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A simmering economic crisis on the Iron Range
You know the old saying. If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water it will hop right out. But if you put a frog in a pot of cool water, gradually turning up the heat, the frog won’t realize it’s boiling to death. Politicians of all stripes have boiled a bog’s worth of rhetorical frogs over the years.…
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The distant barons of Duluth and the Iron Range
As readers here know, we in Northern Minnesota are living in a time of speculation and bewilderment over the machinations of distant industrial powers. The regional economy of the Iron Range is dangling on a bouncing string pulled by unseen actors. But this is nothing new. Same now as it ever was. Zenith City Online, a…
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The Iron Range is dead; long live the Range
“The king is dead; long live the king.” This saying from the height of European monarchies meant when the person at a nation’s helm physically died, the title lived on with the next person in the royal line. Massive change could be seen as mere progression. This simple continuity kept order even at a time…
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Reeling U.S. Steel asks for relief on state mining leases
Socked by a global iron and steel price collapse, U.S. Steel is asking the state for a reduction in the cost of its state-owned mining leases, which currently fund trusts benefiting Minnesota universities and schools. The company needs to reduce costs by about $25 million to reopen its Iron Range properties. The 114-year-old Pittsburgh-based company announced earlier this…
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Mesabi Nugget stays down; U.S. Steel continues cuts
Business North reports that Steel Dynamics, owner of the Mesabi Nugget plant in Hoyt Lakes, will keep the plant idled as the price of iron remains lower than the cost of production. The idling was announced months ago with the hope that it would end after new equipment was installed during the shutdown. Though the upgrades…
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Iron Range Earth Fest promises blend of heart and Sol
If you follow national and international news, it’s easy to see some underlying trends hovering just off the front pages. The cost of solar energy has gone way down in the last couple years, making it affordable and arguably a leading prospect for new energy production in the near future. Climate change continues to affect places all…
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Iron Range mines must modernize to survive
As the iron mining and steel industries gird for a hard year of low prices and intense international competition, iron mining executives and academics meet in Duluth this week for the Society of Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration (SME) Minnesota conference. WDIO reported on the Tuesday keynote by Don Fosnacht, director of the Center for Applied Research and…
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An uncomfortable truth about Iron Range’s mining woes
Here on the Iron Range one cannot escape the talk of impending layoffs at area iron mines. You also can’t mistake who company officials and unions alike blame for this situation: foreign steel dumping. “Dumping” means foreign companies, sometimes as extensions of foreign governments, sell steel for less than it costs to produce, just to move it off their shores. Usually their…
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MinnTac to lay off 700 in taconite slowdown
UPDATE (4/1/15): Minnesota Public Radio reports on the conditions in Iron Range taconite mining. I was on the midmorning MPR News program yesterday talking about the situation. (3/31/15) — This morning, U.S. Steel announced 700 impending layoffs at MinnTac, the Iron Range’s largest taconite plant. U.S. Steel had already announced the idling of its Keewatin Taconite property…
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Range town addition fades to mining
Parkville, Minnesota, is a place, but not a town. It’s one of the location villages common to the Iron Range, a place where miners and their families lived a literal stone’s throw from mining activity. Legally speaking, Parkville is an addition of Mountain Iron, the Mesabi Range’s first town. But U.S. Steel has been gradually buying…
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Great Scott! ‘Doc Brown’ visits Iron Range hot spot
For most in my generation, the actor Christopher Lloyd is best known as the eccentric recluse scientist in the “Back to the Future” movies who sends Michael J. Fox’s Marty McFly to the past, the future, the past again, and then finally the present. Today, that present is past, while the previous future is now…
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RAMS board members plan reform, but no action yet
The Range Association of Municipalities and Schools board held a special meeting last night to reorganize and discuss its appointment of Sen. David Tomassoni as executive director. RAMS is a lobbying organization that advocates for units of local government on Northern Minnesota’s Iron Range. Many at the Capitol and in the media, including me, have been…
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Nolan says 3 Range mines have deal on haze standard
U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan (D-MN8) announced yesterday that three Iron Range taconite mines have struck a deal with federal regulators to comply with Northern Minnesota’s haze standards. Federal haze standards relate to special air quality rules that apply to areas near national parks and wildernesses, of which there are several in the Upper Great Lakes…
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Tailings basin concerns for Iron Range’s MinnTac mine
The state will be looking closely at permit renewal plans at MinnTac in Mountain Iron, Minnesota, after the federal Environmental Protection Agency issued concerns recently that the tailings basin at Minnesota’s largest taconite mine inadequately filters runoff into area waters, including those that flow into Lake Superior and the Boundary Waters Canoe area. The Star…
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Rock and a hard place, change coming to the Iron Range
Some of life’s biggest myths are that 30 years is a long time, that today doesn’t matter, and that anything is permanent. Here on Northern Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range, the lessons of change that come from digging out the ground beneath our very feet have been hard learned. But what’s learned is so easily forgotten after those paltry 30 years.…