Mesabi Iron Range, 2010. Image: MN DNR
The above image was created with a maps feature from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources web site. You can use data to create all kinds of different maps. This is the Mesabi Iron Range, as seen from the air in 2010.
Naturally, I spent my time on the site checking out places around the Iron Range. I was struck at how much mining changes the landscape of the region in just a few years.
The earliest maps available were from 2003, right before a mini-boom in taconite production. Here are the mine lands of Cliffs Natural Resources’ Hibbing Taconite and U.S. Steel’s Keewatin Taconite:
Aerial photo of Hibbing and Keewatin mines, 2003. Image: MN-DNR
With just one click, I could see the same area in 2010:
Hibbing and Keewatin mines, 2010. Image: MN-DNR
You can see noticeable growth of the pits, rising mine dumps, and increased texturing of the existing minefield (deeper pits). And that’s just one little six year sprint of mining (2009 was mostly a bum year for mining).
The picture is also valuable for people to understand that the land consumed by mining is much, much larger than even the largest towns on the Range. These huge mines are run efficiently by just over a third the total number of employees that once worked there.
So, when people wonder why the Range remains so consumed by mining politics when direct employment is so historically low, look at these pictures. Mining really is hard to ignore on the Iron Range. There is a cultural understanding that the mine blasts and rolling tires on the big yellow trucks mean prosperity. We just have to watch out because robots can drive trucks now, and they love working 7-24s for free.
I encourage everyone to imagine this type of mining district in the recreational lake district around Ely and adjacent to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. I can’t think of many people who would want to vacation or live on a lake within the sights and sounds of a nearby industrial mining district. It is choice, one future versus another, not both. One choice provides clean water, clean air, a healthy forest, wildlife, and a healthy lifestyle. The other takes this all away and end the end leaves the community with a bust economy and irreversibly damaged land and water.
What happened to the need to diversify? Mining isn’t the future of the Range but it is part of the future of the Range.
Someone with a family to feed and without a decent and secure income will understand why we should say yes to mining. And by and large a tourist economy pays poorly, unless you own a business. A tourist economy as your primary source of jobs is a dead end.
Somehow in the argument against copper-nickel mining, it has seemingly become acceptable for some to act like the people, the land, the culture, the essence of everything we on the Iron Range are, is apparently wrong. “Clean water, clean air, a healthy forest, wildlife, and a healthy lifestyle” being exclusively for those in an area without mining (and the opposite being for those with mining). Well, guess that means we don’t have any of those things?
I’m not 100% for or against Polymet. I’m not delusional that mining doesn’t change the landscape or environment. I’m not silly about iron mining being a steady, awesome, easy lifestyle for people – it’s not. I’m not against new ideas or education or the internet or tourists or the land or the birds or the air or the water.
But I am getting so tired of the Iron Range being drug into this argument to apparently show how simply awful it is to live in an area with a mine.
Recently, there was even someone who tried to tell the state legislature about how one town (Ely) is so wonderful and so much better than another town (Eveleth) based simply on the fact that Eveleth has a mine. Wouldn’t something just feel wrong about basically trashing a little town in an effort to make a point about something? Wouldn’t someone realize that the people in Eveleth probably know that everything isn’t great (just like it isn’t great in Ely) but that people there have tradition and culture and kids they’re trying to raise (just like the people in Ely)?
For goodness sake, we’re all just little towns in northern Minnesota that are doing the best we can. To drag the Iron Range into this argument against copper-nickel mining, by saying how horrible everything is here, just seems misplaced. On one hand you are certain that we on the Iron Range are living in some type of horrible, poor, ugly, unhealthy conditions, while on the other hand you want us to care that you keep your “clean water, clean air, a healthy forest, wildlife, and a healthy lifestyle”. If you really want people here to try to understand your viewpoint, maybe it’s a good idea to not completely minimize ours.
As I was helping write comments on the PolyMet SDEIS, something really struck me. The PolyMet issue isn’t really about jobs. Yes, 300 jobs would be very valuable to those people. But in the over-all picture, 300 jobs aren’t going to make much of a splash in the economy of northeast Minnesota. What PolyMet is really about is PolyMet/Glencore making billions on the global market by extracting and exporting our metals. And ultimately we are going to be left behind with no metals, centuries of pollution, and a lot of big holes in the ground.
I have spent my life on the Range, teaching in Virginia, and growing up and now living in Chisholm. The entire landscape of this area is being reshaped by mine pits. Virginia is now surrounded on three sides–by Minntac, Minorca, and United Tac– and facing a major highway redesign. In Chisholm, I’m sandwiched between Hib Tac and Magnetation. In the meantime, the Chisholm population is half of what it was when I was growing up.
I think those of us living on the Range need to be realistic. Yes, there are good things about living here or we wouldn’t be here. There’s a neighborliness and stick-to-it-iveness that is part of small town living. But I think we must be realistic about the impact that mining is having on our water, air, and land–some of which we can see, and some which we can’t see, but is affecting us just the same. I think we need to be realistic about the amount of alcoholism and drugs that are rampant as part of our society here–and what causes this to be so much a part of our culture. I think we need to be aware of the expanding gap in income levels that is true of the Range as it is of our country as a whole. We have a lot of problems that need solutions. It is my conclusion that opening up a new mine district in sulfide ores that are notorious for their pollution footprint is not the answer. Unfortunately, our political leaders believe that mining is the only answer, and they keep promising jobs while claiming that the DNR will see that mining is done right–even though that same DNR has allowed taconite mining to continue without meeting water quality standards for the past 60 years. We are at a kind of tipping point–either we are going to give up the rest of the Arrowhead to mining, or we are going to say no to sulfide mining and choose to preserve what’s left of our clean water, woods, wetlands, and wildlife resources. This would not mean the loss of existing jobs. It means we must look for new ways to create the future.
Yes. It would be much better to abandon mining and let this region revert to primeval wilderness, thus preserving it as a retirement and vacation playground for the upper class. As for the existing population that is employed in the mining and industrial sector … well, if they were too stupid to own businesses that cater to wealthy tourists or pursue lucrative careers in environmental activism, then I guess they can move to the Cities and get jobs at Starbucks serving coffee to their betters.
/SARCASM OFF
I find it amusing how both of the anti-mining comments on this thread contained an explicit false choice:
From Becky Rom: “It is choice, one future versus another, not both. One choice provides clean water, clean air, a healthy forest, wildlife, and a healthy lifestyle. The other takes this all away and end the end leaves the community with a bust economy and irreversibly damaged land and water.”
And from Elanne Palcich: “We are at a kind of tipping point–either we are going to give up the rest of the Arrowhead to mining, or we are going to say no to sulfide mining and choose to preserve what’s left of our clean water, woods, wetlands, and wildlife resources. ”
The entire Arrowhead given up to mining? Last I checked the prospective mines (PolyMet, Teck-Cominco, Duluth Metals, Twin Metals) were focused on deposits located within a few miles of Birch Lake, and well south of the BWCAW.
But fear not, environmentalists. I am confident that enough of your ideological cohorts exist in the EPA and State government that, ultimately, permitting for these mines will be DENIED. And high-grade iron ores mined in different parts of the world will eventually displace the demand for inefficient and expensive taconite, forcing existing mines to close. The tourist-based economy that results will quickly reach carrying capacity, and the excess industrial workers will be safely packed off to live in penury in some urban ghetto in the Twin Cities, leaving you to enjoy your lakes and forests in peace.
Mineral exploration is currently taking place throughout Superior National Forest. (USFS-Federal Hardrock Mineral Prospecting Permits FEIS, May 29, 2012). Also, when Mining Minnesota calls this the 3rd largest (copper-nickel) deposit in North America, they are talking about the entire Duluth Complex, which extends from Duluth, along the North Shore, across Superior National Forest, to (and underneath) the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. What Mining Minnesota doesn’t tell you is that the billions of tons of mineralization of the Duluth Complex consists of 99% waste rock. The push to explore and mine these metals is being facilitated by the DNR Lands and Minerals Division and the entire political-economic structure that has tied us to mining over the past century. My point is this –what do we want to retain as the legacy of northeast Minnesota, and how can we create a vision/strategy that would include a variety of decent paying jobs for the people who choose to live here, without destroying the environment that is reason why we choose to live here.
This is from an article related to gold mining (“The Missing Ethics of Mining”), but, in regards to what Elanne is saying about the 99% of poison rock waste that will be laying around (in your back yard in the rain and snow), and what Aaron is saying about the photos,, there is no difference:
“Technology and strategy cannot overcome the inevitable depletion of resources, but they can delay it. A hundred years ago mining companies looked for deposits whose percentage of gold per ton of earth—the grade—was at least one ounce. Today the grade is considered exceptional if it exceeds one gram per ton. When the grade is low, the only way to continue mining profitably is to grow. A mine in the first half of the twentieth century might process 10 million tons of ore over a fifty year period. Now mines are processing 10 million tons each year. Today, industrial mines are designed to yield extraordinary returns, measured in both ounces and dollars. But this is only true because the magnitude is so extraordinary, and mining corporations are able to collect investment and secure the rights for mines as big as anything humans have ever built.
“The magnitude is difficult to illustrate. A mine is not merely a hole in the ground. There are many pits covering a great area, such that it may take two or three days to tour the complex, and even then a visitor would not know all its dimensions. People seeing a mine of this scale often compare it to visiting the Grand Canyon. The first time I visited a tailings pond, where mines store the toxic waste that results from processing ore, I mistook it for a lake. The waste consumed a valley, nearly overflowing its dam. What is often difficult to grasp is that having taken this step there is no going back. A pit filled with toxic compounds does not merely revert to ecological equilibrium, it must be managed forever. A modern industrial mine is complete inversion: the earth turned upside down. Waste piles form new mountains, open pits become ravines.”
http://www.ethicsandinternationalaffairs.org/2013/the-missing-ethics-of-mining-full-text/
Can’t say how strongly I recommend anyone interested in the topic of copper-nickel mining read the article. Especially those that agree with Ranger47. I don’t mean to sound “condescending” (not meant that way at all – – even though I don’t live there now, I’ve had a LOT of firsthand, up-close and personal experience out there on the Echo Trail, and I HAVE hung out with Eveleth’s Polka Padre) but what the guy’s talking about in the article is YOUR (and your kid’s and their kid’s and on and on) future if you let the mining industry (and your legislators) get away with this one. As Elanne pretty much says, but doesn’t quite say, copper-nickel mining really WILL be “the end of life as you’ve known it”: The people behind Polymet are international Sharks Suprema that have been doing what they’re trying to do to you to people all over the planet for hundreds of years… They will lie to you, suck your elected “representatives” in (which they’ve already done) and leave you stranded without enough income or way to get to town to get what you and your family needs (to eat, to stay sane, to live a life worth living, etc.) in exchange for 150 to 200 of you (don’t believe the “300 jobs” bulloney for a minute) getting a few more years of new sound systems, pickups, ATVs and great parties or whatever good (hush) money can buy (for a while).
Anyway… Read the article (if you dare), pay attention, see what you think when you’re done, and MAYbe give a little extra consideration to what Ms. Palcich and Becky Rom are saying: They are ONE HUNDRED PERCENT CORRECT. And if you don’t think that’s true, and keep insisting on pledging undying allegiance to your “inner mining heritage vow,” and keep supporting the ideas and people shilling for the mining industry vampires circling your part of the world, good luck to you and yours.
P.S. If you have any energy left after reading the “Missing Mining Ethics” article, also strongly recommend checking out what this guy has to say (maybe taking particular note of his “World of Chinese Boxes” entry – it’s extra interesting):
https://lvgaldieri.wordpress.com/tag/polymet/
Robots working 24/7 are not “free” and do need to be maintained. My God Aaron, your thinking would have us mining with #2 shovels. And you’re “teaching” our kids. God help us..
Robots working 24/7 require a tiny fraction of the workforce we now have. I mean, you understand that, right? To think, you were an “engineer.” God help us.
” Yes, 300 jobs would be very valuable to those people. But in the over-all picture, 300 jobs aren’t going to make much of a splash in the economy of northeast Minnesota. ”
This is to fail to understand reality. 300 jobs in a rural area is huge. By itself. But those 300 jobs have all sorts of follow on effects in terms of supporting other businesses. To dismiss this just shows a failure to understand how the private sector works and probably reflects a relatively secure income and an attitude of “I’ve got mine Jack.”
You state it better than I David, plus I think you’re making inroads with Aaron. And there’s hope, he’s young, he’s not yet totally “closed fist” union hardened. When from me, I’m afraid it’s a tin ear..
Oy, these kids these days. They never listen.