"The reconciliation bill overrides federal laws and regulations to benefit one Chilean company — Antofagasta PLC — that wants to mine near the Boundary Waters wilderness area."
"A little-known provision of Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” bill would open thousands of acres of public lands at the edge of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters wilderness to a foreign-owned mining company.
The move amounts to a giveaway “in perpetuity” to a company that has lobbied in Washington for years, environmental campaigners say, potentially opening up one of America’s most famous wilderness areas to water pollution risks.
Earlier this month, conservationists cheered when Congress withdrew from the reconciliation bill several provisions that would have sold off hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land in Nevada and Utah. Those provisions had sparked fury among public land advocates and staunch opposition even from some Republicans, including Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana, who vowed to oppose the bill if the land sell-off provisions were retained.
But despite that fury, a lesser-known public lands giveaway remained in the reconciliation bill. If approved as currently written, the provision could lease in perpetuity land near Minnesota’s Boundary Waters wilderness, an enormous complex of pristine lakes and untrammeled forests, to Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining giant Antofagasta PLC."
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