A group of EMS officials from throughout the state gathered in St. Paul to highlight a need for more funding and a restructuring of systems. 

Erik Simonson, a lobbyist with the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities, an organization that lobbied for EMS funding last session, feels hopeful the Legislature will continue to fund the industry beyond a one-time infusion last year to stay afloat – even amid uncertainty with current negotiations.

“I think what you’re seeing right now in the Legislature will work itself out. It will happen in a matter of however much time it takes,” he said.  “I think so many (legislators) said as they were on their way out the door at the end of May, ‘We put a band-aid on the problem, we’ve got to come back in 2025 and find a long term, sustainable solution.’ Now what that is will be shaped by this Legislature in 2025 but I am confident that there are folks on both sides of the political aisle that are willing to roll up their sleeves and figure out how to get that done in a way that provides enough financial support so that people don’t have to worry about, are we going to be here next year?”

EMS is one of the top priorities for the House Health Finance and Policy Committee, said Rep. Jeff Backer, R-Browns Valley, who is the committee’s co-chair along with Rep. Robert Bierman, DFL-Apple Valley. 

“Last year was a band-aid, but it was an important band-aid. … We do need to do more stuff with EMS,” Backer said at the event. 

Backer himself is a volunteer EMT, who knows about the difficulties facing the industry, including workforce challenges and the fact that more rural EMS systems often receive lower reimbursement rates because many of their patients rely on Medicare and Medicaid. Last year, he helped author legislation for EMS funds. He said they’ll need time though to put together a plan. 

“Exactly what happens is going to be interesting if we don’t get together ’til the end of March … that’s going to create some challenges. If we can get together sooner, then we have more time,” he said. 

The governor’s budget proposal announced in January allocates funds for the newly established Office of Emergency Medical Services. Those proposed funds would go to things like operating expenses and grants. 

The Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities is advocating this session for additional funding for EMS, as the group thinks the systems have to be well funded in order to work on longer-term strategies to help with workforce and systemic issues.

“If we don’t fix the financial challenge, we can’t touch any of those, right? It just becomes super difficult to try to find those kinds of solutions if we don’t have the money and keep the doors open,” Simonson said. “If we can fix the funding problem once and for all, and then let a lot of these great minds come to work and figure out ways to do things better and more efficiently.”

At the event, officials stressed the need for a longer-term solution that goes further than funding, though funding would help EMS systems that are struggling to stay afloat. Because of the financial and staffing hardships, among other challenges, many EMS providers have considered merging with another service provider, but that’s not always the best for patients. 

“I do think there are a lot of opportunities with consolidation and reducing overhead and sharing expertise,” said Becca Huebsch, the director of Perham Area EMS. “The challenge is … consolidation that’s planned and expected and not out of desperation. It’s one thing when you’re choosing to consolidate because it makes good business sense and you can continue to support your service areas. It’s another thing when you (have) two failing ambulances that say we can’t have two ambulances anymore, what can we do differently? And I think those are different situations, and maybe that’s not consolidation, maybe that’s actually a failure.”

Ava Kian

Ava Kian is MinnPost’s Greater Minnesota reporter. Follow her on Twitter @kian_ava or email her at akian@minnpost.com.

The post EMS industry hopeful it’s a legislative priority, despite uncertainty appeared first on MinnPost.

In 2009, an invasive tree pest was discovered on an ash tree in St. Paul. This past fall, 15 years later, the city cut down its last ash tree. 

While St. Paul and other more populated cities have been aware of the emerald ash borer for some time, many Greater Minnesota cities are more recently learning about the pest and facing the challenges it brings their communities. 

Restrictions on moving wood have helped contain the ash borer’s spread, but spread along transitways, mainly through human traffic still persists. 

This past summer, the city of Glenwood in the southwestern part of the state faced its first emerald infestation on an ash tree. Pope County went under “quarantine” per state rules and then the city later conducted an inventory of the ash trees in the area to get a sense of what might be the fallout. 

What they found was approximately 978 ash trees in public areas. Of those, roughly 40% were in the “fair, bad or dead” category, according to city administrator David Iverson. 

“We have to make some decisions of what we’re going to do with regard to these trees,” Iverson said. “Do you start taking them down or not?  And what we’re finding is it sounds like … dead trees are tougher to take down because their branches drop off and they fall around, versus a healthier tree is easier to take down than a dead tree.”

But resources are limited. Glenwood is looking for funding sources for this because if it doesn’t find something, Iverson said there’s a high chance the city would have to do some restructuring of other city projects. Taking down a tree he estimates costs around $1,000 per tree, and that doesn’t take into account replanting. 

“It’s one thing to take down trees, but it’s somewhat unrealistic to think a city our size is going to be able to pay if you were going to take down, say, 100 trees, and take down half of these trees we have in four or five years,” he said. “I just don’t know how some of these small towns are going to be able to come up with funds to do this because there’s always only so much money. So, I have a feeling we are going to have to look to … nibble down the size of some of these other street projects that we look to try to do or forgo a project for a year and just jump on a bid to take down a number of trees and just use the money that way.” 

The League of Minnesota Cities (LMC) is pushing for more state funding for communities struggling with the emerald ash borer. It’s not an issue that’s leaving anytime soon, said Craig Johnson, the senior intergovernmental relations representative for the League of Minnesota Cities. 

According to Johnson, there’s significant cost in doing an inventory to find out where ash trees are and their state of health. A concern is the tree becomes more hazardous as it gets more infested. 

“Ash trees get so brittle when they die that they can literally explode. A six-inch branch can just shatter from even a bird landing on it,” Johnson said. “They are definitely a public health and safety issue. If you have emerald ash borer, and there’s a tree that looks like it’s starting to die, it has to be removed or it is going to start falling on people and cars and houses.” 

There’s an element of timeliness in finding a solution for these communities, but it has to still be financially viable. Iverson said as soon as Glenwood found out about it, city workers strapped in their boots. 

“We have a very green community with a lot of trees, which we really enjoy … and it’s the pride of our town,” Iverson said. “You hate to see the loss of all those trees, but yet, if it’s there, you’ve got to do something. We just cannot sit on our hands.”

LMC has sought funding in past years to give communities with emerald ash borer infestation priority on the state’s money to help with the response, like the community tree-planting grant program, established in 2024 to prioritize projects for communities with emerald ash borer infestations. In the 2023 session, the DNR received funds for a “ReLeaf” program, with around $16 million during that biennium dedicated to grants to help communities with removal and tree planting. In subsequent years, a recurring $400,000 will be granted to the program, which LMC fears might get cut into with a tighter budget.

“This year, the budget is going to be extremely tight, and there are going to need to be cuts to the budget, not adding new spending to the budget,” Johnson said. “We are going to be working pretty hard to make sure that the emerald ash borer funds that are in place stay there and that where possible, we reallocate some other funds to provide more resources there, because every year more and more cities are having emerald ash borer hit.” 

Different approaches to the borer 

When dealing with the emerald ash borer, St. Paul opted to get rid of all its ash trees, while Minneapolis took a different approach, targeting at-risk trees and removing those while treating the bigger healthier trees. 

Angela Gupta, an extension educator at the University of Minnesota, said the federal government for a long time supported the Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s (MDA) emerald ash borer surveilling, but it’s no longer a federal priority. MDA still has strict quarantine rules, like policies to limit the spread of firewood in certain areas, which Gupta said is why it’s taken this long for the bug to get to infest some areas of the state. 

“The idea with a quarantine for emerald ash borer is, if you have emerald ash borer in an area, you want to retain it only in the area and don’t let it get out of that area,” she said. “That’s been pretty successful. So part of that is buying time. If we can buy time for science to come up with ways in which to manage emerald ash borer or to mitigate the damage, then we may be protecting our resource.”

Gupta said there are good options for treating the trees now, which can pay off for communities where the concentrations of the pest are low. Treating is a good option for trees that haven’t lost too much of their canopy yet. But if a tree has lost more than 30% of its canopy, it’s likely too late to treat, according to Gupta. For trees near an infestation, Gupta said it’s recommended to treat if it’s within a 10-15 miles radius. 

She advises if a community has to cut down trees, they replant them with a variety of species so they don’t end up in a similar situation down the road.

While Minnesota has been at controlling the spread of the infestation, in recent years even despite quarantines, it has gotten harder to contain the spread, one reason for which is climate change, Gupta said. 

Temperatures of negative 30 degrees Fahrenheit will kill 90% of the insect, studies show.

This past winter, when temperatures were warmer and there was no snow, conditions were ideal for the ash borer to survive and spread. The emerald ash borer is now being found in areas it wasn’t before, like the Chippewa National Forest in northern Minnesota. In areas of the state, like some spots in northern Minnesota, places that previously remained safe from the pest, due to temperature, quarantine rules and other factors, black ash trees may now be more at risk. 

“Emerald ash borer will be able to benefit as we get warmer,” Gupta said. “That’s a concern because Minnesota is the state with the largest ash resource in the United States at this point.”

Ava Kian

Ava Kian is MinnPost’s Greater Minnesota reporter. Follow her on Twitter @kian_ava or email her at akian@minnpost.com.

The post Cities ponder how to deal with tree infestations appeared first on MinnPost.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency finalized the changes to two of its general permits for feedlots this month, which typically apply to those with 1,000 or more animal units. The changes, which go into effect June 2025 and February 2026, have some farmers worried, but others relieved. 

The main changes are an online tool to develop a manure management plan, added regulations for tracking data when transferring manure to someone else and some prohibitions on manure applications to ensure best management practices. 

Many of these changes are “steps in the right direction,” said Matthew Sheets, a policy organizer with the Land Stewardship Project, a nonprofit with a focus on sustainable agriculture. 

Prior to the plan being finalized, people with various ties to the permitting system voiced their likes and dislikes during an open comment period. 

Sheets said he’s happy with the requirements for tracking manure application. 

“For a while it has been that the way that large CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) are able to get rid of some of their liquid manure is by working with somebody else who is going to apply that on their fields. They essentially sell it to another person. And up until now, at that point of sale, that’s where the tracking stops as well,” Sheets said. “In these new rules, the tracking doesn’t stop there.” 

He wants more tracking about groundwater quality, but including this manure specification is a good step, he said. 

Hesitations about tracking 

Others, like Loren Dauer, the public policy director at the Minnesota Farm Bureau Federation have concerns about application tracking and its associated information. While he’s happy to see the tool online and on an accessible platform, he’s concerned that the owner of the feedlot that’s producing the manure will have the responsibility of collecting that data and sharing it with the state.

“If you’re the farmer or the landowner who utilizes manure, you are now going to be required to essentially give up your crop history data,” he said.  “From our perspective, this was proprietary data. These are farmers, individuals that utilize this information, and if you’re a larger feedlot, and you’re providing this manure to several other landowners or farmers … does that one feedlot have the right to hold all that information and report that back to MPCA? In our opinion, that should not be the case, because it is kind of private.” 

He suggested the MPCA instead collect the information separately instead from the permittee (who’s providing the manure) and the receiver of the manure. 

Glen Groth, the president of the Winona County Farm Bureau Federation, said he’s heard concerns about how this will be tracked. 

“If you give manure to a neighbor or sell manure to a neighbor, you’re expected to ensure they comply with the current manure application regulations. Well, how do you make them comply to it? And then, you know what happens if they say, ‘Yeah, you bet I’ll put down the cover crop within a certain amount of time,’ and then they don’t?  … How do you hold your neighbor to account?” 

The MPCA has stated that feedlot owners are required to ensure manure application is done appropriately and, if a manure recipient consistently fails to comply, then the permittee should consider no longer doing business with that recipient. If despite the permittee’s best efforts, recipients don’t follow the regulations, MPCA can take enforcement action against the manure recipients. 

Those at the Land Stewardship Project disagree, saying that the requirement isn’t necessarily onerous. 

“Even though that is something that is an additional piece that must be kept by the person that is spreading that manure and the operator of the CAFO … it is just one of the bare minimum things that we can be doing to support and ensure that our the best management practices are going to be adhered to,” Sheets said. 

Groth and Dauer are also concerned about the best management practices that are required for permit holders, which include specific practices such as applying the manure to a growing perennial or row crop or planting cover crops to a range of other practices depending on the time of year. There are specific regulations for the areas that are considered “vulnerable groundwater areas.” 

The MPCA has stated it will recognize “good faith efforts” to establish a cover crop because of weather uncertainty, which can impact cover crop growth.

But the Minnesota Farm Bureau Federation feels these regulations, when coupled with the existing Groundwater Protection rules, may have farmers in a bind. 

“With the Groundwater Protection rule from the Department of Agriculture, you’re not allowed to apply commercial fertilizer during the fall time without some of these practices. And so a lot of these farmers have kind of turned to using manure from livestock to kind of fill their needs and their nutrient plans,” Dauer said. “We’re not providing a lot of options for our farmers to have nutrient plans in these areas because this new groundwater vulnerable area, is also similarly where the Groundwater Protection area is as well.”  

Groth, who’s not too worried about the impact of these regulations on his own crop operation, said he’s heard from farmers in his area about how these new rules could affect them. 

He’s worried that these new rules may potentially inform future regulations on feedlots, especially expanding these regulations to those who don’t currently need to apply for the permits because of the size of their feedlots. 

“If these regulations apply to smaller family farms, they could be very difficult and very expensive to comply with,” Groth said. 

He said it’ll be financially challenging for farmers to do some of those best management practices, especially regarding manure application, if it has to be done in the spring. 

“The rule says that manure can’t be applied in the fall unless certain conditions are met, or it has to be applied in the spring. Manure applied in the spring, that could greatly increase the amount of manure storage someone has to have, which is very expensive on farms these days. And it could be just a time constraint. We have situations where it’s gone from snowy and frozen to perfect planting field conditions in two weeks. Two weeks aren’t enough for a lot of farmers to get their manure applied in a responsible manner, or to even hire somebody to do something like that.” 

Future impacts on feedlots

In Winona County, Groth estimated there are just a handful or two of feedlots that apply for these permits. But there are many farms on the edge, meaning having just a couple more cows would require them to apply for this permit. 

“There’s a lot of farmers, far more than just a handful, that are just right on that cusp of needing this or not. So the concern is, if this is baked in the law, these somewhat impractical new requirements, that they could lower the threshold at some point in the state of Minnesota … meaning (farms) somewhat suddenly would have to comply with these rules,” Groth said. “And then (that would) apply to hundreds of farms in the county rather than just five to 10 or a couple dozen.” 

He worries that these regulations would prevent farms that want to expand from doing so. 

“I think you see a bit of that in Winona County already. We got this extremely low animal unit cap. And I think you see a number of people in Winona County farm families that either they get away with it by having to own two or three facilities rather than one, which is not efficient from an environmental permitting and manure management standpoint, nor is it from a purely economic production standpoint,” he said. 

Groth said a solution is needed that would reinvigorate the dairy industry. He thinks being more liberal with permitting dairy facilities to encourage more dairies could be one of the ways to achieve better groundwater quality, and encouraging perennial crop production like alfalfa, which is feed for cows and also helps reduce nitrate contamination in groundwater.

Ava Kian

Ava Kian is MinnPost’s Greater Minnesota reporter. Follow her on Twitter @kian_ava or email her at akian@minnpost.com.

The post Minnesota finalizes new feedlot permit system, prompting some backlash appeared first on MinnPost.

University of Minnesota researchers have found that obstetrics units continue to close in rural counties in Minnesota and across the country. 

Minnesota has seen its fair share of obstetric (OB) unit closures, such as the Mayo Clinic Health System in New Prague, which closed its unit in early 2024, and Essentia Health-Fosston, which also closed in 2024. 

Mayo Clinic Health System in Fairmont reported its OB unit will close in March due to staffing shortages and other issues, including, according to a statement from the health system, “decreasing patient volumes and birth rates, and an increase in the number of patients with complex needs who need higher levels of care.”

The University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center wanted to quantify the losses and gains of obstetric care at rural and urban short-term acute care hospitals between 2010 and 2022.

“It’s hard, actually, to track obstetric unit closures on a national scale because there is no national database of obstetric unit closures or obstetric unit access across communities,” said Julia Interrante, a research fellow and statistical lead for the University of Minnesota’s Rural Health Research Center. 

The center’s prior research found that access to maternity care in rural counties continues to decline, with 49% of rural counties having had hospital-based obstetrics in 2010, a figure that fell to 41.2% in 2022. 

Interrante said 537 hospitals across the country lost obstetric units between 2010 and 2022. “Rural communities were definitely overrepresented among those losses,” Interrante said.

In 2010, 43.1% of rural hospitals and 29.7% of urban hospitals did not offer obstetric care. The research found that each subsequent year, there was a net loss of obstetric services at U.S. hospitals. While 138 hospitals gained obstetrics in these years, 112 of those were in urban hospitals, but only 26 were in rural hospitals. 

The researchers came up with an algorithm that uses data from the American Hospital Association Annual Survey and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to identify obstetric unit closures. They check for inconsistencies and validate the information based on new reports, phone calls and hospital websites. 

In 2021, about 14% of Minnesota women had no birthing hospital within 30 minutes, according to a report from the non-profit March of Dimes. Women in the counties with the highest travel times could travel up to 49.2 miles and 55 minutes on average to reach their nearest birthing hospital.

Studies have found that further distances to receive maternity care increase the risk of maternal morbidity and adverse infant outcomes, such as stillbirth and NICU admission. 

The center’s researchers have also conducted case studies on hospitals that have successfully kept their OB units to highlight potential things that struggling hospitals could do. 

Success stories

In western Wisconsin, one effort involved making services more attractive to potential patients, in turn drawing patients who would’ve otherwise gone to a different hospital. 

Through phone interviews and emails in 2020 with Western Wisconsin Health clinicians and leadership, the researchers learned about the hospital’s various maternity services often not available in rural communities. Because of this, the hospital was able to draw in a large number of clients from surrounding areas and across the Minnesota border.  

“There were some hospitals that provided a greater array of options for birthing to help even try to recruit patients to give birth there, even pulling some patients from urban centers if they were in a rural community but not that far from an urban one. Providing things like vaginal birth after Cesarean (section), water birth, access to midwives, things like that,” Interrante said. 

Resources are needed to offer services like that, and enough staff, too. She said other instances of units staying open have involved someone in leadership who really feels passionate about birthing access. 

Challenges to staying open 

The center’s other work has examined the decisions behind closures by talking with rural hospital administrators. 

Workforce shortages and the financial challenges of operating the unit were the main reasons for closures. Staff must be available at all times, for instance, fixed costs like malpractice insurance can also add strain. 

It can be challenging in rural areas that have two or three people attending to births — especially when one of them is on vacation or retires. “That’s also a big strain on that one or two individuals to be available 24/7, when you don’t really have much backup, ”  Interrante said.

By 2030, the country is expected to have a shortage of OB-GYNs, with demand exceeding the supply by over 5,000 full-time employees, according to the Department of Human Services. 

The system that pays for maternity care services is really a volume-based revenue system, she said. 

“By that fact, it really does disadvantage rural lower birth-volume hospitals who, again, if they don’t have enough births to cover those fixed costs, their hospitals losing money on that service line, which can make it really challenging,” Interrante said.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include a Mayo Clinic Health System statement on the closure of its Fairmont clinic.

Ava Kian

Ava Kian is MinnPost’s Greater Minnesota reporter. Follow her on Twitter @kian_ava or email her at akian@minnpost.com.

The post U of M researchers find continued loss of OB clinics in Minnesota, across the country appeared first on MinnPost.

Disappointed in a 2024 legislative session that ended with no bonding bill, Greater Minnesota organizations are encouraging the Legislature to focus on funds for infrastructure projects as this year’s session gets underway. 

The Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities and the League of Minnesota Cities, whose requests often overlap, plan to push lawmakers to pass a bonding bill, which would allow the state to borrow funds for local projects, early in the session. 

Ideally, that legislation would pass early in the session, said Bradley Peterson, executive director of the CGMC. “This is unfinished business from last year,” he said. 

“Front and center for us is the bonding bill,” said Anne Finn, the LMC’s intergovernmental relations director. “Cities really depend on capital investment by the state to complete projects that local taxpayers can’t always foot the bill for. And those include pots of money for things like roads, bridges, water and wastewater infrastructure, housing and the local road wetland replacement fund.” 

State economists forecast the surplus for the next state budget to be $616 million, which would be $1.1 billion less than what was projected for the 2025-26 budget period at the end of the 2024 legislative session. 

Peterson said he fears people will view bonding as “dessert” rather than, as the coalition believes, one of the larger needs for many Greater Minnesota communities. 

“They didn’t get to dessert last year,” he said. “We challenge the premise that dessert implies that it’s …  a cherry on top where we know that it funds core infrastructure in terms of water, wastewater, transportation.” 

He said things like water and wastewater projects would be a priority if funding was limited. The coalition is asking for $299 million to be put toward public facilities programs that fund water and wastewater grants and loans. 

There’s an added layer of uncertainty as the legislative session began without a clear partisan majority in both the House and Senate. In the Senate, DFL leaders on Monday announced an agreement to share power until a special election is held for one of the seats. But it was unclear if House members would come together in a bipartisan manner. 

Emergency medical service

Last year, both organizations pressed the Legislature to approve funding for Emergency Medical Service delivery in Greater Minnesota. The Legislature granted $24 million — around $100 million less than had been originally asked for.

The pressure is still on, Peterson said. 

“The issue has not gone away. I don’t know that it’s changed a lot, but last year’s injection of money definitely helped. But again, that was just one time. And so we need to try to figure out, ‘What can we do here over the long term to sustain and stabilize these systems?’” Peterson said.

Finn said LMC has identified other issues with EMS service delivery around the state, including staffing and response-time challenges. She said she will be looking toward the new Minnesota EMS agency that replaced the prior regulatory board to see how the agency helps with the persisting difficulties for EMS systems.

Local Government Aid

The groups are also looking for an increase in the amount of aid that goes to local governments. 

The Local Government Aid program, which has existed since 1972, distributes state funds to cities annually based on a formula, which has changed throughout the years. In 2023, the Legislature increased the total LGA appropriation by $80 million to $644.4 million. A similar program exists for counties. 

Peterson and Finn said local governments are feeling the impacts of higher costs for employees and operations, so they would push for an inflationary increase in LGA built in over time rather than a set amount per year. 

“There were significant levy increases around the state during the past budget cycle, and there are a lot of pressures on local budgets, the biggest one being that local governments are employers,” Finn said. “The cost of staffing our cities is growing because of demand and labor market, along with the cost of things like health insurance.” 

Local housing control

The groups are also keeping their eye on zoning issues. Last year, a proposal referred to as the “missing middle” that sought to promote the construction of more types of housing in traditional single-family neighborhoods did not move forward. 

That proposal — backed by Democrats and Republicans alike, as well as social justice organizations and chambers of commerce — aimed to provide more housing and density in urban areas by requiring cities and suburbs to allow duplexes, triplexes and other housing options in single-family zones. 

It would have made it more difficult for local governments to block or delay apartment construction in commercially zoned areas. The LMC and CGMC were among the groups that objected to that bill, worrying that it would infringe on local control of zoning decisions.

“We very much acknowledge that there is a shortage of housing in our state and cities want to be part of the solution. What cities don’t want is for the Legislature to impose one-size-fits-all all policies on local governments,” Finn said. “Specifically, we’re concerned about removal of local decision-making authority related to land use and zoning.”

Ava Kian

Ava Kian is MinnPost’s Greater Minnesota reporter. Follow her on Twitter @kian_ava or email her at akian@minnpost.com.

The post City groups hope Legislature will find funds for infrastructure projects appeared first on MinnPost.

Minnesota is facing a workforce shortage in its aging services, with estimates showing about 17,000 openings statewide for licensed practical nurses, registered nurses, direct care staff and dietary staff, according to a 2024 survey conducted by the Long-Term Care Imperative, a partnership of two senior care associations. 

That’s roughly 20% of the workforce, said Anna Mowry, the director of workforce solutions for LeadingAge Minnesota, a nonprofit that supports more than 1,100 senior care organizations in the state.  

The staffing challenges limit access to care and have resulted in the closure of some nursing homes and assisted living facilities, she said. 

To fill some empty positions, the industry has recruited nurses from other countries to live and work in Minnesota on employment-based visas. According to a 2023 Lightcast report, nearly one in three nursing assistants and nearly 14% of Minnesota’s overall healthcare workers in 2021 were immigrants.  

Dire need in rural communities

Since 2005, the number of beds in rural licensed nursing facilities in Minnesota has declined between 30% and 100%, depending on the region, according to a report by the Center for Rural Policy and Development. The report found counties in the northwest and southwest regions are expected to experience peak demand for nursing facilities significantly sooner than the rest of Minnesota. 

As of February 2024, Minnesota had 33% fewer nursing facility beds than it did in 2005, with the most severe drops occurring in rural Minnesota, where entirely rural counties have 41% fewer nursing facility beds than they did in 2005. Entirely urban counties had 29% fewer nursing facility beds, according to the Center for Rural Policy and Development, a think-tank based in Mankato.

The decline is in all regions — and those in the nursing care industry say people from other countries could help with the staffing shortage. 

“We are not going to see the numbers in terms of birth rate and the workforce population that is domestic be able to solve the problem of the baby boomers getting older and having enough staff to address the needs,” said Kathleen Murray, director of Organizational Learning and Development at Benedictine. 

Benedictine is an example of a nursing home operator that has helped sponsor immigrants to come to the U.S. to boost its workforce. Murray said the organization has brought 158 RNs and nurses’ aids to facilities in North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri and Illinois. Over 100 others are currently going through the immigration process. 

Mowry said people in these roles need support when entering the country and beginning their jobs. 

Supporting new Americans 

In 2023, the state Department of Human Services received about $28 million in grant funding from the Legislature to improve the recruitment and retention of immigrants and refugees working in the state’s assisted living communities and other long-term care environments. LeadingAge Minnesota, for example, secured just under a million dollars for that work. Funds were distributed to another 23 organizations, too. 

Mowry said LeadingAge Minnesota will use some of that funding to translate its nursing assistant curriculum into three languages that are commonly spoken by newer immigrants. 

“We need to double down on supporting the new Americans already here in our state who want to have these job opportunities, and who either don’t maybe know they exist or don’t know how to find the certification to become a CNA,” Mowry said. 

These efforts are designed to help people already in the country get into direct-care careers. Efforts to bring nurses and other direct-care workers to Minnesota have been ongoing and have included recruiting nurses from the Philippines, Mowry said. But there have been challenges in supporting those new nurses. 

Last year, a group of people in the nursing care industry, including Mowry and Murray, traveled to Nairobi, Kenya, alongside state Rep. Mohamud Noor to explore partnership opportunities in East Africa to help establish pipelines for nurses to work in the United States under employment-based visas. 

During that trip, Mowry said they celebrated the opening of a second testing center for nurses, which would create more access for nurses to take the exam that’s required for them to work in certain countries. 

LeadingAge’s members sponsor Kenyan students and provide scholarships to nurses abroad. Some even make job offers to candidates who are just waiting on immigration papers, Mowry said. 

Wait times can often be several years, according to Murray. Sapana Dhakal, a registered nurse at a Benedictine Living Community nursing home in Owatonna, interviewed for the position while living in Australia in 2021 but just got to the United States in 2024. 

Dhakal, who is originally from Nepal, and worked as a nurse in Australia for a couple of years, said finding work in the U.S. was much easier than in Australia, where she said more people were applying for the same jobs. 

Since 2016, Benedictine has placed 89 international RNs in Minnesota. In the town of Ada in northwestern Minnesota, for example, two of the four full-time RNs working for Benedictine are international RNs. 

“The need is just so great that if we cover the immigration costs to bring a nurse here … if we can get an RN in a rural community that will work for three years, that will pay for itself in terms of us not having to bring in an external agency that will be a lot of higher cost,” Murray said.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify that the survey mentioned in the opening paragraph was conducted by the Long-Term Care Imperative and to correct Kathleen Murray’s title.

Ava Kian

Ava Kian is MinnPost’s Greater Minnesota reporter. Follow her on Twitter @kian_ava or email her at akian@minnpost.com.

The post Staff-strapped nursing homes look to new Americans for help appeared first on MinnPost.

As we close out 2024, I wanted to share some of my work from the past year that will stay with me, and I hope you, into 2025. These were fun, exciting pieces I reported on. But more than anything, they were fulfilling. 

Working tirelessly to keep the lights on and the news flowing

Working at MinnPost has given me an inside look into what goes into writing stories, connecting with audiences and keeping a newsroom running. But after a series of newspapers shut down in April, I wondered how those responsibilities pan out in rural parts of the state and what pressures smaller news outlets face. 

So I went to Mahnomen, where the community had one local weekly paper. One paper with two employees covers everything from government meetings to local small businesses to high school sports. My reporting includes details about newspaper closures across the state and how one community has held on to its paper as a pillar of democracy. 

Farmers adding up their losses in southwestern Minnesota after flooding devastates crops

I guess what they say is true: You can’t control the weather. Remember that intense rainfall this summer that led to severe floods in southern Minnesota and eventually led to President Biden declaring a major disaster? Well, it just so happened that I’d need to go through some of that flooding to get to an interview I had for another story. That led me to write about how bad the flood was for the yields of some farmers in Wilmont, and the kinds of support they needed.

I hopped into Jim Joens’ pickup as he drove around showing field after field of damaged crops and township roads that would need to be fixed. My personal highlight from this story was when he showed me some cattle nearby. Those were the muddiest cows I’ve seen to this day. 

It’s no contest: In many Minnesota towns, some races in November will feature just one candidate — or none at all.

While we produced several stories explaining the dynamics and importance of certain consequential legislative races leading up to the election, we also wanted to write about what civic engagement was looking like in Greater Minnesota, something that we had heard was a challenge.

What I quickly found after looking through local candidate filings was that many communities had races where a candidate was running uncontested. This story explored why that’s happening and how local communities are responding to the strain it puts on democracy. 

An elopement, quarry carving and letters home: records shed light on Pipestone’s Indian boarding school

In this story, I got to experience reporting from a historical perspective. I had heard about the Pipestone Indian Training School, which operated from 1893 to 1953 in the southwestern corner of the state, and I was curious about what the local community knew about it. I found out that people were trying to teach the community the history, so I went to see how that was coming along.

I visited the National Monument that sits near where the Indian Training School once was. I heard stories of what the Pipestone quarries meant to the Yankton Sioux Tribe, read school records and talked with descendants of students at the school to see what the school was like, and in the process learned about the more than 500 other Indian boarding schools in the nation.

___

These were just a couple of the stories from this year that I’m proud of on my beat, although I had lots of fun writing some outside of that too, like for this story about defunct LGBTQ+ publications. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this coverage this past year, and I’m excited to bring more in 2025. Happy holidays!

The post Greater Minnesota reporting highlights: surviving newspapers, muddy cows and local elections appeared first on MinnPost.

Two nonprofit groups have teamed up to help a solar cooperative get off the ground in west-central Minnesota. 

The West Central Initiative and Solar United Neighbors are leading the Lakes & Prairies Solar Co-op as it takes sign-ups through the end of March with plans to begin rooftop projects in the spring and summer.  

Solar isn’t very popular in Fergus Falls, home of the West Central Initiative, said Cedar Walters, the initiative’s climate officer. Walters, a Fergus Falls resident, said she only knows a couple of people in the area who have solar panels on their homes.  

“There’s really not a lot of solar out here yet,” Walters said. “The cool thing is once you have a few people that have done it, if you see that your neighbor has solar, you’re going to ask them how it went and what was easy, what was hard, or what they learned. They’re going to ask, ‘Oh, if I’m interested, how can I do it, too?’ And they’re going to be able to learn from the person next to them that already did it.” 

The co-op is largely focused on rooftop arrays as opposed to the larger “solar gardens” that have popped up in recent decades across rural Minnesota.  

Walters said the co-op option makes it easier for people to consider solar, especially when paired with informational sessions from Solar United Neighbor. 

In 2023, renewable sources provided 33% of Minnesota’s electricity — including wind, solar, hydro and biomass — according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Solar power provided about 4% of Minnesota’s total electricity generation. More than four-fifths of the state’s solar power came from utility-scale installations, but smaller scale installations played their part, too. 

Individuals, businesses and nonprofits can sign up with Lakes & Prairies Solar Co-op for free and get an evaluation to see if it would be a good fit for them. 

Meetings across region

West Central Initiative and Solar United Neighbors have held “Solar 101” events in some cities of the eligible counties of Becker, Clay, Otter Tail, Traverse, Wilkin, Stevens, Grant, Pope and Douglas. 

John Anderson, the Minnesota program associate for Solar United Neighbors, said a co-op model helps make solar more affordable for individuals. The organization started co-ops in Duluth, Morris, Winona and on the Iron Range, in addition to installations they’ve helped organize in the Twin Cities.

So far, Anderson said that’s meant 270 household installations that have added up to 2.3 megawatts of installed capacity. About 40% of those installations were in Greater Minnesota, he estimated. 

The last “Solar 101” event drew 29 people, Anderson said. Earlier in the month, there was one in Morris and there will be another in Moorhead in January. Walters said the questions people had ranged from impacts on their roofs to available tax credits to how their energy is tracked.

Once people sign up for the co-op, the organization puts out a request for proposal to solar companies to find out how much it will cost. From there, a selection of co-op members help poll what the rest of the co-op wants. 

“Some people just want the lowest price. Other people — they want made-in-the-USA panels,” Anderson said. “The selection committee decides sort of which company they want to go forward with.”

Ava Kian

Ava Kian is MinnPost’s Greater Minnesota reporter. Follow her on Twitter @kian_ava or email her at akian@minnpost.com.

The post Cooperative making push for more solar power in west-central Minnesota appeared first on MinnPost.

Editor’s note: This story is a collaboration between MinnPost and Open Campus, with support from Ascendium Education Group. It was co-published with The Chronicle of Higher Education. 

Minnesota this year has wiped out tuition bills for thousands of students applying to its public colleges. But big costs remain for some families. 

That’s because paying for college requires paying for more than just tuition. North Star Promise, the state’s new free-tuition program for families earning less than $80,000 a year, is advancing in making college less expensive for low- and middle-income families. But it doesn’t mean college is suddenly affordable.  

Eating and sleeping at the state’s public colleges comes with a hefty price tag. At the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, on-campus housing and food cost $13,856 a year. At Minnesota State University, Mankato, that rings in at $12,420. There are also other costs, such as transportation and textbooks, which the tuition-only awards don’t cover.

More than 16,700 students are receiving North Star Promise funds this fall, surpassing the state’s goal for the program’s first year. The state pitches the program online with slogans like: “Going to college doesn’t have to mean going into huge debt.” “No tuition. No fees. No kidding.” 

The reality that families can receive these funds and still struggle to pay for college limits the impact of the program, said Steven Roenfeldt, a pathways coordinator for St. Cloud Area School District 742.

Roenfeldt advises about 200 seniors each year on college and career options. Many of them are from low-income households. They will make their college decision based on whether they can live at home and eliminate housing costs. 

“The incentive for our students to go beyond our community is not provided in the North Star Promise. They’re not saving any money,” he said. 

At St. Cloud State University, which Roenfeldt’s students often attend, on-campus housing and a meal plan costs $10,596 each year. 

Dennis Olson, the state’s higher education commissioner, said in an interview that legislators focused on creating a program that would be sustainable and predictable from a budget standpoint.

Olson said he recognizes “there are going to be additional costs associated with going to college, beyond tuition and fees,” but the program’s flexibility is something of which he is proud. He called the program an “incredible first step” and said he expects efforts to build upon it. 

The state tried to get ahead of confusion about the program by tabling at the state fair and college events around the state, holding virtual info sessions for families, and talking to financial-aid advisers through specifics of what promise funds cover and don’t cover.

Jeff Salinas-Jenni, a junior studying communication studies at Minnesota State University Moorhead, said he knows of students who mistakenly thought that North Star Promise covers housing. He feels the program has been talked about on campus as “free college for everyone.” 

“But really, it’s not quite that,” he said. “It’s free college for folks that meet a certain income threshold, and even then, it’s not free college so much as free tuition, because college has other cost factors in there, as well.”

Salinas-Jenni, 32, lives off-campus and took three classes this past semester. This lowers his costs compared to other students. For the fall semester, he owed about $3,447 in tuition and fees, which was fully covered by state and federal grants, including North Star Promise. 

Salinas-Jenni also qualified for supplemental state funds known as North Star Promise Plus. The award equals 15% of the value of a student’s Pell Grant — federal funds for low-income students — and isn’t restricted to tuition. It can be put toward housing, food, and other expenses. 

Salinas-Jenni received about $232 in those supplemental funds this fall, according to his account statement. He took out several thousand dollars in federal loans to help cover other costs. 

“I am grateful for the program and the help it provides students like myself,” he said in an email. “However, I think it is important to raise awareness of the hidden costs of college that come with housing, meal plans, and fees.” 

Paying for college

North Star Promise isn’t the only state program available to help students pay for college in Minnesota. 

There’s a state grant that goes toward cost of attendance for students from low- and moderate-income families, with maximum awards ranging from $7,845 at a public two-year college to $12,345 at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities or a private four-year college. (North Star Promise doesn’t apply to students attending the state’s private colleges.)

There’s also a tuition program for American Indian students that provides funds before any other grants or awards are applied, a setup known as “first-dollar.” 

North Star Promise works in reverse: As a last-dollar program, it kicks in to close whatever gap remains between a student’s tuition bill and the aid they’ve already received.

Minnesota’s 18 private colleges have warned the Legislature that Minnesotans who attend private colleges “with the same kind of financial needs” are left behind by North Star Promise. They’ve called on lawmakers to “prioritize financial aid fairness” in the next legislative session. 

State Sen. Omar Fateh, DFL-Minneapolis, one of the architects of the program, told MinnPost in an email that expanding North Star Promise to include private colleges remains too expensive.

The state distributed more than $900,000 to tribal and private colleges this year for grants to defray unexpected expenses and has invested $6 million over the next two years to support emergency grants at the state’s public colleges.

A ‘hole in the middle’

About two-dozen states, including Michigan and Washington, have some version of a promise program, according to the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. Last-dollar programs like Minnesota’s are the most common type, said Michelle Miller-Adams, a senior researcher at the institute. 

North Star Promise is simpler than some promise programs in a few key ways.

For example, it doesn’t have an age limit or requirement for people to stay in the state after graduating, restrictions that can limit its effectiveness, Miller-Adams said. 

The program’s structure means it benefits mostly families making between $60,000 and $80,000 per year. Families with incomes lower than that tend to receive Pell Grants and other state funds to cover tuition. In contrast, families with higher incomes don’t qualify. 

“There’s always this hole in the middle,” Miller-Adams said. “College is so expensive that it winds up where people are earning too much money to qualify for Pell Grants, but not enough money to really afford college.” 

Isaac Ecklof, 19, is a freshman at Minnesota State University Moorhead. After graduating from high school in Olivia, Minnesota, he took a year off to work and save money for future schooling, which he thought would likely be a trade school or two-year degree.

After hearing about the North Star Promise, he decided he wanted to attend a four-year university. He receives nearly $4,200 per semester in North Star Promise dollars but doesn’t qualify for the unrestricted supplemental funds. He quickly realized he’d have to use savings to pay to live on campus, something the university generally requires for freshmen. Housing and food costs about $11,000 a year.

“It sounds like most people, even [those] who have the North Star promise, have to take out loans,” he said. 

Those other costs are something the state’s Office of Higher Education was aware of when getting the word out about the program, said Keith Hovis, the office’s communications director. 

The team focused on making their messaging as simple as possible, without being misleading. That meant pushing back when, during tests of the messaging, some suggested billing the program as “free college.”  

“I was very vocal [in] saying, ‘That is not true,’” Hovis said. “Tuition needs to be there because if you say ‘free college,’ a person is automatically going to assume that includes any costs associated with college.”

North Star Promise and North Star Promise Plus are forecasted to cost about $73.6 million this fiscal year, according to projections released in November. 

North Star Promise Plus is funded for three years, Olson said. Depending on the availability of funds in the future, he said state leaders will reassess whether to change the percentage of Pell dollars that it matches. 

The program is one way state officials are working to increase the number of Minnesotans pursuing degrees. The state has a goal that 70% of adults will have a college degree or certificate by the end of next year. In 2023, about 63% of adults had one, according to the state’s Office of Higher Education.

Minnesota State credited North Star Promise as one of the factors that helped drive a systemwide 7.7% enrollment increase this year. 

How North Star Promise works 

There isn’t a special application process for North Star Promise. A student completes the FAFSA — the free application for federal student aid — and then, if they’re eligible, receives North Star Promise dollars from the in-state public colleges they apply to.

The exact amount they receive will vary, depending on their family income and what other aid they qualify for. The projected average award for this fiscal year is $2,110, according to a report the state sent the Legislature in February.

There’s been some interest in raising the income threshold of the program so more people can be eligible. Among the supporters: Students United, an advocacy group led by students who attend Minnesota’s seven state universities.

The current limit was designed to help “a majority of students in need of financial aid,” said Olson, the higher-ed commissioner.

Fateh, the state lawmaker, said the Legislature should expand the program, which could include raising the income eligibility threshold or more gradually phasing out award amounts, instead of having a hard cutoff for families earning more than $80,000. 

“Longer term, we want to see both more Minnesotans obtaining degrees – and fewer of them graduating with student loan debt,” he wrote. 

The passage of the program came during the 2023 session at the Legislature when Democrats controlled the Senate, House and governor’s office and were able to push through a slew of progressive legislation.

The next session will have a divided Legislature — with a tie in the House, Democrat control of the Senate and DFL Gov. Tim Walz. That could make it more challenging for the program’s income ceiling to be increased. Still, Fateh said he will push to see it funded at the “highest level possible,” pointing to the success he’s seen so far in the first year. 

Opening students’ eyes  

Roenfeldt, the pathways coordinator in St. Cloud, thinks the program’s messaging did encourage students who might not have thought of college before to consider it. 

“Just the idea of the North Star Promise incentivized them to think, ‘There is help for me, paying for schooling after high school,’” he said.

Billing the program as “free tuition” is useful marketing, Miller-Adams said. 

“It’s very interesting to see that many of the students using these scholarships already had their community college covered through Pell grants, but they didn’t know that. So by saying, ‘Hey, it’s tuition-free,’ and putting that free message up front, you can bring a lot of people into the process,” Miller-Adams said.

North Star Promise brought Kara Cleveland, 33, back to college. She had taken a break after getting her associate’s degree in 2014 because she didn’t want to take out loans. She saved money in the hopes that one day she could get her bachelor’s degree — but working as a realtor wasn’t enough.

“It wasn’t stacking up nearly as quickly as I was hoping,” she said. “My dream of going back to school seemed like it was more of a 10-year plan than a five-year plan like I had originally hoped.” 

That changed when she found out about the North Star Promise from someone at a party. She is now attending the University of Minnesota Twin Cities part-time and studying psychology. She lives off-campus and received about $1,920 this semester in North Star Promise and Plus funds.

The state is expecting to spend $260,000 through June 2025 marketing North Star Promise, including through paid social media ads, radio commercials, and digital signs at libraries and grocery stores. 

In rural areas like Melrose, in central Minnesota, the state relies on relationships between counselors and students to help get the word out. 

“Just like any other program, unless they actively follow an account or know … to follow along with it, I don’t think most students would know about it,” said Shelby Sawyer, a guidance counselor at Melrose High School. Staff at the school have pitched North Star Promise during financial-aid events and helped students promptly complete the FAFSA. 

After the legislation creating North Star Promise passed last year, the Office of Higher Education put together a toolkit — translated into Hmong, Somali and Spanish — and sent it out to high schools, colleges and other community groups. “Continuing your education can help you go further and do more in life, especially without the burden of debt to hold you back,” the toolkit says. 

Olson said the office is still hearing from students and families who are learning of the program for the first time.

 “We continue to build that marketing strategy and that communication strategy even as the program gets off the ground,” he said. 

Hawo Mohamed, a 17-year-old senior at Apollo High School in St. Cloud, learned about North Star Promise at a college fair in Minneapolis. Awareness among her friend group varies. 

“One group of friends, perfectly clear, they know what they’re doing” she said. “Other group of friends [are like], ‘What the hell is that?’” 

Mohamed’s father has a college degree. His experience opened her up to the idea of college. 

“So many other people don’t have that kind of opportunity, don’t have that kind of support,” Mohamed said. 

She hopes to attend the University of Minnesota in the fall.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to add information from the Office of Higher Education on the marketing of the North Star Promise program in paragraph 11 and to clarify the parameters of other state financial aid in paragraphs 19 and 24.

Ava Kian

Ava Kian is MinnPost’s Greater Minnesota reporter. Follow her on Twitter @kian_ava or email her at akian@minnpost.com.

The post Minnesota promised free college tuition, but housing and living costs still loom large appeared first on MinnPost.

WASHINGTON — Minnesota’s mining industry is looking forward to  president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration next month, which will usher in a reversal of policies that will allow Twin Metals to renew efforts to mine copper, nickel and other precious minerals in what opponents call environmentally sensitive land.

For years, Twin Metals has strived to locate its mine on federal land in the Superior National Forest. But it had to mothball its plans after the Biden administration — citing environmental concerns — canceled its leases and put a 20-year moratorium on underground mining in the forest, which is a watershed for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Trump has vowed to reverse the Superior National Forest moratorium as a priority after he’s sworn in, which he can do under his executive authority.

Earlier this year, Twin Metals also conducted exploratory drilling southwest of the federal site on state land. 

It’s not only Twin Metals that is expected to benefit from a change of administration; other mining projects in the state are likely to benefit, too.

In 2017, the last time Trump was in the White House, he signed an executive order directing agencies to identify critical minerals essential for national security and the economy. The order also encouraged reducing permitting delays for mining projects involving these minerals.

And the next Congress is expected to be far friendlier than the current one when it comes to the concerns of mining interests.

For instance, legislation proposed by Rep. Pete Stauber, R-8^th District, and other lawmakers that would streamline federal permitting and make it harder to halt or slow the development of new mines in court now has a better chance of becoming law.

That legislation was never considered by the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate and was always vulnerable to a Biden veto threat. But Republicans wrested control of the chamber from Democrats in November’s elections, the GOP maintained its majority in the U.S. House and Trump is expected to back legislation that helps U.S. mineral production.

“Because of the balance in the House and the Senate, we’re going to be playing a lot of defense,” predicted Ingrid Lyons, executive director of Save the Boundary Waters, one of the many environmental and conservation groups that have battled sulfide ore mining on the Iron Range.

Twin Metals spokeswoman Kathy Graul declined to be specific about her company’s plans but provided a statement that said “we are committed to advancing our project in a bipartisan manner to ensure Americans can benefit from the much-needed copper, nickel and cobalt resources that are abundant in northeast Minnesota.”

Julie Lucas, executive director of the trade organization Minnesota Mining, was more blunt. “The company is ready to go whenever they have the opportunity to go again,” she said of Twin Metals, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining company Antofagasta.

Saying there is no safe way to mine for copper, environmentalists, including a group called Save the Boundary Waters, have tried to derail the Twin Metals proposed mine for nearly 10 years and say they are ready to renew their efforts in court.

“The protections that were put in place by the Biden administration went through a formal process by which public comments were taken and a science-based determination made from that,” said Chris Knopf, the executive director of Friends of the Boundary Waters. “And so if the Trump administration were to haphazardly and quickly undo that work, we would challenge that.”

‘An appetite’ to make changes

The election and the political change it ushered in may also benefit Talon Metals, which is navigating the permitting process to build a nickel mine near the town of Tamarack, about 50 miles west of Duluth.

Because nickel is a critical mineral in the production of EV batteries and the Pentagon’s arsenal, Talon has already been given grants by the Department of Energy and Department of Defense to pursue its goal.

Talon also has an agreement to supply electric car-maker Tesla with 165 million pounds of nickel. That agreement with Trump pal Elon Musk is thought to be beneficial for the company, as is its decision to ship its ore for processing to a facility in North Dakota, where its governor, Doug Burgum, is Trump’s choice to head the Interior Department.

Burgum is a proponent of increased oil and natural gas production on federal land and supports domestic production of clean technologies.

Paula Maccabee, advocacy director and legal counsel for WaterLegacy, another group fighting copper and nickel mining, said she’s skeptical of the plan to send raw ore to North Dakota for processing.

“Usually, the processing is done on site, and what a company sends for the next stage is concentrate, which is about a 30th of the size and scale to the ore. So it is a really important issue for Minnesota,” Maccabee said. “Is Talon’s plan to ship all the ore, rather than all the concentrate, to North Dakota feasible? Or is some sort of processing and tailings facility going to come back to Minnesota?”

Maccabee said that “locking that down and preventing that from happening, I think, is a really big question.”

Talon’s proposed mine, which needs to be given a green light by the state, is in its scoping phase, meaning there’s an effort to identify potentially significant environmental and socioeconomic issues and determine whether those can be mitigated.

Talon Metals spokesman Todd Malan said the company is aware of concerns voiced by the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, about the impact of the proposed mine — which would be located less than two miles from its reservation — on the tribe’s land, fish, water and people. 

Malan said “there is an appetite to make some careful and prudent changes” to the company’s plans and he’s optimistic about the future of the project.

“At the end of the day, Americans and the U.S. government need nickel,” Malan said.

Lawsuits ‘a fact of life’

A much larger project called NewRange Copper Nickel, which proposes building a $1 billion open pit mine near Babbitt and Hoyt Lakes, has been beset by legal and regulatory setbacks.

The project needs both federal and state permits to move forward and its federal permit from the Army Corps of Engineers has been revoked because of concerns over the mine’s potential impact on a federally protected wetland.

But the prospect of a more mining-friendly administration could help the mine, a 50-50 joint venture between Swiss commodities giant Glencore and Canada-based Teck Resources that is still widely known by its old name, PolyMet.

NewRange spokesman Bruce Richardson said his company will reapply for a Clean Water Act “Section 404” wetlands permit. “We have every intention to do that,” he said.

Knopf said he fears the Trump administration will reissue the permit for that project, which the Army Corps of Engineers had ruled would violate water quality standards.

Richardson also said he hoped a key state license that has been stalled will move forward. Called a “permit to mine,” it was put on hold when a state administrative law judge recommended that the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources not reissue the permit originally given to PolyMet because of concerns to store waste tailings in a giant basin. Richardson said the company is modifying its plans to address concerns and the DNR said that is why the permit is on hold until next August.

“The scope of potential changes could have a direct impact on specific issues under consideration in the contested case hearing process,” DNR spokeswoman Gail Nosek said in an email. “DNR’s final decision-maker ordered the stay to prevent significant expenditure of time and resources in the contested case process for a project design that may become moot if the company seeks to modify its project in ways that would require a permit amendment and/or additional environmental review.”

While it’s difficult to predict how the conflict between the state’s mining interests and environmental advocates will play out, the change in the direction of political winds are certain to reignite debate and court battles.

“Lawsuits are a fact of life if you want to build a mine,” said New Range’s Richardson.

The shift toward the GOP in the state House (which is now evenly divided between DFL and Republican lawmakers) also makes it tougher for environmental allies to win approval of legislation that would impede state permitting of mines.

While the state has a law prohibiting mining in the Boundary Waters, some legislators have sought to expand that to its headwaters, an effort that failed and now seems further out of reach. 

Lucas, the Mining Minnesota official, said she understood the concerns of those who are fiercely opposed to mining for critical minerals in Minnesota because of fears of pollution of the Boundary Waters and other waters and land.

“They are not bad people for being scared,” she said. “They are just scared.”

Ana Radelat

Ana Radelat is MinnPost’s Washington, D.C. correspondent. You can reach her at aradelat@minnpost.com or follow her on Twitter at @radelat.

Ava Kian

Ava Kian is MinnPost’s Greater Minnesota reporter. Follow her on Twitter @kian_ava or email her at akian@minnpost.com.

The post Trump, GOP electoral wins boost copper, nickel mining prospects in Minnesota appeared first on MinnPost.