Governor grants Solo reprieve
Don Davis, Forum State Capitol Bureau - 12/21/2007

“We are going to give the black bear a reprieve, a pardon,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty announced on his weekly Friday radio show. “It is a good pre-Christmas, pre-holiday announcement.

State Department of Natural Resources officials had considered putting Solo down because she had become too friendly with people, which could be dangerous. But now state officials say she will live out her life in a wildlife sanctuary, but no decision about where to send the bear family will be made until next week.

Solo is a 4-year-old, one-eared bear that has become well known to residents Eagles Nest Township near Tower. That is where she and her cubs are hibernating under a private cabin. Pawlenty, saying all he knew about the case was what he read in newspapers, came down on the bear’s side Friday.

“My feeling is this bear should not be euthanized,” Pawlenty declared.

Paul, a caller to Pawlenty’s show, said killing her would be “a waste of natural resources.”

The governor agreed, but said the state must keep children safe. “We obviously have to put those concerns first.”

DNR officials said Friday afternoon that the bear family will be sent to a captive facility where the three can live without “uncontrolled interactions with people.”

“This solution satisfies our original and primary concern about public safety,” said Michael Don Carlos, DNR wildlife research and policy manager. “The typical behavior of a black bear, like any wild animal, is to avoid humans. This bear is habituated to humans and has lost its fear of people, which makes it impossible to predict its behavior.”

DNR officials said they are looking into several locations for the bears.

If Pawlenty remains involved, look for Solo to receive some sort of judgeship, maybe on the appellate court. Unless it shows activist tendencies. After that, look for T-Paw to drop it off at Tom Rukavina's house.

Miners lung study to cost $5.5 million
Lee Bloomquist, Duluth News Tribune - 12/18/2007

EVELETH — A study of the causes of lung disease among Northeastern Minnesota iron ore miners will cost $5.5 million. And some people are wondering where money to answer the longstanding health question will come from.

“We’re going to find the money,” state Rep. Tom Rukavina, DFL-Virginia, assured about 50 people Monday at a meeting of the Minnesota Taconite Workers Lung Health Partnership at Iron Range Resources headquarters in Eveleth. “I would like to find all of it up-front and secure it away.”

The partnership is aimed at determining once and for all what has caused a sharp increase in mesothelioma deaths among Iron Range miners.

Mesothelioma is a rare, usually fatal lung disease related to asbestos exposure.

A statewide cancer surveillance system determined that 58 of 72,000 miners who worked in the iron ore industry between the 1950s and 1983 died from the disease.

The disease rate among the miners is much higher than the expected rate in Northeastern Minnesota. But it never has been determined what causes the disease.

Researchers determined in 2003 that 17 of the miners probably developed the disease from commercial asbestos dust. Some critics said the Health Department didn’t look hard enough at mine dust.

The new study will examine whether working in the mines is a risk factor for lung disease, whether other diseases occur as a result of working in a mine, and whether spouses are at risk, said Dr. Jeffrey Mandel, University of Minnesota School of Public Health associate professor. The exhaustive five-year Health Department study would include health examinations of current and former workers and spouses, air sampling in Iron Range communities and near mines, lake-bottom sampling, mineral analysis and historical data, Mandel said.

“This is the time to figure out what is going on,” Mandel said. “The rate here is clearly elevated. There’s no point in waiting longer.”

Iron Range town mulls surveillance cameras placed around town
The Associated Press - Sunday, December 16, 2007

BUHL, Minn. -- Law enforcement officials in the Iron Range town of Buhl want to put six surveillance cameras around the town of less than a thousand people.

Sergeant Pat McKenzie of the St. Louis County Sheriff's office say it's a cost-efficient way to deter crime. But some locals think it's a silly idea in a small town where not much crime happens in the first place.

The city council is considering the proposal, which would have cameras placed at the three main ways into town, and one each at the city park, near the city beach and near an industrial park.

Not all council members are on board. One calls the proposal, quote, "creepy" and says it raises concerns about invasion of privacy.

The Tiffany Johnson Memorial Fund has been established as a tribute to Tiffany A. Johnson, who lost her life as the result of a tragic shooting on December 9, 2007, in Arvada, Colorado.

A native of Chisholm, Minnesota, Tiffany “Tiff” was taken from this earth while graciously serving for “Youth with a Mission (YWAM).” Tiffany’s life was dedicated to caring for and helping her fellow man. She began her work with YWAM in 2006 as a student and acquired additional training to become a staff person with the organization. During her time with YWAM, Tiffany was carrying out what she believed to be the two most important duties in her life: serving God and sharing her faith with others.

Tiffany was known to many as a strong, beautiful young woman whose passion in life was working with people and sharing the goodness of life while continuing to spread the Word of God.

The Tiffany Johnson memorial fund will grant scholarship(s) for youth that are training to become missionaries as well as future missionary work.

Tiffany leaves behind a loving family and the many lives she changed. Tiffany’s mission has been accomplished.

Local unions to build iron nugget plant
Lee Bloomquist, Duluth News Tribune - 12/12/2007

A project labor agreement that guarantees the use of local union labor for construction of the world’s first commercial iron nugget plant has been reached between Steel Dynamics Inc. and Northeastern Minnesota labor unions.

The agreement ensures that all of the work to build the $235 million nugget plant near Aurora and Hoyt Lakes will be done with local union labor, said John Grahek, president of the Iron Range Building Trades.

Steel Dynamics of Fort Wayne, Ind., hopes to have a 500,000-metric-ton-per-year nugget plant operating at the site by mid-2009.

“It’s going to be an all-union job and it will put a lot of local people and contractors to work,” Grahek said. “It’s going to mean 1 million man-hours of work. And they have a seven-year plan, from what I understand, in which they could possibly add two other [nugget] modules.”

Construction on the plant’s initial module is already under way.

With the agreement, about 500 construction workers — including electricians, plumbers, carpenters, pipe fitters and laborers — are expected to be at work at the site this spring, Grahek said.

‘Clean coal’ project is too good to be true

As society begins its vital and inevitable transition from fossil fuels, the Mesaba Energy Project of Excelsior Energy is a litmus rest of collective intelligence and will. Politicians from Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Sen. Norm Coleman to Iron Range Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party legislators have been seduced by the phrase, “clean coal.” I don’t believe there is such a thing.

Excelsior’s proposed coal-gasification generating plant on the Iron Range would fail to achieve the primary purpose of such a facility. The draft Environmental Impact Statement reads: “Excelsior has not established a specific, detailed design for carbon capture, transport, or sequestration.” Why not? Because the geology of Northeastern Minnesota prevents it. So why build the plant here? The essential point of coal-gasification is to sequester the carbon, thereby reducing the production of greenhouse gases that contribute significantly to global warming. If you don’t do that, you’ve accomplished nothing but the destruction of another tract of Minnesota forest and wetlands — besides fouling the atmosphere.

There is no demand for the potential electricity. A few weeks ago the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission denied Excelsior’s petition to force other power companies to buy its electricity.

So will elected officials finally dismount this dead horse? No doubt government funding will play an important role in encouraging the development of alternative energy sources, and such will be worthy endeavor. But the Mesaba Energy Project is not worthy and not smart. It should be given up. Too much taxpayer money already has been wasted.

Peter Leschak
Side Lake

Our view: Highway 61 revisited, this time in an Escalade
Duluth News Tribune - 12/11/2007

Bob Dylan shilling for Cadillac? Before we get into the predictable is-nothing-sacred discussion, know that the big bucks ad deal isn’t the first time the Duluth-born, Hibbing-raised icon of counterculture has memorialized the symbol of quality, if not excess, in song.

Take this from the 1963 dream-sequence ballad, cheerfully titled “Talkin’ World War III Blues”: “Well, I seen a Cadillac window uptown And there was nobody aroun’, I got into the driver’s seat And I drove 42nd Street In my Cadillac. Good car to drive after a war…”

Not much there to indicate the song’s protagonist actually purchased the car, though it really wouldn’t matter since it’s supposed to take place at the end of the world. Or something like that. Obligatory Dylanesque obscurity aside, the Highway 61 troubadour better known for counting how many roads a man must walk down is unambiguously endorsing a more refined, if expensive, form of transportation today.

“This week, we’re living large and climbin’ into a Cadillac,” he said in a two-minute excerpt from his XM satellite radio show, “Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour,” doubling as a long-form Escalade commercial.

“Cadillacs. They roll (or did he say roam?). They cruise. They make you feel like a million bucks. Nothing goes better with a Cadillac than a long ride to nowhere full of (or fooling with?) the right music.”

That’s positively Dylan cruising up Fourth Street, and why shouldn’t it be? It’s a little late for anyone to lose sleep over rock ’n’ roll getting a second life hawking the institutions it once criticized. It’s been five years since Minnesota filmmaking brothers Joel and Ethan Coen used the Beatles’ “Taxman” to push H & R Block. And that was a decade after the very late Janis Joplin’s anti-materialistic anthem, “Lord, Won’t You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz” became the background track in a C-Class commercial.

Maybe Dylan has sold out, but if so, keep in mind he’s been riding in limos ever since his first concert sold out. As for Cadillac, General Motors had better be careful which songs it appropriates from the man who wrote “They’ll stone you when you’re driving in your car” and “We drove that car as far as we could, abandoned it out West ...”

Think they want to get tangled up in that?

Economists say buying local is a complicated ideal
Jane Brissett
Duluth News Tribune - 12/10/2007

Christmas shopping at J. Skylark, a locally owned toy store in Canal Park, is a longtime tradition for Paige Salyards of Duluth.

“I try to always shop locally,” she explained. “I just see the value of supporting our
local economy.”

Donna and Lauren Sletten, also of Duluth, do likewise. “We just love those one-of-a-kind gifts,” she said.

Consumers locally and throughout the nation are becoming more aware of the “buy local” movement, believing it will boost individual businesses, the local economy and the quality of life where they live. A recent report by a new state think tank, Minnesota 2020, highlighted the value of buying local this holiday season.

Local buying advocates point out that mail order and Internet sales send money
elsewhere and that even big box stores and chains divert most of their money to corporations, although they do pay local salaries and rent or property taxes that put money into the economy.

But whether spending locally really makes a big difference is an open question, two local economists said recently. While no one is saying shoppers shouldn’t favor their favorite local merchants, the economic issue really hasn’t been well studied.

Buying service

Part of the reason it’s difficult to tell whether buying local benefits the local economy, said Jim Skurla, acting director of the University of Minnesota Duluth’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research, is “it’s so difficult to tell what’s local and what’s not.”

Even if an item is sold by local merchants, it’s probably made elsewhere, he pointed out. Sometimes — but not always — local prices are higher than large retailers.

What you’re buying locally really is service, Skurla said. “That’s what the local people are adding to it, is the knowledge and the time,” he said.

There’s also the question of what is local. Big box retailers Target and Best Buy, for example, are Minnesota-based corporations. They pay taxes in the state, contribute to community causes and employ people at their headquarters who wouldn’t be in Minnesota if the companies were based elsewhere.

And, taking the argument to the extreme, what would happen to the shipping ompanies if everyone bought local, asked Tony Barrett, economics professor at the College of St. Scholastica. If northern Minnesotans stopped shopping in Minneapolis,
workers might be laid off and then they’d be unable to afford to come to Duluth
as tourists, he added.

The world of commerce is too interconnected for the buy local argument to be simple, he said.

Iron Range is preparing for a boom
Lee Bloomquist, Duluth News Tribune - 12/09/2007

As the Iron Range taconite industry expanded in the early 1970s, a temporary trailer park for hundreds of construction workers sprung up on the St. Louis County Fairgrounds in Hibbing. Workers had to move their trailers for a week to make way for the county fair before rolling them back onto the fairgrounds.

A similar scene is about to be played out again as the Iron Range braces for the biggest construction boom in more than 30 years.

Minnesota Steel’s steel mill, Mesabi Nugget’s iron nugget plant and PolyMet Mining Corp’s proposed copper, nickel and precious metals mine are alone projected to require 3,400 construction workers and about 1,300 permanent employees.

A $200 million Minnesota Power environmental control improvement project at
its Boswell Energy Center in Cohasset over the next three years will require up to 800 construction workers. Excelsior Energy’s proposed coal gasification power plant would need about 1,000 construction and 150 to 300 permanent workers.

“We are at a place in time where there’s potential for several large-scale projects to happen,” said Sandy Layman, Iron Range Resources commissioner. “I don’t think we’ve had this kind of investment since several of the taconite plants were built. It’s not only the dollar amount that’s unusual and historically important, but it’s also that these projects are higher value.”

The flood of construction, permanent and spin-off workers would alter economics, education, health, housing, civics, crime, transportation and ethnic diversity within a region that has a 100-year history of being a melting pot of people.

“After 27 years of economic depression, we will become the jewel of the steel industry in the Western Hemisphere,” said former state Sen. Ron Dicklich, now a consultant for Itasca County on the $1.6 billion Minnesota Steel project near Nashwauk. “We’ve always been a mining camp up here, and we have been treated like a mining camp. But now you’re going to have a large corporation located in our area. Just having a foreign owner [Essar Steel of India] here is going to be a big cultural change.”

Many results, fewer answers
By Steve Kuchera, Duluth News Tribune - 12/08/2007

A new analysis of information on 58 Minnesota mine workers who died from mesothelioma reveals a large variation in where and for how long they worked in the industry.

The Minnesota Department of Health, which did the analysis, will use the findings in preparing multi-year studies aimed at determining what might have caused the rare, asbestos-related lung cancer. Those studies will be done in collaboration with the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.

Jeff Mandel, a professor at the school and one of the leaders on the planned research, said the analysis contains some interesting information, but points to the need for further study.

“The critical question here is whether exposures in the workplace are somehow related to these [58] cases,” he said. “The reason for this number of cases really has to be determined. It has caused a lot of questions in people’s minds and a lot of concern. The only way those issues are going to be addressed is to do a more formal investigation.”

Mesothelioma is a rare, fatal form of cancer seen almost exclusively in people who have been exposed to asbestos. The disease shows up at about twice the expected rate in Northeastern Minnesota, raising questions about a possible relationship between respiratory disease and mining work.

The 58 miners — all men — were among 72,000 people who worked in the state’s iron mining industry between the 1930s and 1982.

Mining company expands Range copper, nickel deposits estimate
Duluth News Tribune - 12/04/2007

The size of a copper-nickel deposit being explored near Babbitt has been expanded.

Officials of Franconia Minerals Corporation say a new estimate shows an inferred underground resource of 124.4 million tons of copper and nickel at what's called the Spruce Road resource.

The Spruce Road estimate is in addition to 100 million tons in a resource at Franconia's Birch Lake exploration site and an 83 million ton resource at Franconia's Maturi site near Babbitt. The Spruce Road deposit, part of the Birch Lake project, is about six miles south of the Birch Lake deposit.

A report on the Spruce Road deposit also considers the option of developing an open pit copper-nickel mining operation at Spruce Road with 377 million tons of indicated reserves, according to Franconia Minerals news release.

Franconia Minerals Corp. has for several years been exploring deposits of copper, nickel, platium, palladium and other precious metals near Babbitt.

By the end of the year, Franconia expects to complete an 18-hole, 23,000-foot drill program at Birch Lake, according to a Franconia Minerals news release.

The drilling will provide samples for bench scale and pilot scale metallurgical testing in 2008. A similar exploration pro-gram is in 2008 planned at the Maturi site.

Land deal clears way for new iron ore mine in Iron Range
Lee Bloomquist
Duluth News Tribune - 12/04/2007

Steel Dynamics and Cleveland-Cliffs announced a land deal Monday that would lead to the opening of a new mine to provide raw material for the world’s first commercial iron nugget plant. The mine and plant together would employ about 200 to 300 workers, compared with 50 for the nugget plant alone, said Steel Dynamics chairman and CEO Keith Busse.

The Mesabi Nugget plant is planned for the former LTV Steel Mining Co. site near Aurora and Hoyt Lakes.

“This is excellent news,” Hoyt Lakes Mayor Marlene Pospeck said. “Everything is moving ahead, very much so. I’m very impressed with the progress that’s being made in construction in the first phase of the project.”

Under the $18 million deal, Steel Dynamics Inc. will acquire about 6,000 acres at the former LTV Steel Mining Co. site and assume some environmental and reclamation liabilities that had been Cleveland-Cliffs’ responsibility.

It also will acquire mineral rights to about 133 million tons of iron ore reserves beneath the ground at the former taconite plant, according to Pete Clevenstine, state Department of Natural Resources Lands and Minerals manager of engineering and mineral development.

Steel Dynamics officials in September said there are enough iron ore reserves at the site to operate four iron nugget modules for 100 years.