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The Cook County Coalition of Lake Association’s (CCCoLA) focus is on promoting responsible lake and shoreland management practices with the goal of preserving water quality, healthy shorelands, and wildlife habitat.) The CCCoLA Board, representing 21 Lake/Road/Property Owner Associations throughout Cook County, has been studying the threat to human health, wildlife, the environment, and the region’s economy posed by copper-nickel sulfide mining.
Their conclusion: Copper-nickel mining in proximity to the Rainy River and Lake Superior Watersheds raises several troubling concerns.
Their concerns are environmental, economic, and health related. You can read more about these issues on the MN COLA website and on the websites of many of the other environmental organizations.
Pro-mining supporters focus on job creation, the need for these critical minerals, and their confidence in the mining companies and the State’s approval processes to build appropriate safeguards into the mining operations. The sulfide mining issues have come back into focus with the change in the administration in Washington DC, and most recently, with a bill passed in the U. S. House to overturn former President Joe Biden’s mining ban in northern Minnesota. The measure now moves to the Senate for consideration and, if approved there, to President Trump, who campaigned in 2024 on overturning Biden’s 20-year block on mining across 225,504 minerals-rich acres (91,200 hectares) in the Superior National Forest.