‘We intend to have a shovel in the ground late this year’
TOWER — A determined and optimistic CEO of the PolyMet copper/nickel/precious metals venture near Hoyt Lakes said final permits for the project should be in hand sometime in the fourth quarter of this year.
“And when we have them (permits), we go ... we intend to have a shovel in the ground late this year,” Jon Cherry said in an address to the Laurentian Chamber of Commerce’s annual meeting last Friday evening at Fortune Bay Casino near Tower.
Cherry, an environmental engineer with more than 20 years of mining experience, joined PolyMet Mining as its president and CEO in 2012 to lead the project through completion of the environmental review and permitting stages and development and production of the mine.
The guest speaker also said that although $500 to $700 million needed to get the plant operational is a big number, it won’t be a problem to secure.
“I have no doubt we will get the money for the project,” said Cherry, adding that interest from investors is high and has increased as the supplemental draft environmental statement process has progressed.
Three public hearings were held on the SDEIS in Duluth (1,300 people), Aurora (650 people) and St. Paul (1,300 people) in early 2014. The document then went to a public comment phase which closed last March 13, with about 58,000 responses received.
Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Tom Landwehr told a meeting of Iron Range officials at a mining forum last October that the final vetted SDEIS should be ready this spring. “My goal is to have the EIS out the door early next spring,” Landwehr told the group of about 80 local elected officials.
The DNR is the lead agency on the EIS review and is joined by the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as co-lead agencies.
PolyMet must obtain a number of state and federal permits, including air and water discharge permits from the state Pollution Control Agency prior to construction. PCA Commissioner Stine has said his agency plans to come to a decision on those permits within 150 days of application in accordance with state law.
The PolyMet project, which will tap into the ultra-rich NorthMet ore body in the vast Duluth Complex, has now been more than 10 years in development.
The potential of the Duluth Complex for minerals and jobs is huge. Experts say it likely holds the largest undeveloped reservoir of copper/nickel/precious metals in the world that would translate into a lot of jobs on the Iron Range, which historically has a higher jobless rate than the rest of the state:
• 4 billion tons of nonferrous minerals have already been identified.
• More than 10,000 construction jobs and 5,000 permanent jobs would be created. And for each new mining job, another spinoff 1.6 jobs would be realized.
• 100 years of mining of the strategic metals in the Duluth Complex is projected.
And the need for the minerals is not being met in the United States. Cherry cited these statistics that were gathered by the NRRI:
• 1.25 million tons of copper is currently produced annually in the United States; 1.8 million tons is used each year, which represents a 25 percent to 30 percent deficit.
• 202,000 tons of nickel is used in the country each year; zero tons of nickel is currently produced in the U.S.
• 183,000 tons of strategic metals (platinum, palladium and cobalt) is being used in the U.S. annually for products such as medical devices; only 8,000 tons of platinum is produced in the country.
A first EIS was found to be inadequate by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which set in motion the SDEIS. That new document, however, last March received the highest rating ever received from the EPA for a mining project such as PolyMet.
The agency’s comment on the SDEIS was very favorable. “We appreciate the extensive improvements to the project and the clarity and completeness of the environmental review that are reflected in the SDEIS,” said Alan Watts, director of the EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance in Chicago.
The project will generate about 2 million construction hours over a 15-month period, while the long-term benefits include creation of more than 900 direct and indirect jobs, including 350 positions on site, and $515 million annually in economic benefit to the region.
While copper was first discovered on the Iron Range in the 1940s, it has only recently become practical to mine the mineral in a profitable and environmentally-safe way.
Responding to a question from the audience after his address of about 30 minutes about where the copper and nickel would be shipped for processing, Cherry said the options are a smelter in Sudbury, Canada, or else to one in Arizona or Utah.
Critics contend copper/nickel mining will pollute the region’s waters. But Cherry said, “We’re all environmentalists. The people who will work the project live here.”
Cherry was also asked about the inevitable lawsuits to come from environmental factions once the permits are approved. But the CEO said he feels the EIS will be as “bulletproof as possible.”
And he said the company will have some good allies in the courtroom. “We will be sitting at the table with some pretty good and important people,” he said of the three co-lead agencies for the SDEIS.
Cherry said construction, however, can not be halted by a lawsuit, unless a court injunction is ordered. And he said litigants would have a high threshold to meet for that to happen.
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