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Iron Range Renaissance? Or Recovery?
Officials of all stripes engaged in back patting and speech-making on the Iron Range this week for the dedication of Mesabi Nugget, a new facility that makes iron nuggets from low grade iron ore near Hoyt Lakes. They also toured Minnesota Power’s new Taconite Ridge wind energy project by Virginia. This year we’re producing innovative…
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Range coal gas boondoggle tripped up at PUC
Excelsior Energy’s boondoggle Mesaba Energy Project, a massively expensive coal-gas power plant that relies on government favors and grants to survive, was dealt a minor blow this week. The state PUC declined to reconsider a past decision that would have granted the project more time to coalesce. It also corrected language in the proposal to…
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A busy week …
Quietly, it’s been a very busy week on the Iron Range. There were developments in Mesabi Nugget, Minnesota Steel, Polymet, Taconite Ridge, iron magnetization, flood mitigation for the Canisteo mine pit, my favorite boondoggle (Mesaba Energy Project) and more. I can’t keep up with it all. I hope to have several posts up later today…
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Tom Bakk: the MinnesotaBrown interview
Iron Range State Sen. Tom Bakk, chair of the powerful Senate Tax Committee, is exploring a run for governor in 2010. He’s been making the rounds to newspapers and blogs telling people his decision-making strategy. Paul Demko did an interview with Bakk earlier in the week for the Minnesota Independent. His political team approached me…
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Go Tigers!
Indulge some nostalgia here. My alma mater, Cherry High School, is making its first appearance at the state baseball tournament since 1997 when I was still a student there. Cherry is a tiny township tucked away along the Mesabi Iron Range, known mostly as the place where all the Finns went after being blacklisted from…
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Gubernatorial showdown on the Range
While I’m (slowly) working on a post about my interview with Tom Bakk, here’s a story from Monday’s Mesabi Daily News about the prospects for a rural governor, specifically an Iron Range governor, in the 2010 election cycle. What’s interesting is how the two potential Range candidates, State Rep. Tom Rukavina and State Sen. Tom…
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Range connections in AK-SEN race
Minn Post has a story about the Iron Range family ties of Mark Begich, Mayor of Anchorage and Democratic challenger to Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska). Begich’s father, U.S. Rep. Nick Begich, was born and raised on the Iron Range and his uncle, Joe, is a fixture in Range politics. I am ashamed that I didn’t…
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Long, hot summer
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Fishing is the pits
Iron Range mine pits … not just for disposing of Jimmy Hoffa’s body anymore*. Sam Cook’s column in today’s Duluth News-Tribune explores the success of the program that stocks our abandoned, flooded mine pits with large, delicious fish. Fishing in a mine pit is just like fishing in a lake except that if you step…
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Steel barons of the 21st century
This is my weekly column for the Sunday, June 8, 2008 Hibbing Daily Tribune. It was held over from last week because Essar made an announcement reiterating their commitment to the Minnesota Steel project just beforehand. My original sentiment remains, though; the Range must not depend on large steel companies or consultant-driven projects to deliver…
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Minnesota Steel project to be self-financed by Essar
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On deck in the Fightin’ Eighth
Recently I posed the question: “Who might succeed Jim Oberstar if he moves up to Secretary of Transportation in a hypothetical Democratic Administration?” It’s a question full of logistical problems, including the need for Democrats to win the election, Jim Oberstar to be offered the job and Jim Oberstar to take the job. Overall, people…
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Mulling a Post-Oberstar World
According to an item in MinnPost, U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) is strongly suggesting that if Barack Obama wins the presidential election this fall that he nominate Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.) to be Secretary of Transportation. Oberstar is the longtime ranking Democrat and chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Oberstar has represented Minnesota’s…
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Range project loan payments were extended as favor to company
Another Excelsior Energy audit story ran Sunday in the Hibbing Daily Tribune. This one focused on the decision by Iron Range Resources Commissioner Sandy Layman to unilaterally extend the interest payment deadline for this company a couple different times. The story seems fairly benign, but the bigger story for me is that the DFL dominated…
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Optimistic news about Minnesota Steel on the Iron Range
Like a lot of people who have followed the story of the proposed Minnesota Steel integrated mining and steel making facility near Nashwauk, I’ve been getting nervous. While officials were receiving assurances that the western Iron Range project would go forward as planned, we were all getting mixed signals as Minnesota Steel’s new parent company,…