Many causes for Ely’s decline

When my wife and I moved to Ely 28 years ago, we became quite aware of the anger people felt about the BWCA legislation.  Some people lost the source or their livelihood, and many lost their unfettered access to their favorite wild places.  The anger was not surprising.  People become unhappy when they lose something they once had, such as lost income, loss of power or influence, lost youth, or loss of way of life.  All are hard to accept.

Now the anger seems to be shifting toward the perceived negative effect of the BWCA on the Ely economy.  It is indisputable that Ely’s population and school enrollment have declined since the BWCA legislation.  Ely’s economy also appears to be diminished.

But is if fair to blame all that on the BWCA?   A friend of mine recently mentioned a number of other macro economic factors that have had little to do with environmentalism, and which I repeat here:

• About 1,500 mining jobs and related residents went away because Ely’s many underground mines were too wet, extremely dangerous, and unprofitable compared to open pit mines on the western Iron Range.

• Another 500 or more mining jobs and residents were lost among people who lived in Ely but worked all across the Range.  Those jobs went away because technology and mining productivity allowed one miner to do the work of many miners.  Technological change is a self-evident fact of life we live with every day.

• Another 500 jobs and residents were lost in forestry for the same reasons.  One logger today can do what many loggers could do in 1965.  Furthermore, trade laws have ensured that far too many paper products and chip boards are manufactured in Canada rather than here.  Every environmentalist I know opposed those trade laws at the time.  Furthermore, reopening the Boundary Waters to logging today wouldn’t generate one new job in the forest products industry.  Much more accessible stumpage goes begging today.

• The Ely school population is down, of course, and in fact is far lower than would be expected based on the population decline alone.  Why?  Because young people are getting married much later and having far fewer kids.  This is now the nationwide culture.

• Empty storefronts.  Yes, we have some of those.  So does every small rural town and local neighborhood in America.  Why?  Because Walmart, Menards, Shopko, Target, eBay, Amazon and all the rest are eating our lunch.  Again, this box store marketing and on-line retailing is universal.  It has nothing to do with our local issues.  The Walmart heirs have accumulated more wealth than the bottom 30% of all Americans combined.

• One of the main reasons the Ely economy of 1965 was more robust in some ways than today is because the minimum wage then was 50% higher than it is now, and Wall Street bankers then took home millions of dollars, today they are taking home billions.

So what is the answer?  Is the BWCA legislation the reason for much of Ely’s economic decline?  Or is it the same problems that are effecting much of rural America?  Maybe the opportunities presented by Ely’s adjacent wilderness have actually been helping to mitigate those problems?  It is a question easy to argue, but an argument unlikely to be won by either side.

Conflicts that tend to split the city are unlikely to benefit anyone.  A more positive response would be for this end-of-the-road city and surrounding community to hunker down and all work together.  Fortunately,  the recent Incredible Ely and the Ely Folk School initiatives are examples that it is already beginning to happen.

Phil Hogan

Ely, Minn.