PolyMet’s long story continues on - Mesabi News -Dec 3
How do you tell a story that isn’t over?
There’s an ending that’s all-but written as new drama unfolds in the middle at every turn. The beginning, which started so long ago, is more a reference point in the story’s history than an open part of its current debate.
For more than a decade, PolyMet’s story has criss-crossed the Iron Range, Minnesota and Washington, D.C. with public displays of support and opposition — behind the scenes, advocates pushing and pulling.
If anyone finds themselves fatigued on the subject, it can almost be expected. Range leaders and advocates have held the PolyMet copper-nickel project near Hoyt Lakes as the beacon of hope for quality jobs on the East Range. And for the last decade, they’ve fought tooth and nail for it, riding the ebbs and flows of the region’s optimism toward the possibility that copper can be mined in northern Minnesota.
Few victories were as a sweet for them as last week’s.
By a 309-99 margin, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a land exchange between PolyMet and the federal government. It marked a major milestone in the project. With the backing of Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., the bill is expected to pass the Senate, be signed by President Donald Trump and clear a large hurdle for the project — potentially nullifying a series of lawsuits challenging the action on its way.
But the fight isn’t over, caution PolyMet’s supporters. After all, it wouldn’t be the PolyMet project if things went the easy way.
“Nothing comes easy for the Iron Range, but we’re willing to work for it,” said Dave Lislegard, the mayor-elect for Aurora, who helped represent Jobs for Minnesotans in Washington last week. “It’s amazing how hard we have to fight to have an opportunity to work in this country.”
An opportunity presents itself
It was the Friday after Thanksgiving when Congressman Rick Nolan, D-Minn., was informed that his PolyMet land exchange bill would be voted on when the House resumed on Tuesday. The Capital was mostly empty of lawmakers home for Thanksgiving recess, and Nolan, though confident in the bill’s chances on the chamber’s consent agenda, knew he would need a two-thirds of the House if a roll call vote was requested.
That’s where the nerves started creeping in.
“It was a quite a full-court press in the final days,” Nolan admitted Tuesday night following the bill’s passage. “We had a much higher bar to meet … normally you can get a better head count.”
Unknown to them as they booked flights to Washington, a contingent of Range leaders were soon critical to solidifying its success in the House.
Lislegard, Nancy Norr and Kyle Makarios of Jobs for Minnesotans, along with Frank Ongaro of Mining Minnesota, were due in Washington at the beginning of the week to help Congressman Tom Emmer’s land exchange bill through the lower chamber. On Friday, they too received word that PolyMet was on the agenda.
Nolan likened the final days to last December, when Minnesota’s DFL Central Committee was taking up Resolution 54, an on-the-record stance against PolyMet and Twin Metals by the party. There were calls for a compromise between the Range and the Environmental Caucus — if it went to vote, did mining have enough supporters in the crowd to win?
“They came to me and said, ‘Nolan, it’s your district, it’s up to you,’” the congressman recalled. “No, we’re not going to compromise as long as the vigorous rules and regulations remain in place to do both. That was the same situation we were in here.”
Some supporters the of land exchange, or H.R. 3115 as it was filed, lobbied Nolan to withdraw the bill fearing a deflating defeat was forthcoming. He remained confident, despite no hard count on the votes, that it would pass. It just needed some last-minute work.
In the halls of Congress, the Iron Range contingent went their separate ways. They had split up a list of lawmakers and went to work on meeting everyone they could. Nolan worked the phones from his office to gather every vote he could in the event of a roll call.
Consent agenda items in Congress, much like city council and school board meetings, are almost always up and down consensus votes. Few members of Congress are in the chamber when these items are presented. But Nolan and others knew PolyMet had its opposition, so when roll call was announced, they also had to herd everyone onto the House floor to cast a vote.
With the exception of U.S. Reps. Betty McCollum and Keith Ellison, both Twin Cities-based Democrats, the state of Minnesota cleared the PolyMet bill. That included Tim Walz, a Democrat running for governor in 2018 and Republican Erik Paulsen, who would go on to lobby against the land withdrawal bill days later.
Congressman Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., was a main voice in pushing the land withdrawal reversal forward as chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Minerals, part of the Natural Resources Committee. He rallied together the House’s Western Caucus, which he also chairs, to give PolyMet a thumbs-up vote.
“We had a number of other votes if needed,” Nolan said. “I had a dozen or more members lined up to give us the votes.”
The Iron Range comes together
If anything defined the victory of H.R. 3115 for the Iron Range, it was the local effort behind the win. PolyMet played its role. Business, labor and communities formed tight alliances through groups like Jobs or Minnesotans and Mining Minnesota.
It’s a relatively new concept for the Range, which has struggled with less clout on the state level as its population decreases. Organizing as it did last week was the culmination of the unions, business and local politicians pulling together and moving in one direction — no longer relying on a decreasing amount of political capital to win the day.
“The Iron Range, in the last five years, has come together in a way that we are very formidable,” Lislegard said. “Our unity is our strength.”
He credits people like Norr, Ongaro and Makarios for their efforts on the ground, and the work done by the likes of Nolan, Walz and Gosar in Washington. But the grassroots groups forming around the Iron Range also play a critical role.
When Paulsen, the Republican congressman from Minnesota, started to openly sway about 20 GOP House members against Congressman Tom Emmer’s land withdrawal bill, the troops in Minnesota began the counter attack — making phone calls and blitzing social media pages of House members.
“The local efforts were tremendous,” Nolan said. “They were swarming the Capital. Every member’s office was visited or communicated with at least a half dozen times.”
The latest chapter of the PolyMet story is here: A new power, a new organizational structure on the Iron Range formed through those alliances, rallying around the Hoyt Lakes project. And just like the old days, when clout won the day, the Iron Range seems to be winning the fights it picks — from Resolution 54 to PolyMet.
“We have a strong organization that has the ability to respond when called in a very positive and impactful way,” Lislegard said. “That didn’t come overnight. It seems like time and time again they rise to the occasion. The answer the call.”