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IRONWOOD - The Ironwood Economic Development Corporation met Tuesday
in a regularly scheduled meeting. Several items appeared on the agenda
in addition to the proverbial Regionalization of the Revolving Loan
Funds.
The first item on the agenda was approval of a Loan to the
Gogebic Economic Development Commission. Yes, the GEDC. In an unusual
move, Scott Erickson and Donna Scorse have been working on the
concept of moving IEDC funds downstream through the GEDC, who would in
turn loan it out to an Erwin Township Businessman Howard Niemi.
Scott calls the plan “Thinking outside the box”, in New York or Chicago
we call it money laundering! No, no, that’s just a joke. It is really a
good idea that will keep $50,000 of our RLF money out of the
regionalization scam. Oddly enough the MEDC has already given a
tentative ok to the plan. It would be hard to understand their
objections if there were any objections. After all the loan is a mini
version of what the MEDC wants to do with OUR money.
The
board voted to approve the loan to the GEDC.
Dave Anderson spoke to
the group providing an update on the Orvana’s Cooperwood Mine.
Everything is moving along well and it is believed that the permit
process could be completed by November. During the discussion it was
mentioned that the “Clean Water Initiative” (which isn’t) is beginning
to stall. The Initiative is disguised as a “Clean Water” issue but is
blatantly an anti-mining effort.
The discussion dealt largely
with infrastructure questions and speculation. There is as we reported
earlier a keen interest by Ironwood Management to provide the water to
the mine site. This option is on the table (not really) according
to Anderson. The first choice Orvana is to build its own water plant on
site. They would pump water from Superior to the plant for purification.
The plan is to build a facility slightly larger than needed that could
be turned over to local entities if and when the mine would close down.
Much the same as what occurred in Ontonagon when White Pine shut down.
The cost to build the facility is expected to be $7,000,000. The
cost to provide Lake Water to the entire region would be approximately
$33-35,000,000.
The most problematic item to the mine is EXCEL
Energy, which wants a whopping $25,000,000 to bring electricity to the
Copperwood Mine. One has to wonder, what have they been doing with all
those immoral rate increases they received from the even more immoral
MPSC?
The board members discussed once again the proposed theft
of the Revolving Loan Fund money by the Lansing Banditos. There’s
nothing new to report to our readers since our last report. Many members
of the Corporation board would like to form our own local RLF. However,
once again, Jim Huss discussed the rationale of surrendering to the
Lansing gangsters. Mr. Huss, told the members present that
Ironwood would get a seat at the table and Gogebic County EDC will have
a seat at the table, That will give us 33% of the vote. Here is
one number not mentioned by Huss, if Ironwood, Gogebic County and any
other local entities formed a local RLF, we would have 100% of the vote
not 33%.
The board did not vote to either approve or disapprove the
grand theft action.
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