Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum Wants Just 90 Days to Hand the Boundary Waters Over to a Foreign Mining Company
This morning, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum again joined Twin Metals to urge the DC District Court of Appeals to put the Boundary Waters litigation on hold.
The Burgum Reply explains that a review of the Twin Metals matter is already underway at Interior; and it assures the court that this review will be an exercise in a foregone conclusion: “there is a meaningful likelihood that the contours of the issues presented in this case will change as a result of the agency’s review.”
The filing also reveals that Interior has placed the previous Solicitor’s legal opinion under “Suspension Review,” which means that “Interior may not ‘rely on those M-opinions as authoritative and binding without first consulting with the Office of the Solicitor for guidance.'”
That office is currently headed by Acting Solicitor Gregory Zerzan, who in the past has held a number of government positions and served as Principal Deputy Solicitor under Daniel Jorjani in Trump’s first term. Jorjani, of course, wrote the M-Opinion that determined Chilean mining giant Antofagasta plc had a “non-discretionary” right to renewal of its leases near the Boundary Waters. (I’ve written about that opinion, its genesis, its selective use of history, and its contorted logic at length on this blog and elsewhere. This link should bring up some of those posts.).
Neither Burgum nor the attorneys for Antofagasta seem especially confident that the Chilean mining company can win on the merits, and they are asking for a 90-day reprieve to render this case moot.
250307BurgumReplyrdDownload
