Rhetoric heats up in Range mining battle

The Duluth News Tribune ran a Sunday editorial blasting the environmental bill that would place new restrictions on nonferrous mining in Minnesota. It’s interesting to watch the DNT editorial board these days. They lurch to the political left and right at random, it seems. It’s like watching the state TV station of a South American dictatorship with an old, sick generalissimo at the helm. Used to be, you could read between the lines in a predictable way; now, not so much. Who’s really in charge?

Proponents of this oft-mentioned anti-sulfide mining bill still have to prove how necessary it is to add additional regulations on the ones that exist. The surprise here is that the DNT takes a straight “company line” stance, doing very little to respect the concerns of the opposition in their editorial.

The paper did run a guest commentary by John Doberstein advocating for the bill and against nonferrous mining in the region. All due respect to Mr. Doberstein, someone I’ve battled alongside in the past and who I admire, the paper sets him up as something of a straw man by identifying him as a volunteer leader of the Sierra Club and an agent for Edina Reality. Sierra Club? Edina? This is no way to win a public relations battle on the Iron Range. Something written by a Range resident (for instance, former miner Bob Tammen, who wrote a guest post for this blog last week) would have carried more weight.

I still think there is a common sense way to turn old iron mines into other kinds of mines provided the companies involved agree to take great precautions and remain responsible for any environmental damage. That’s what the next several weeks of debate will be about. I’m not sure how good that debate will be, however; it seems that our local media and the involved parties can only see black and white. Range history and economics is considerably murkier than that.

The Range will never be the environmental paradise espoused by mining opponents, nor are the concerns of environmental groups as unimportant as developers (and the newly pro-business DNT) would have us believe. We’re going to have to figure out how the Iron Range 21st century can include clean water and an economy. We need both.

Comments

  1. Anonymous says

    I volunteered with John Doberstein on the Obama campaign through the caucuses and the election. He is from Duluth and I respect what he has to say. I grew up on the Range, have a MS in Environmental Health from the U of M (focusing on health and safety of workers) and red flags went up when I first heard of this mine. It isn’t just the environmental damage that concerns me but also the health effects that could result in people who may work there. The minerals they would be mining have greater health effects than our current mining operations (this of course excludes a possible tie between the mesothelioma cases and iron ore mines). I will be honest, I have not had a chance to look into this particular project. I’m guessing I should start paying more attention.

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