The latest release of Boundary Waters documents arrived today, a 14th supplemental production in response to my FOIA lawsuit v. the Department of the Interior. I’ve put them online here.

Two things caught my attention right away: first, an inventory of documents the Solicitor’s office at the Department of the Interior put together, apparently in connection with the Voyageur litigation. A short Twitter thread calls out some items of interest.

Also among the records I received today: a Bureau of Land Management map showing prospecting permits and preference rights leases in Superior National Forest.

There are already a significant number of active leases and many more in the application stage that could eventually come online.

The purple plume of inferred and hypothetical reserves of critical minerals is especially noteworthy here.

We know from other documents I obtained that political appointees in the Solicitor’s office intended to position Antofagasta’s mine as a source of critical minerals; and after the Trump administration published a new list of critical minerals in 2017, Antofagasta itself even flirted briefly (in its 2017 Annual Report) with the notion that Twin Metals had significant cobalt reserves.

The Biden administration is currently reviewing the actions the Trump administration took on Twin Metals and — maybe just as importantly — they are undertaking a review of the critical and strategic minerals supply chain. If it were to be fully developed, that purple plume of hypotheticals and inferences could become a real-world industrial corridor.

Update, 12 May 2021: According to a May 10 Settlement Agreement in Center for Biological Diversity et al. v. Mitchell Leverette et al. (a case in the US District Court of the District of Columbia), the Bureau of Land Management will review its May 1, 2020 decision authorizing the extension of 13 of the prospecting permits indicated on this map. The renewals were made without an Environmental Assessment under NEPA or an effects determination under the Endangered Species Act. These thirteen prospecting permits are for all intents and purposes suspended until BLM completes its review; Antofagasta agrees not to engage in any ground disturbing activities. Antofagasta’s two mineral leases are also under review at Interior and USDA, and we can expect some news on that front in the June 22 filing in Wilderness Society v. Bernhardt.