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Today’s vote has Range school district on the ropes
Today there’s a levy referendum for the Greenway School District on the western end of the Mesabi Iron Range. If you’re not from the Range, this is one of the schools who used to kick your school’s ass in hockey. Part of the reason they haven’t been kicking your ass lately (I’m talking about you,…
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Session wrap in waiting
I didn’t get to the Minnesota legislative session analysis I had hoped to write today. Here’s the short version: despite the challenges, this was a good session for the Iron Range in general. Not perfect but pretty good considering. Check out round-ups from the DNT. The Range papers have stuff, too, but it’s not posted…
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I’ve got the Power! (for now)
There’s a lot going on around Minnesota and the Iron Range. I had about six posts I was going to work on this weekend in between paper grading (finals week!) until the wind started. High winds knocked out power around 4 p.m. Saturday out here in the deep woods Brown Compound. You know what you…
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Dylan changed the world; so can we
This is my weekly column for the Sunday, May 18, 2008 Hibbing Daily Tribune. I archive my columns at my writing site. Dylan changed the world; so can we When I tell people I’m one of the co-chairs of Dylan Days I usually get a look. It’s a look that says, “You? You’re too young…
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Today in Coal
What do you think? Is “Today in Coal” a show you would watch? Anyway, two items came across my desk this morning and both are about coal. 1) The Range’s biggest power plant, Minnesota Power’s Clay Boswell facility in Cohassett, is entering its second summer of construction on a $200 million environmental upgrade. Like U.S.…
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Midnight in the halls of Iron Range power
I didn’t think Excelsior Energy could go a whole legislative session without deploying its vast lobbying force for something. Recently, in the tax bill conference committee, State. Sen. Tom Bakk inserted language that extends the property tax exemptions from 2010 to 2012 for everyone’s favorite black hole of government giveaways and special favors. Excelsior is…
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Five questions about the Iron Range economic boom
Tony Barrett, an economics professor at St. Scholastica in Duluth, poses five excellent questions about the Iron Range’s prospective economic boom in today’s Duluth News-Tribune. I sense on the streets and back roads of the Iron Range that people are sitting back, perhaps a bit too comfortable in the belief that good times are about…
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True knowledge in the north woods
This is my weekly Hibbing Daily Tribune column for Sunday, May 11, 2008. I archive my columns at my writing site. True knowledge in the north woodsBy Aaron J. Brown The other day, my almost-three-year-old son Henry and I walked down to the lake to throw sticks, a favorite pastime of Henry’s and a ritual…
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More steel and speculation in this week’s Biz North
Wayne Nelson and the writers at Business North do a fine job of covering the economic news of northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. This week’s edition has a couple of interesting Iron Range stories. First, this story reviews Essar Global’s North American steel ambitions, something I talked about earlier in the week. This is the company…
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Great news! The Range is getting shafted by lobbyists!
Maybe you heard on the TV the great, fantastic super duper news that lobbyist-run Excelsior Energy got a gabildyzillion dollars in tax credits for their boondoggle Mesaba Energy Project. Wow! That’s great! Except that the tax credits apply only if they build the plant, a prospect that requires private investment and a customer willing to…
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City Pages reports on Iron Range past, present
I’m not sure what drew them to us, but City Pages — the Twin Cities’ alt weekly — profiles a snippet of Iron Range history and provides a surprisingly detailed look at new nonferrous mineral mining technology on the East Range in this week’s web edition. The history portion in particular puts a bit of…
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Excelsior petitions for delay in PUC ruling on Mesaba project
Excelsior Energy’s Mesaba Energy Project will not be on the docket for Thursday’s Public Utilities Commission meeting. The PUC had been expected to rule on two key aspects of the proposed coal gas plant, but Excelsior asked for and received a delay. Why? Some mumbo jumbo about an appeal to a previous administrative decision. The…
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Nashwauk is just one push pin on a big map for global steel company
It’s been said before, but Essar Global’s ongoing purchase plans of the Minnesota Steel project — a proposed iron mining and steel-making operations near Nashwauk — sends the Mesabi Iron Range deep into the complicated global steel market. For two decades, Iron Rangers have come to view the prospective mine and steel mill on the…
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Anzelc speaks truth on Mesaba boondoggle
In this Mike Jennings story rescued from last Saturday’s edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune, my friend and colleague Tom Anzelc becomes the highest level public official to acknowledge the foolishness of the Mesaba Energy Project: Efforts to sort out the legal and administrative tangle that has ensnared Excelsior Energy will continue next week, but…
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Taking Requests: Minnesota Steel, sure thing or just a myth?
This is the third and, for now, final installment of the randomly occasional “Taking Requests” segment, in which I blog about Range issues on the minds of MinnesotaBrown readers. Today’s topic, at the prompting of a couple e-mails I’ve received, is the Minnesota Steel project near Nashwauk. For the past decade, the biggest of all…