Should Minnesota pilot responsible mining standards?

Sometimes I wonder about our political processes. Steel companies are leaning on our legislature to weaken federally approved water quality standards. US Steel had a 4th quarter profit of $275 million for the 4th quarter last year. A review of their financial statements makes one wonder where the "hardship" of meeting long-standing water quality standards ranks with all the other hardships the steel industry faces. An opinion piece in yesterday's Star Tribune nicely highlighted the status of the standards US Steel claims could pose a "hardship." At least Target didn't claim environmental standards were to blame for the economic hardship they're suffering after their unsuccessful Canada initiative.

source: Thomas Michael Power

After seeing the taconite folks claim environmental standards are eating into their profits, I wonder about the copper-nickel mining industry and their "responsible mining" claims. There is, though, a way to see if any of the mining entities in Minnesota truly mean what they say when they claim they're "responsible." Ask them, for the record, how they'd go about meeting the draft standards developed by the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance. Personally, I'd love to see the IRRRB take some leadership and work with the mining companies, existing and prospective, on a pilot effort and make the outcome public. The standards in question have been prepared with the participation of the mining industry. Let's see how well they may fit Minnesota's existing and prospective mining projects.

To put this in a slightly different perspective, looking at a different project, the Minneapolis Park Board is being accused of delaying and increasing the costs of the SouthWest Light Rail Transit project because they've got the Feds to require the Metro Council to follow the rules. The issue in contention arises from Section 4(f) that "states that a special effort must be made to preserve the natural beauty of the countryside and public park and recreation lands, wildlife and waterfowl refuges, and historic sites. Section 4(f) has been part of Federal law in some form since 1966." Based on what I've read in the paper, the Metro Council could have been more thorough when they engaged in due diligence on "prudent and feasible alternatives" early in the process. If they had, Minnesota might have a project moving ahead now. Even a recovering planner (who once worked at the Metro Council) knows there's such a thing as "penny wise, pound foolish." We'd all be better served if we focused on developing projects that meet the needs of all stakeholders, rather than winning a turf war or weakening long established standards. The green building industry is discovering that to produce a better product, you need a better process. That's where Integrative Design comes in. It seems to me that Minnesota could come out way ahead if we applied integrative design thinking to our project development, especially if there might be some disagreement along the way.

Science

By Alison Hawthorne Deming 

Then it was the future, though what’s arrived   

isn’t what we had in mind, all chrome and   

cybernetics, when we set up exhibits

in the cafeteria for the judges

to review what we’d made of our hypotheses.

The class skeptic (he later refused to sign   

anyone’s yearbook, calling it a sentimental   

degradation of language) chloroformed mice,   

weighing the bodies before and after

to catch the weight of the soul,

wanting to prove the invisible

real as a bagful of nails. A girl

who knew it all made cookies from euglena,

a one-celled compromise between animal and plant,   

she had cultured in a flask.

We’re smart enough, she concluded,

to survive our mistakes, showing photos of farmland,   

poisoned, gouged, eroded. No one believed

he really had built it when a kid no one knew   

showed up with an atom smasher, confirming that

the tiniest particles could be changed   

into something even harder to break.

And one whose mother had cancer (hard to admit now,   

it was me) distilled the tar of cigarettes   

to paint it on the backs of shaven mice.

She wanted to know what it took,

a little vial of sure malignancy,

to prove a daily intake smaller

than a single aspirin could finish

something as large as a life. I thought of this

because, today, the dusky seaside sparrow

became extinct. It may never be as famous

as the pterodactyl or the dodo,

but the last one died today, a resident

of Walt Disney World where now its tissue samples

lie frozen, in case someday we learn to clone

one from a few cells. Like those instant dinosaurs

that come in a gelatin capsule—just add water   

and they inflate. One other thing this

brings to mind. The euglena girl won first prize

both for science and, I think, in retrospect, for hope.

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Of streetcars and rural development

More than once we've promoted the idea that greater Minnesota needs a more diversified economy, particularly on the Iron Range. Apparently, we're not the only ones with similar thoughts. These days more and more resources are being developed to help local communities empower local businesses and develop the local economy. Here are some that have recently caught our eye.

Minnesota, in particular the Twin Cities and our agricultural areas, has long benefited from the development of co-ops. According to the Citizens' Institute on Rural Design [CIRD], "The USDA Rural Development's Rural Business-Cooperative Service helps residents form new cooperatives and improves the operations of existing ones through education, research, technical assistance, publications and funding, and provides much-needed capital in rural areas."

Spring Valley, Minnesota

Photo by J. Harrington

CIRD also highlights an upcoming "Community Builders Webinar: Creative Approaches to Economic Development: What it Takes to Attract and Retain Businesses in Today's Economy on February 25."

The University of Minnesota's own Center for Small Towns will be hosting a Rural Arts and Culture Summit on June 2-4 in Morris. The theme this year is "From the Ground Up: Cultivating Creative People and Places."

rural Chisago County Minnesota

Photo by J. Harrington

I've recently been amused by the Republicans emphasis on greater Minnesota. Once upon a time, so long ago the the Department of Employment and Economic Development was called the Department of Trade and Economic Development, Minnesota had a Rural Development Board. That disappeared in the mid-1990s, during the Republican Administration of Arne Carlson. The DFL controlled the House for many of those years so they may bear some responsibility for abolishing that board. Along about those times or a little earlier, Minnesota produced and regularly updated a Rural Investment Guide. My point is that Minnesota used to have institutions focused on greater Minnesota.

Maybe the trouble started when Earl Butz, a Republican Agriculture Secretary, told farmers to "get big or get out." That philosophy essentially signed a death knell for many rural communities. In 1862, when the USDA was established, about 90% of Americans were farmers. Today its about 2%. Think about how many farmers it takes to support a cafe or a Target store. The growth of bigger farms hasn't much helped rural school districts or businesses. Of course, once we had streetcars in Minnesota too. Now we're faced with the need to rebuild a rural economy and an urban streetcar system because we weren't wise enough to protect what we had. Have we learned any lessons from our history, or will our lack of institutional memory support further destruction of our environment? One of my long-time rural development heroes, Aldo Leopold, once wrote "To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering." Are we keeping track of all Minnesota's social, economic and environmental cogs in both "The Cities" and greater Minnesota? It would seem not.

Repetition

By Kay Ryan 

Trying to walk

the same way

to the same store

takes high-wire

balance:

each step

not exactly

as before

risks chasms

of flatness.

One stumble

alone and   

nothing

happens.

Few are

the willing

and fewer

the champions.

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