Eight years of intensive historical research and 44 years of intensive living on the Iron Range taught me more than I ever planned to know about the steel industry.
My latest column, “With merger on the ropes, the fate of U.S. Steel will shape the future of the Iron Range,” is in the Wednesday, Sept. 25 edition of the Minnesota Star Tribune. You can read it now at this gift link.
Humans are always biased to believe the world of their lifetimes is the true and only world. But some worlds can only be entered if you take a different point of view.
A few weeks ago, I toured the Pulsar Helium site at Babbitt (more on that in a future column). I decided to drive the most direct route from my house, which happens to avoid all towns. It’s 80 miles, almost entirely on dirt roads and lonely country highways.
This route hugs the northern edges of three taconite mine tailing dams: Keetac, Hibtac, Minntac. These massive basins rarely cross your mind, even when you live near them as I do. But they’re arguably the most distinctive thing about the Iron Range when you look down from an airplane. They are both marvels of engineering and persistent risks in need of constant mitigation. Dams like these are made of the very tailings they’re meant to contain. Decade after decade, they grow taller, wider, and more imposing. They change the landscape, such that my drive to Babbitt on century-old logging roads was altered by their expansion.
This is a story about the environment, yes, but people are part of the environment. These swelling tailings deposits tell a massive, generational story of workers, ore and steel. It continues because of demand for the ore.
But what if demand changes? What if the technology of steelmaking changes?
It’s already happening. We see the results in the deep uncertainty facing the companies that seek to rule the iron mines of the Mesabi Range, especially U.S. Steel.
Read the column now, or pick up a copy on the Wednesday newsstands.
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