There are few places in this country more beautiful than the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota, which is contained by the equally staggering Superior National Forest. So, naturally, it's just the perfect place to drop a massive copper mine.

Over the weekend, former vice president Walter Mondale and Teddy Roosevelt IV wrote an op-ed in The New York Times calling our attention to this free-market brainstorm.

The prospect of any major industrial activity in the watershed of such a place would be deeply troubling. But this kind of heavy-metal mining is in a destructive class all its own. Enormous amounts of unusable waste rock containing sulfides are left behind on the surface. A byproduct of this kind of mining is sulfuric acid, which often finds its way into nearby waterways. Similar mines around the country have already poisoned lakes and thousands of miles of streams. The consequence of acid mine drainage polluting the pristine Boundary Waters would be catastrophic. It is a risk we simply can't take. Scientific evaluations of the project and the industry's destructive record point to a major threat to a treasured ecosystem. Poison the headwaters, poison the system. And this mine would poison not just the Boundary Waters but also Voyageurs National Park, which is on the wilderness's northwest corner, and the adjacent Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario.

At issue is the renewal of a couple of 20-year-old leases granted to a Chilean mining behemoth. But the proposed mine is just the biggest part of a general struggle in northeastern Minnesota between the people charged with keeping public wilderness pristine and extraction companies waving the promises of fees and jobs around in a tough economy. In June, the U.S. Forest Service came out against renewing the leases and set off a huge controversy concerning not only the Boundary Waters mine, but also existing iron and mineral producing facilities all over the Iron Range. Governor Mark Dayton has written a strong letter against the Boundary Waters mine.

Of course, if this were taking place in neighboring Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker would be up there with a shovel right now. Elections, as we are reminded, have consequences.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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