What the Walz Order and the Twin Metals Lease Cancellation Mean for Voyageurs
Clean water isn't a partisan issue, it's a Minnesota issue. Our lakes and rivers should stay healthy enough to fish, drink from, and pass on to the next generation. That shared value is worth remembering as two major developments reshape the conversation around sulfide-ore copper mining in our watershed.
What's happened.
Spring 2026: This spring, Congress voted to roll back long-standing federal protections, reopening the door to sulfide-ore copper mining upstream of one of the most pristine freshwater systems in the world.
August 2026: In response, Governor Walz signed Executive Order 26-10, directing the DNR and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to halt permitting and environmental review for nonferrous mining across the 1.9-million-acre Rainy River Headwaters Watershed. This would bar the state from issuing any new leases there.
September 11: The DNR issued a public notice canceling one of the mineral leases held by Franconia Minerals, a subsidiary of Twin Metals, the company that has spent more than a decade pursuing a copper-nickel mine near Birch Lake, south of the Boundary Waters
November 10: The termination becomes effective, following nearly a year of review, based on a determination that the company hadn't met the lease's performance and production requirements.
Two details make this particular lease notable. First, it sits on School Trust Lands, acreage the Minnesota Constitution dedicates to generating revenue for the state's K-12 school districts, not to any conservation purpose. Its cancellation is as much a statement about responsible stewardship of a public asset as it is about water protection.
Second, Twin Metals is a subsidiary of Antofagasta, a Chilean mining conglomerate, a reminder of the question of who ultimately profits from Minnesota's public lands and waters. The canceled lease isn't in the exact footprint Twin Metals has proposed to mine, but it's the first time the state has used its own authority, separate from Washington, to pull a Twin Metals lease back. That matters, and advocates say it may set a precedent for the leases still to come.
Why this matters for Voyageurs specifically. It's easy to think of Twin Metals as strictly a Boundary Waters issue. It isn't. Voyageurs National Park shares the same watershed, the Rainy River headwaters, and sits downstream of it. As hydrologist Tom Myers has explained, Voyageurs is at the downstream end of its watershed, so everything entering the system passes through the park before reaching Canada. Mercury contamination, arsenic leaching, and acid mine drainage would travel that same path. Our lakes, our fish, our loons and eagles, and the visitor experience that roughly 240,000 people come here for each year all depend on what happens upstream, often decades before the water ever reaches us.
Tribal Nations have led on this issue. The Boundary Waters and Voyageurs watershed sits within land ceded under both the 1854 and 1866 treaties, where the Bois Forte, Fond du Lac, and Grand Portage Bands retain treaty-protected hunting, fishing, and gathering rights. Those rights only mean something if the water and the fish in it stay healthy. Grand Portage Band Chairman Robert Deschampe called Governor Walz's executive order a win for treaty rights, and was careful to frame the Band's position not as opposition to mining as an industry, but to the pollution that risky sulfide-ore mining can bring: "We are anti-pollution." In May, five Anishinaabe Nations spanning the U.S.–Canada border signed an agreement to coordinate protection of these shared waters, a reminder that this watershed, and the responsibility to care for it, crosses jurisdictional lines.
Where Voyageurs Conservancy stands. Our mission is to protect Voyageurs National Park. Sulfide-ore mining in our watershed presents a significant risk to Voyageurs' 'Outstanding Resource Waters' and the ecosystem, economy, and communities that depend on it, a position we share with Tribal Nations, local business owners, scientists, and Minnesotans across the political spectrum.
What you can do. The most useful thing any of us can do right now is stay informed and keep talking about it, with neighbors, with local officials, with anyone who loves these waters. Understanding how this watershed connects the Boundary Waters to Voyageurs, and why that connection matters, is the foundation for protecting it long-term.
Let's continue to work to keep this place wild for generations to come.
