Steven J.

Timmer
5348 Oaklawn Avenue
Edina, Minnesota 55424
August 16, 2019

Governor Tim Walz

75 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd #130
St. Paul, Minnesota 55155

Re: Glencore/PolyMet

Dear Governor Walz:

I read a story in the Star Tribune on Tuesday, the 13th of August, about your recent visit
with representatives from Glencore plc and PolyMet Mining Corporation. After the meeting,
you reiterated your support for sulfide mining, “if it can be done safely.”

Aye, there’s the rub. And certainly the record to date does not establish that it can be done
safely: quite the opposite, frankly. Here’s a list of just some of the things that the record
reveals.

1. Industry-captured regulators and their naked corruption. It is hardly necessary to

recount the efforts of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to suppress the urgent
concerns of the staff of the EPA’s regional office in Chicago about the proposed and
toothless water discharge permit that the MPCA ultimately issued. And as I understand it,
you became aware of this skullduggery during the transition to your administration.

With these people in charge, some of whom are still in government, as you know, no one
can have any confidence in the blandishments of PolyMet, Glencore, the state’s regulators,
or your administration, frankly, claiming that the project is “safe.” Really, you don’t
personally know, and the people you rely on are proven, unreliable blackguards without
fidelity to their public charge.

It is like, as John Oliver so memorably put it, Hiring dingoes as babysitters.1

2. The issuance of a water discharge permit without specific limits for several heavy metals
is an attempt to evade the Clean Water Act. When asked to comment on the lack of specific
limits for heavy metals: arsenic, cobalt, lead, nickel and mercury, MPCA spokesman Darin
Broten says, Oh, we can add them later. I offer that sly and disingenuous statement as

1
http://left.mn/2015/08/hiring-more-dingoes-as-babysitters-a-reprise/
Governor Tim Walz
August 16, 2019
Page 2

Exhibit A in the case against the MPCA’s fidelity to the citizens and environment of
Minnesota.

Mining permits do not get made stronger; they only get made weaker. I can think of only
one case where a permit to mine was made more stringent: Reserve Mining Company being
restrained from discharging tailings into Lake Superior in the 70s. And it was a titanic
effort that took years and was fought by Reserve tooth and nail every step of the way.

Far more often, a mining company will seek to weaken the environmental, public safety, or
financial requirements of a permit and threaten a loss of employment if it doesn’t get them.
Given the cyclical nature of the mining business, this happens with depressing regularity.

Mining is known as an “extractive industry” for a number of reasons and only a part of it
has to do with what is in the ground.

3. The toothless water discharge permit deprives the public of a remedy for pollution of the
water. It is stunning to say, but the MPCA’s water discharge permit is a shield against
enforcement of the Clean Water Act by members of the public, environmental nonprofits,
or even the affected bands of Ojibwe Indians, especially the Fond du Lac Ojibwe. That is
because of something called the “permit shield.” I am sure your legal advisers have
explained this to you.

But just in case they haven’t: it is a defense to an action by the public to enforce the Clean
Water Act to say, We’re in compliance with our permit. Regardless of the degree of
malfeasance, corruption, or dishonesty that led to the issuance of the permit.

You don’t have to believe me about this. But you should believe the Seventh Circuit Court of
Appeals in WISCONSIN RESOURCES PROTECTION COUNCIL, et al., Plaintiff–Appellees, Cross–
Appellants, v. FLAMBEAU MINING COMPANY, Defendant–Appellant, Cross–Appellee.2

This case is an interesting one. The Flambeau mine, on the banks of the Flambeau River in
Wisconsin, was a copper mine that was touted as a mine without pollution. I called it the
Grotto of the Miracle of the Immaculate Extraction.3 Former DNR Commissioner Tom
Landwehr was a believer in the Immaculate Extraction. Faith is a powerful thing.
Sometimes, though, it is confronted by reality.

In Wisconsin federal district court, a bunch of pesky environmentalists proved that the
Flambeau mine was not the Grotto of the Miracle of the Immaculate Extraction, but rather it

2
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-7th-circuit/1641915.html
3
http://left.mn/2013/07/trouble-in-the-grotto/
Governor Tim Walz
August 16, 2019
Page 3

followed in the footsteps of every hard rock mine in history. It polluted, and contrary to the
provisions of the Clean Water Act, in this case in a creek that was a tributary to the
Flambeau River.

Well, that’s too bad, said the Seventh Circuit, The mine is in compliance with the permit
issued by the Wisconsin DNR. The permit, not coincidentally, lacked standards for certain
pollutants, just like the one issued by the MPCA for PolyMet. Imagine that.

If you have the right regulators, they are your defenders, not your regulators.4

Glencore/PolyMet have been at this for a while, and I suppose they know the ore body
pretty well. It is certainly not beyond imagining that they influenced the MPCA to issue a
permit that avoids mention of pollutants that they knew would be tough to handle. Based
on what we know at the moment, it would be difficult to come to any other conclusion. We
need to get to the bottom of it, anyway.

The MPCA says, laughably, look at how long our water discharge permit is!

4. The upstream tailings dam permitted by the DNR is a dangerous joke. This type of
tailings dam has a regrettable propensity to “liquefy.” Simply, that means if the dam and its
substrate are sufficiently saturated with water, the dam will collapse. To prevent that from
happening, water needs to be pumped out continuously to keep the dam dry enough to be
stable. That means somebody has to be around to run and maintain the pumps, for perhaps
hundreds of years.

It also means we have to figure out what to do with lots and lots of sulfate and heavy metal
contaminated water that is pumped out. At a hearing in early 2014, Assistant
Commissioner and Director of the Land and Minerals Division of the DNR, Jess Richards,
said that he had a reverse osmosis system for drinking water in his house and that it
worked great. Swell.

Upstream tailings dams of the sort that PolyMet bought – indirectly, anyway – from LTV
have failed three times in the last handful of years: twice in Brazil and once in British
Columbia. In two of the three incidents, consultants to the PolyMet project were involved.

The tailings dam at Mount Polley in Canada that failed in 2014 was designed by Knight
Piésold, an engineering firm that was and perhaps still is, consultant to the Minnesota DNR
on PolyMet. Naturally, Knight Piésold ran away from Mount Polley as fast as it could after
the dam failed and poisoned one of the largest sockeye salmon runs on the planet.

4
http://left.mn/2019/06/skipping-down-memory-lane-with-polymet/
Governor Tim Walz
August 16, 2019
Page 4

Scott Olson, consultant to PolyMet, also ran from the recent Brazilian tailings dam5 collapse
that killed 240 or so people after the dam failure. Olson was an author of a report just
months before the collapse saying that the dam in question required no immediate action.

If we assume for a moment that Olson is skilled and experienced in this kind of thing, we
also have to assume that upstream tailings dams can collapse in spite of expectations, and
catastrophically so.

It is also important to remember that the tailings dam and basin purchased by PolyMet as a
result of the LTV bankruptcy has about $90 million in deferred maintenance. How that
happened without any enforcement action by the DNR is also a cautionary tale. And utterly
de rigueur for the DNR.

5. Permitting the PolyMet mine without a Glencore financial guarantee and backstop is
governing malpractice. We know that on its own, PolyMet couldn’t dig a foxhole, nor could
it pay to fill it up again. Because of the lengthy reclamation period, any permit to mine will
be open for a long time, perhaps hundreds of years after the mine closes. For that to be
meaningful, it requires a permitee who can continue to perform the conditions of the
permit, stand for the damages the mine might cause, and provide public liability insurance
to compensate citizens and the state for the mine’s harm. Financial assurances might cover
reclamation costs, but not tort damages: direct and consequential loss to life, property,
livelihoods, and the environment.

At the same hearing where Assistant Commissioner Richards spoke glowingly of the water
treatment system in his house, I told him in a sidebar that Glencore was even in early 2014
in practical control of PolyMet and needed to be on the permit. 6 “Oh, no,” he said, “We can’t
do that.”

We’d better do that, or we are utter fools. You said in your remarks after the Glencore
meeting that Glencore was not wild about the idea of being on the permit, and its
representatives said that it might interfere with its ability to raise money for the mine.

When the bankers run, Governor, you should pay attention.

6. There is an enormous environmental justice subtext to the PolyMet project. There are a
lot of people trying to distinguish between PolyMet and Twin Metals projects, including
Tom Landwehr, who signed the PolyMet permit to mine when he was the DNR

5
http://www.startribune.com/polymet-critics-site-mine-dam-failure-in-brazil/513408672/
6
http://left.mn/2015/08/puppet-on-a-string-a-reprise/
Governor Tim Walz
August 16, 2019
Page 5

Commissioner, but who now argues against a sulfide mine7 perhaps ten miles away from
PolyMet’s proposed mine at Hoyt Lakes. Landwehr correctly identifies the ills associated
with a sulfide mine, but his attempts to distinguish PolyMet and Twin Metals are entirely
specious.

The supposed difference between PolyMet and Twin Metals is the Laurentian Divide. The
two proposed projects are on opposite sides of the divide; PolyMet on the St. Louis River
watershed side, flowing to Lake Superior, and Twin Metals on the Rainy River basin side,
flowing through the BWCAW to Hudson’s Bay. The Laurentian Divide only describes what
happens to the surface water, however.

The Laurentian Divide does not explain what happens to groundwater.8 According to the
Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, in a 2015 report, groundwater pollution
from a PolyMet mine operation would also flow north into the Boundary Waters. It is
reported in the linked Timber Jay article that the DNR acknowledged that the GLIFWC
could be right.

But to me, this is all beside the point. I find this divide-the-baby faux environmentalism to
be distasteful. I submit that it is just as important to protect the waters of the St. Louis
River watershed as it is the Rainy River Basin. I place the interests of outdoor enthusiasts
who enjoy the Boundary Waters and the Ojibwe who revere and rely on their wild rice
waters for the manoomin on an equal footing. I think it is racist not to do so. Perhaps the
manoomin is even more important.

Copper mining kills wild rice.9

You have been the governor long enough now that the problems with PolyMet and
Glencore are your problems. I really hope you will rise to the challenge to fix them.

Thank you. I remain,

Very truly yours,

/s/

Steven J. Timmer

/sjt

7
http://left.mn/2019/05/former-dnr-commish-tom-landwehr/
8
http://timberjay.com/stories/agency-polymet-discharge-would-flow-north-to-bwca,12245
9
https://www.wxpr.org/post/researcher-looks-effects-sulfide-mining-wild-rice-beds#stream/0