DULUTH Cohasset City Council accepted
The revised environmental review for a wood factory proposal
During a brief meeting Tuesday evening, however, he did not take any in-person public comments.
The updated environmental assessment worksheet or EAW for the
Huber Engineered Woods $400,000 million oriented Strand Board, or OSB, Plant
came after
Late last year, an environmental group, an Indigenous band and two Bemidji-area businesses spoke out about the inadequacy the original EAW.
State agencies now need to look at permits for the plant after the EAW was deemed adequate by Cohasset.
The meeting lasted approximately 17 minutes and was held in the city halls community centre to accommodate dozens supporters and opponents. Cohasset mayor Greg Hagy stated that he and his council would only receive written comments submitted during a 30-day period in January and February.
We recognize that there may be people interested in speaking out for or against the EAW Project, but we won’t accept public comments tonight. Hagy stated that in the beginning, Hagy decided to only accept written comments.
As the council called for roll call, opponents of a plant demanded that they be allowed to speak.
Why didn’t you allow the people to speak? Winona LaDuke is the executive director of Honor the Earth. This Indigenous-led environmental group was founded in 1997. It was open to the public.
Honor the Earth released Monday’s news release stating that they were previously told by the city public comments would be permitted, but the city changed its mind, in direct contravention to the purpose of Minnesotas Open Meetings Law.
The
Mondays are still open public hearings.
An earlier afternoon, company officials and supporters held a Huber Huddle in Grand Rapids at Timberlake Lodge.
Brian Hanson, president of APEX, a Duluth-based economic development agency, stated that the project will help the community to weather the planned phase-out of Minnesota Powers Boswell Energy Center coal fired units.
The project will create 158 jobs in the region. The 800,000-square foot facility is planned for 400 acres near Boswell, which accounts for a significant portion of the area’s employment and tax base.
Hanson spoke by telephone to say that there is a problem here and Huber Engineered Wood provides a great opportunity for helping to replace that platform.
A Hubers-sized project would normally trigger a stricter environmental impact statement. However, the Minnesota Legislature
Passed a law exempting the project from such a study
.
The Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe submitted written comments stating that the project should be given the full environmental impact statement. This is more stringent than an EAW.
The band, which is located just one mile from its reservation, said that it was not included in any necessary tribal consultations in the months leading up to the announcement of the plant in June 2021.
A number of trade associations representing timber producers, truckers, and loggers have backed the project.
The Huber mill’s production capacity will help to restore some of the mill capacity Minnesota lost in the past 13 years. It will also allow Minnesota to use the more than 10 million acres of mature aspen and the large amount of growing aspen (mostly harvested in the 1980s) that will be coming to rotation over the next 5-10 year. Mike Forsman is the executive director of the Associated Contract Loggers and Truckers of Minnesota. The additional volume is sustainable and essential for maintaining healthy forests, wildfire suppression, wildlife habitat, and the environment.
But a competitor in this industry is opposed.
West Fraser, an OSB plant in Solway near Bemidji, has reiterated its concerns about the lack of enough timber, namely aspen in the state, to support another mill.
The updated EAW shows Mike Kilgore (chair of the Department of Forest Resources at University of Minnesota) stating that the aspen annual sustainable harvest was 2.36million cords per annum and that only 1.43 million cords were harvested for 2018. Kilgore stated that Huber would use approximately 300,000 aspen cords per year, leaving plenty of aspen for him.
West Fraser wrote comments on the EAW and included letters from Robert Wright, an Ohio professional forester, and Stephen Fairweather, a Washington forest biometrician, who both listed many issues with the EAW.
Roberts pointed out that Kilgore used a 2019 report by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. However the report itself relies heavily in part on environmental impact statements that were issued in 1994 and 2006. These statements are too outdated to accurately analyze the potential impacts of this project.
The company also asked why the City of Cohasset was EAWs responsible unit governing unit or RGU and not the DNR, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, which would be more knowledgeable.
The City disagrees. The city responded to the comments. The City was assigned to the RGU in accordance with rule. The EQB regulations state that if a proposal falls into more than one mandatory EAW Category, then the RGU will have the greatest responsibility for supervising the approval of the Proposed Project.
Although permits must still be obtained from the state regulators, the project has a goal of opening in 2024.
However, legal challenges from Honor the Earth or other organizations are to be expected.