“Overburden” is more than just the title of my award-winning book (though principally that’s what it is). Overburden is also a real word that means something “miney.” Miney is my new word for things related to the mining industry. You start saying things like this after a few years of covering the mining industry. Anyway, overburden is anything covering an ore body that needs to be removed.
Taconite production creates a lot of overburden waste and one company is attempting to market the aggregate for building materials and landscaping. This means that in addition to feeding the steel mills that make the rebar and guard rails of American highways, the contents of our Iron Range earth could become the actual road materials as well. There are challenges in this business, namely making a profit transporting heavy-ass rocks all over the place. But that’s a fairly standard operational challenge when you live around here. Beth Bily of Business North has the story.
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