FACTS + FIGURES — Mining along the Iron Range

For more than a century, gigantic blasts designed to shake loose millions of tons of iron ore have rattled the ground across the Iron Range. Along with the weekly blasts have come noise and dust, and thousands of mining company jobs.

In the early years of iron ore mining, blasts that felt like earthquake tremors on a regular basis meant that people on the Iron Range were prospering. Washing rich red ore from streets and clothes was a sign that the economy was strong.

But today, some residents of the Iron Range are looking at mining in a different light. They see expanding mining operations getting too close to their neighborhoods for comfort.

In Virginia’s Ridgewood addition, homeowners are angry about a layer of red dust that has settled on the neighborhood from the Auburn mine, which reopened this summer about a quarter mile from their homes.

And in Gilbert, about 30 homeowners claim blasting at Inland Steel Mining’s Laurentian mine is responsible for structural damage to their homes. Near Auburn, rust-colored dust from the mine has impregnated siding, decks, rain troughs, covered sidewalks and even seeped into homes through cracks around windows and doors, say residents.

Bruce Skubic of Virginia, who co-owns the mine, says dust problems began to develop Sept. 1 when workers ran into a problem drying moist ore. Under a sublease arrangement with U.S. Steel (which owns the property) and Eveleth Mines (which had leased the mine from U.S. Steel), about 220,000 tons of natural ore were shipped from the mine this summer.

Plans call for the removal of about 3.5 million tons of iron ore from the pit during the next five years. When the mine’s natural ore supply is depleted, Eveleth will likely fill the pit with waste rock.

Both the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and Minnesota Pollution Control Agency have instructed Skubic to come up with a new processing plan. DNR officials say Skubic should keep the plant’s drying bag house in good repair, shut down the mine when winds are blowing toward Virginia, relocate the plant farther away from town, control dust by spraying the mine’s roads and cover inactive stockpiles.

Skubic says the dust problem will be solved by spring with the installation of a new natural gas-fired dryer.

To help reduce dust emissions, the mine’s processing area will be moved about 1,400 ft. to the southeast and behind an earth berm. Only stripping work will be performed during the winter. Though today’s taconite mines have invested millions in dust control equipment and follow stringent blasting guidelines, a certain amount of dust and noise has always been a part of living on the Iron Range.

In addition to the dust, noise from bulldozers and huge production trucks, operating atop an Eveleth waste dump near the neighborhood, has residents upset.

Iron Rangers have lived with this tradeoff between progress and permanence ever since iron ore was discovered there in the late 1800s. For the past 100 years, homes and entire communities that sprung up along the 80-mile-long Biwabik Iron Formation — which stretches from Grand Rapids to Babbitt — have been moved to make way for mining.

The largest and most highly publicized move began in the early 1920s when the entire city of Hibbing was moved south. In 1919-1920, 114 natural iron ore mines, each with a life span of 5-6 years, operated across the Iron Range. Location homes that stood near the edges of mines were moved, often as the neighboring mine expanded. A few decades later, car tires, streets and clothes of those who worked in the mines were stained with red natural ore as production rose to a high of 60.7 million tons in 1953.

Today, about 20 Iron Range cities, from Babbitt to Coleraine, sit on or alongside the iron formation.

— From the Knight-Ridder/Tribune business news wire.