About 200 construction workers are pouring concrete on the Iron Range, laying the foundations of Essar Steel's planned iron ore mine-to-steel mill complex.
The four-year, nearly $2 billion project could employ up to 2,000 construction workers and produce 500-plus permanent jobs by 2015 on the western end of the range that was once home to Butler Taconite, shuttered 25 years ago.
The plant, owned by Essar Group of India, would cost nearly four times as much as the Minnesota Twins' Target Field and provide the first integrated mine-to-mill facility in an area long exploited for its underground riches that are then shipped elsewhere for manufacture into the steel used for cars, ships and skyscrapers.
"This is a big deal," acknowledged Rep. Tom Anzelc, DFL-Balsam Township, who represents the area 70 miles northwest of Duluth. "I just wish they weren't using steel imported from India when the taxpayers of Minnesota already have invested $70 million in infrastructure, the gas, electric, water and sewer lines, roads, and a short-line railroad ... an unprecedented public investment in a taconite plant. And we are not buying American steel?"
Essar is delivering steel from one of its mills in India to northeastern Minnesota.
The locals are grateful that, after years of planning and negotiation, Essar is building what could be a huge economic engine near the bones of the Butler mine near Nashwauk. But importing steel to build a mine in "Buy America" country stings.
Anzelc and others suspect that Essar may be promising a steel mill, but might deliver only a mine that will extract taconite and ship it to one of its North American steelmaking plants.
Steve Rutherford, the Essar project manager at Nashwauk and a range veteran, acknowledges that the company's contract with the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board (IRRRB), the regional economic development agency, called for Essar to build with U.S. steel if possible.
