The chatter I keep hearing from folks who attend lots of under-reported public meetings is that the $67 million bonding request to fund infrastructure for the Minnesota Steel plant near Nashwauk is vital to the project’s viability. In quiet rail authority and city meetings, company representatives and city officials communicating with them say that the costs of things like rails, pipelines and access roads keep going up and that Essar Global, the company that bought the Minnesota Steel project, is relying on that infrastructure to get started quickly.
Now, I have no doubt that the bonding bill will include money for the steel plant infrastructure (unless the bonding bill flames out entirely). The question is how much and where is it coming from? Gov. Tim Pawlenty would prefer that most of the money come from a one-time Iron Range Resources fund built up from mining taxes. Rangers would prefer that money come from the bonding bill because of the unique nature of the project and its long-term benefit for the whole state (not all that mining money stays on the Range, folks). If this argument can’t be resolved then we could see major delays on this important project. The morale hit on the Iron Range would be great. This is the one “potential” project for which almost everyone holds the most genuine hope.
I put “potential” in quotes because we have had the good news that U.S. Steel will expand production at Keewatin Taconite, creating about 75 permenant jobs and a brief contstruction boom later this year. It’s interesting to me that the KeeTac project happened so quickly it was never discussed as a “potential” project, just as one that happened. What does that tell us about our Iron Range habit of throwing all our money and hopes at proposals rather than economic realities? After all, the steel plant is only at the top of the list because the price of steel is currently very high. Ah, but that’s a story for another day.
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