As CFACT has written about and documented on many occasions, the EPA’s bureaucratic system has a way of limiting and altogether stopping job growth in many sectors of the private economy. Mr. Scipioni knows first hand exactly what that means when it comes to the natural resource and mining sector. His visit to our CFACT chapters in MN gave students a first-hand look at just how truly un-nerving and expensive the bureaucratic process is.
Polymet is in the process (6 years to date) of meeting and surpassing all of the bureaucratic hoops put in the way of getting a mining operation up and running in NE Minnesota. The mine would bring close to 1,000 jobs alone directly to the region, add 15 million dollars in new tax revenues to the state, and get the United States a share of the copper, platinum, palladium, colbalt action. As equally important, it would give the US and MN a literal foothold on cleaner, environmentally sound, mineral resource mining over other countries like Russia and China who practice non-environmentally sound resource mining. The fact that the US buys a considerable amount of the same precious metals that would be produced in NE MN from these other significantly less environmentally sound countries shows just how out of whack and out of touch the bureaucratic red tape and justification process in the United States truly is.
