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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

What’s the plan?

How does sowing division help to improve Ely’s economy?

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In 25 years of publishing a community newspaper, those of us who put out the Timberjay week after week have learned a number of lessons. One of the most important is: never burn your bridges. We all live in a remote part of the world, and there aren’t very many of us up here to get things done. Sooner or later, we’re all going to need to work together on something of common interest and importance.

That’s why the current bloodletting in Ely over copper-nickel mining is so frustrating and destructive. Ely, of course, has boiled over on any number of issues over the years along the usual environmental fault lines. But not since 1978 has it been as ugly as we’ve seen in recent weeks.

Mayor Ross Petersen undoubtedly spoke for a significant contingent of Ely opinion in his much-chastised column that appeared recently in both the Timberjay and the Echo. For many of those who grew up in Ely, and who have family connections to the mining industry, there is very real outrage that a community that once was overwhelmingly united behind one vision of its future, now has a significant component of its population that sees a different path to economic success and sustainability.

It is these competing visions that drive this debate, but neither side wants to see Ely or the surrounding area be anything but prosperous. When Mayor Petersen suggested otherwise, impugning the motives of those on the other side of the mining debate, he stepped way out of bounds, and spoke from anger and ignorance.

As the foremost representative of a community, we expect mayors to provide positive and constructive leadership, to build bridges to strengthen their cities, not to tear down a significant and influential segment of their community over a political disagreement. Mayors aren’t supposed to throw gasoline on the fire.

The truth is, Ely was a mining town, but today it’s a town in transition to something else. That is something that plenty of other former mining towns can’t say, because most of them just disappeared when the mines shut down. Residents of Ely still debate what that future will be, but there’s one thing that’s clear. In the half century since the last mine closed in Ely, very, very few of the thousands of people who have collectively invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the area, in homes, lake cabins, hunting land, or businesses, did so with the hope of working in a mine some day. These are people who moved here, built businesses here, and retired here, because the forests and the lakes provided a quality of life that they understood has real value and meaning to them. These are people who own many of the small businesses in Ely and who are active and creative members of a whole host of community institutions. These are people who’ve put down roots of their own. They aren’t packsackers who should be run out of town, as one local letter writer recently suggested. They are an important part of the community and they have a right to express their views just like everyone else.

What is perhaps most frustrating is that the future of copper-nickel mining doesn’t hinge in the least on what people in Ely have to say about it. The international economy will make that call, and right now it doesn’t look as promising as it once did. Even in the best-case scenario, copper-nickel mining likely won’t provide anything more than a handful of new jobs in the Ely area for at least the next decade.

In the meantime, what exactly is the city’s economic development strategy going to be? To discourage investment by anyone who disagrees with mining proponents? Should we just tell people attracted to a greener lifestyle, looking to vacation or to make their home or start a business here in the North Country, to try Grand Marais instead? That’s not a development strategy… it’s the road to ruin.

Folks in Ely could spend the next ten years waging lawn sign battles, boycotting businesses, and taking potshots at one another in the local newspapers. And ten years from now, the community will have only gone backward—whether or not any new mines actually open.

Or, we could choose to end the silliness and start sincerely looking for common development ideas that will move the community forward. There is plenty of creativity in Ely, as the productive discussion over the community center has revealed. Why spend so much emotional and intellectual capital on symbolic battles that, in the end, signify nothing? Ely is too small and too remote a community to burn all its bridges. It’s time to begin the repairs.