with each telling of the story. The water, as the Senator from Minnesota, Senator Smith, said, is some of the cleanest you will find anywhere in the lower 48. It is a bucket-list, once-in-a-lifetime designation for so many public land owners. And that is precisely what is at risk with this vote--one of our Nation's true crown jewels.

So let's back up a little bit for folks who don't have firsthand knowledge of what the Boundary Waters is, where it is, and do a little explaining.

The Boundary Waters is one of the most incredible intact wilderness landscapes left in our Nation. It is an absolute tapestry of lakes and streams, consisting of well over 1,000 individual lakes, 2,000 designated campsites, and hundreds of miles of rivers and streams. The Boundary Waters contains the largest contiguous landscape of uncut forest remaining in the Eastern United States.

The 3 million-acre Superior National Forest in which the Boundary Waters sits contains fully 20 percent of all the freshwater in the entire National Forest System--an incredible figure.

In fact, this wilderness was so important that Teddy Roosevelt himself, President Roosevelt, set it aside as part of the Superior National Forest all the way back in 1909. Almost half a century later, Congress voted overwhelmingly to include the Boundary Waters as one of the original units of the National Wilderness System.

In many ways, Minnesotans rely on the Boundary Waters to support their local economy. Every year, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness draws more visitors--more visitors--than any other wilderness area in the entire Nation. This recreation supports 17,000 Minnesotan jobs, contributes roughly $1 billion in annual sales, and preserves and shares, more importantly, a way of life--a way of life that has been passed down from generation to generation.

This is a place, this is an area that is no stranger to threats. In addition to containing so many of the natural resources that come with the wilderness, the area also contains copper.

I should say, you know, for one, there is a long history of iron mining in this area. I grew up the son of someone who worked for Anaconda Copper, the grandson of somebody who was a gold miner. But I want to talk a little bit about the difference between some of these Iron Range mines that mine ore that is just chemically inert. It is chemically stable.

When you mine for iron, you are basically mining iron oxide. You are mining rust, and then you are turning that back into iron. This is not that kind of mine. This is a copper sulfide mine, and the company that wants to mine here is called Twin Metals. And that sounds so Minnesotan. I think they might have picked it to sound Minnesotan. It is actually a subsidiary of a Chilean mining company called Antofagasta.

They want to build this copper-nickel mine less than a mile upstream from the Boundary Waters on a spit of land between two waterways.

Let me explain a little bit about what it looks like to mine copper in a place like Boundary Waters, particularly when you are mining copper sulfide ore. The company will have to dig some very deep shafts to reach these very deep ore bodies. They will then remove many millions of tons for processing, millions and millions of tons of copper sulfide ore. After they remove what copper and nickel are economically recoverable in that ore, they will dump as much as 100 million tons of waste rock and low-grade ore on the site, never to be removed.

Now, deep underground, the copper is locked up in this ore rich in sulfur, but that ore has never been exposed to water. It has never been exposed to oxygen or air. And when you bring it to the surface and you let it sit out in a pile and you expose it to air and water, oxygen bonds with that sulfur, and when you bond oxygen to sulfur, you get sulfuric acid. Sulfuric acid is one of the hardest waste products you can imagine to try to control.

The waste rock that has been dumped on the site will naturally form sulfuric acid. That acid will then dissolve toxic heavy metals present in the waste rock, and then you have this toxic stew of heavy metals along with sulfuric acid.

Now, there is no plan to remove all this waste from the mine site, so it is basically a ticking time bomb of acid and heavy metals.

Studies by the EPA say that the odds of sulfuric acid polluting the Boundary Waters under this scenario are highly likely. And I will do you one better: It has a perfect track record of polluting water. That is according to the peer-reviewed study on sulfide-ore copper mining that drove the 2023 decision to ban mining in the area. It is also my personal experience as a former natural resources trustee who had to negotiate with copper companies that polluted water with this same technology.

So it is not just highly likely; it is guaranteed. Sulfide mining in the Rainy River watershed will cause certain irreversible pollution to the Boundary Waters. Think again about eating those fish that you caught or drinking that water you dipped from the middle of the lake, because the thing about sulfuric acid poisoning is it is invisible. You can't see it, but it makes water unsafe to drink.

Sulfuric acid also lowers the pH level of water, changing entire ecosystems. At high levels, fish that rely on healthy water to live literally experience respiratory failure in water poisoned by sulfuric acid. They literally drown to death. They will not be able to reproduce normally. Their food sources will be tainted, meaning entire fish populations of lake trout and smallmouth bass will be at risk.

The sulfuric acid produced by this mine will leach heavy metals like lead, mercury, or copper into that same water. That will then accumulate in the bodies of fish and wildlife that consume that water. And when people eat meat and fish with heavy metals, they accumulate in our bodies too.

This isn't a myth; it is a virtually guaranteed outcome because we know that plans for the mine include storing over 100 million tons of toxic waste rock on the edge of the wilderness upstream of the Boundary Waters. Think about how much that is. Let's visualize how much waste rock we are talking about being dumped and never removed from this mine site. A hundred million tons is like 740,000 Boeing 777 airplanes. It is twice the mass of all the living people on Earth. It is 500 times the weight of the Empire State Building sitting there, generating toxic acid. It is the amount of toxic waste that Antofagasta--a foreign mining company that plans to sell the copper to foreign countries-- plans to store on the edge of the largest patch of wild rivers and forests in our country, the place that has 20 percent of all the freshwater in our National Forest System.

The damage is really unthinkable, but it is also irreversible because currently we don't have any technology available that is capable of reversing sulfuric acid contamination.

This is bad. It is so bad that in 2016, even before there was a mineral withdrawal, the Obama administration canceled the mine's lease. And in 2023, after years of review and overwhelming public support, a 20-year mineral withdrawal was established in the Rainy River watershed, home to the Boundary Waters. That decision reflects common sense. Some places are too valuable to gamble with.

With today's technology, if it is a gamble, why not wait 30 years when maybe that technology is a sure bet? But it is not a sure bet today.

That decision also reflected the voices of the American people because the assessment that led to the mineral withdrawal was completed by the U.S. Forest Service in 2022, and it included hundreds of thousands of public comments--675,000 public comments--over 95 percent of which favored the withdrawal area being withdrawn from nonferrous mining, sulfide mining.

Today, 70 percent of Minnesotans oppose mining in the Boundary Waters. Instead of listening to Minnesotans and Americans from all over the country who care about this place, Republicans today are using an unprecedented, blunt-force legislative method that includes zero public comment--no comment period--to make decisions about our public lands without any input from the people to whom those lands actually belong.

We can't talk about the Boundary Waters without also speaking of belonging and Tribal communities. Three Tribes--the Bois Forte Band, the Fond du Lac Band, and the Grand Portage Band of Chippewa--have extensive treaty rights in Northeastern Minnesota. These are rights to do things like hunt and fish and gather wild rice. These rights are guaranteed to them by the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe and have been reaffirmed by Federal courts over and over again. By overturning the public land order with a CRA resolution, Senate Republicans will not only cut Tribes out of the conversation, but they disrespect the Tribal treaty rights and directly risk those Tribes' guaranteed access to their traditional way of life and subsistence use of this place.

So since my Republican colleagues are refusing to include constituents' voices in this process, I will bring a few of those from New Mexico to the floor here today.

Dr. Brown, from Santa Fe, wrote me in urging that we oppose this vote. He said:

I've canoed the Boundary Waters many times and can attest to its uniqueness . . . with some of the purest water in the U.S., these lakes are visited and admired by thousands of Americans . . . Pollution of the Boundary Waters would be a tragedy for the nation and the world.

Dr. Merriman, from Albuquerque, said:

Please vote no on HJ Res 140. Some things are worth more than money.

Lee, from Los Alamos, wrote:

I am writing to ask you to oppose H.J. Res 140 . . . The [Boundary Waters Canoe Area] is a national treasure--not just for Minnesotans but for me and other New Mexicans as well.

From Naima in Santa Fe:

This is a hideous giveaway to corporate profiteers and cannot stand. Please vote NO.

From Dr. Bagne in Silver City:

Any short-term economic gains would clearly not outweigh the long-term risks to the ecosystem and water supplies. Although it is in Minnesota, many similar public lands in New Mexico would be threatened by . . . relaxing mining rules. Please oppose.

Judy, from Albuquerque, wrote:

I am aghast . . . Please do all that you can to stop this giveaway of our wonderful public lands. This happened despite all the thousands of citizen signatures against the vote.

From Roxane in Rio Rancho:

Please vote against reversing the ban on mining . . . I am very concerned that the Trump Administration is flying under the radar and doing a lot of damage that will be difficult, or even impossible, to reverse.

From Amy in Albuquerque:

Please do not allow this to happen. [The Boundary Waters] belong to all Americans, not to a Chilean mining company with contracts to [process ore in] China.

Their voices matter because the Boundary Waters are our public lands--all of ours. President Teddy Roosevelt, who had the incredible foresight to protect this beautiful place, had it right when he said that we ``should see to it that they are preserved for [our] children and [our] children's children forever, with their majestic beauty all unmarred.''

The way I look at public lands is that they are the closest, most tangible thing we have to being able to represent true Jeffersonian democracy.

They are the thing, as we saw last June, that often unites us across the political spectrum. If you take these public lands away, you tear away the places where we are the most free. This is an issue of our heritage, and it is an issue of our inheritance.

It is an issue for Minnesota, but it is not just an issue for Minnesota--it is an issue for our Nation. It is about something bigger. It is a test of whether our public lands--as a friend of mine likes to say--our public lands that are the anvil upon which we have forged our collective identity.

Can that be stripped from us? Can it be stripped of their protections?

You know, I am going to summarize this one more time. We are going to allow a foreign mining company to take our minerals, to ship those minerals to China for processing, and then to sell those back to us with a tariff on top.

Like, how is that ``America First''? It is not. And to risk this globally, incredible rare asset that is the Boundary Waters for that, boy, that just seems really shortsighted to me.

I would urge every one of my colleagues--I would urge you--to vote no on this Congressional Review Act resolution.

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