#boundary waters

[myfootyrthroat]

I know there's... A Lot going on right now and we're all hanging on by a thread, but I've got a favor to ask.

A bill, HJ Res. 140, just passed Congress. This overturns some of Biden's environmental protections and would allow mining in the Boundary Waters watershed, a beautiful wilderness area here in Minnesota.

Please contact your senators and ask them to oppose this.

I'm including a couple of pictures that I took while I was up there doing research, but they really don't do it justice.

[huariqueje]

Across the Bay - Scott Lloyd Anderson

American , b. 1958 -

Oil on panel , 16 x 12 in.

[dishesoap]

im not a pro-AI guy. but like. i do wish that everyone who uses every chance they can to talk about how AI is absolutely fucking over the worlds water would also like, care about the worlds water in literally any other context. our natural resources aren't just a 'gotcha' in internet arguments.

anyway can we save the fucking boundary waters please.

Protect the Boundary Waters from sulfide-ore copper mining.

[leebrontide]

The bill allowing strip mining the boundary waters is being voted on TODAY! Please call and leave a message for your senators now if you want to protect the whole Great Lakes water shed from dangerous contamination!

Call your senators!

Call your senators!

And please help spread the word!

[starfragment1979]

Smoke from the Boundary Waters wildfires has been blowing in and it is so so so bad here. AQI higher than I've ever seen it to the point where I feel like something must be malfunctioning but there's multiple local stations reporting numbers above 500. It is visibly smoky and orange outside and even with windows shut and AC and air purifiers cranked it still smells like a campfire inside. Wildfire smoke absolutely wrecks my health and this is the worst I've ever seen it so I'm anticipating the World's Worst Crash coming soon.

I had to edit this photo slightly because my phone's camera kept wanting to color correct it to make it look normal, but this is the view in my neighborhood.

[ghostriderslade]

The smoke from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area wildfires in Northern Minnesota have cast our town in Northern Wisconsin into a haze. It smells like a campfire outside. The haze is getting thicker as the morning goes on.

[thedruidsforest]

Pardon my beauclairoise but how the FUCK am I just supposed to sit at my desk at work after learning protections for the Boundary Waters have been stripped? How am I supposed to carry such immense environmental grief with me that grows with every headline? How am I supposed to use my anger and fury when no one else will stand up to oppose the heavy machinery?

We were supposed to be the gardeners of this place. We were supposed to be the goddamn gardeners of this place.

[rjzimmerman]

Republicans deployed a little-known law to open Minnesota wilderness to mining

Legal experts say the use of the Congressional Review Act to open mining near the Boundary Waters could drastically reshape U.S. public land

Excerpt from this story from Grist:

Minnesota’s Boundary Waters comprise a vast stretch of wilderness bordering Canada, with over a million acres of untouched forest and thousands of lakes and streams. Accessible largely by canoe, it is an ecological gem and one of the most popular spots in the country for outdoor recreation. On Thursday, Senate Republicans voted 50-49 to open the area up to mining — passing a resolution that repeals a 20-year moratorium using a little-known law called the Congressional Review Act, or CRA. 

The act was designed in the 1990s by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who sought to cut back on government bureaucracy by eliminating regulations. It was engineered to allow Congress to quickly overturn regulatory rules with a simple majority, rather than the usual two-thirds vote. Critics say it’s dangerous because it enables public rules and regulations based on years of research to be quickly overturned with little debate. 

“It allows Congress to basically do a thumbs up or a thumbs down, where otherwise a filibuster would apply,” explained Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center, a nonprofit, public interest law firm. During the CRA’s first 20 years of existence, it was used only once by the second Bush administration. But President Trump and Republicans have worked to dramatically expand and weaponize the CRA, with the Boundary Waters case being the latest example, Schlenker-Goodrich said. In 2017, the Trump administration invalidated 17 rules from the Obama era. In 2025 alone, Trump signed 22 CRA repeals. 

The CRA technically gives Congress 60 days to overturn a rule after it’s passed. The Boundary Waters protections were passed over three years ago during the Biden administration, and not as a rule, but rather as a Public Land Order. This puts the Senate and administration in territory that is “extraordinarily legally questionable,” said Blaine Miller-McFeeley, a senior legislative representative at Earthjustice. “We are not done fighting, and there are a lot of open questions because this is such uncharted territory.” 

The decision could set a dangerous precedent. Should the resolution be allowed to stand, it could open up all land management decisions to political attacks. Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah, for example, has proposed a CRA resolution to eliminate the resource management plan for the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. 

The Trump administration’s use of the CRA also effectively cuts tribal nations out of Boundary Water negotiations. “Three tribes — the Bois Forte Band, the Fond du Lac Band, and the Grand Portage Band of Chippewa — have extensive treaty rights in Northeastern Minnesota,” New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich said in remarks on the Senate floor. “These rights are guaranteed to them by the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe and have been reaffirmed by federal courts over and over again. By overturning the Public Land Order with a CRA resolution, Senate Republicans will not only cut tribes out of the conversation. They disrespect tribal treaty rights and directly risk those tribes’ guaranteed access to their traditional way of life and subsistence use of this place.”