SMRs and AMRs

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Mining's big price tag is down the road for the public to absorb

Don’t burden Minnesota taxpayers with PolyMet cleanup costs

By John Gappa | 04/15/15

John Gappa serves as the chief financial officer for a Minnesota-based company and has 30 years of experience as a financial executive. In 2011, Gappa was named CFO of the year by the Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal.

Too frequently, the debate about PolyMet’s proposal to build a copper-nickel, or sulfide mine, in northern Minnesota is portrayed as a debate between conservationists and business, between jobs and the environment. On tax day, April 15, I want to bring a different perspective from my 20 years of experience as a chief financial officer. If Minnesotans are not careful, we could end up footing a future tax bill enlarged by publicly funded cleanup costs.

As a CFO, I have reviewed hundreds of millions of dollars of investments creating over 1,000 jobs. My role in these investments was to develop the business case, project costs and revenues over a 20-year period, and evaluate the returns and associated risks.

While most of these investments were successful, some were not. Over the years, I learned the hard way that failed projects all have two problems: overestimated benefits and underestimated costs and risks.

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