By Winona LaDuke
Out of the Deep South a lumber company, Huber Manufacturing, is proposing what may be the largest oriented strand board plant in the country. The Frontier plant would be built in Cohasset, just east of Grand Rapids, and on Minnesota Power’s land, where the Boswell Energy Facility is located.
The era of coal is ending in a time of climate chaos and major innovations in renewables. Replacing the big polluter, the plant would go up less than a mile from the Leech Lake reservation. No one in the Walz administration thought to call Leech Lake and ask what they thought. Instead, they just started the cannon ball rolling towards the forests of the north.
Huber Manufacturing hopes to build a 750,000 square foot facility, where 150 people would work and make industrial sized construction panels. Sounds simple, right?
Well, the MN Legislature thought it sounded like a really good idea, so they gave $80 million in subsidies to the North Carolina based company. They told the City of Cohasset that it should be the Responsible Government Unit, and then gave the company an exemption from an environmental impact statement, saying that a simple environmental review (an EAW worksheet as it’s called) might be just fine.
Minnesota is hoping the deal will be sweet enough that Huber will pick Cohasset over competitors in other states. Kind of sounds like Minnesota has become a very cheap date. And, for that much in state subsidies, it might be worth some vetting.
Oriented Strand Board
Oriented Strand Board or OSB is some important stuff to fast building. It’s sort of a sticky mess and has some toxic materials to hold the wood together. Since Paul Bunyan logged our massive pine forests we now just mush up little stuff and glue it together with petrochemicals. That’s the Minnesota way.
The first oriented strand board was made by Blandin in Grand Rapids There was also an OSB plant in Deerwood, which made joists, operated initially by MacMillan Bloedel, and then by Weyerhauser. Deerwood’s Trus Joist had a number of health related concerns before the plant was closed, and the industry is generally pretty toxic to worker health.
It turns out that the chemicals like formaldehyde and others, combined with wood dust, aren’t that healthy. Other OSB facilities closed during the financial collapse in 2008. And facing more changes and shrinking forests, the pulp and paper mills have also been facing hard times. Tough sledding in the logging industry.
What About the Trees?
It’s about the trees and the forests. A forest is a living ecosystem, or timber resources are inanimate materials. Those are two profoundly different world views which have been facing off in the forests of the north since before the 1855 treaty. What’s clear is that Minnesota does not manage the forests sustainably. Even the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) knows that. Twenty eight DNR staff outlined their ecological concerns in a 2019 letter to Commissioner Sarah Strommen. The authors “do not believe it is scientifically honest or transparent to say that the 10-year timber plan is ‘beneficial to wildlife.’”
Minnesota’s forests are managed for aspen and deer. That’s not a diverse forest, that’s a monocrop. Loss of old growth and clearcutting destroys habitat for larger animals, and destroys ecosystems. The DNR wildlife scientists thought that the proposed 8.75 percent increase in harvest from state managed lands would cut out biodiversity and habitat. There is just not enough forest left to support mega projects.
That was before the Huber Plant proposal, which will be fed by these same forests. The Frontier OSB plant needs an estimated 400,000 cords of wood annually to sustain a 24-hour assembly. Huber wants to get that within a l00 mile radius from the project. In comparison, the Minnesota DNR in 2019 offered 875,000 cords from all state land. That logging impact circle includes the entire Leech Lake reservation, the Chippewa National Forest, and a good portion of the White Earth and Red Lake reservations.
There are already two separate lumber plants on either side of the Leech lake reservation, and the Leech Lake Nation has concerns about the lack of information provided in the EAW, noting in their initial comments, “most of the wood for this project will necessarily be harvested from the Leech Lake reservation or the l855 treaty territory…. the failure to analyze the woodshed based on feedstock quantities necessary sets the State upon a dangerous trajectory for forest health.”
“We find our medicines in mature forests, not early in the succession,” said Ben Benoit, Environmental program for Leech Lake. “Protecting and restoring forest diversity is critical to preserving Anishinaabe lifeways in an ever-changing climate and world. Tribal citizens rely on the forest as our teachings and culture is tied to natural cycles and diversity that is disrupted with timber industry focused management…” In other words, you can’t make maple syrup in a clearcut.
Then there’s the little guys, like the Long Eared Bat (Myotis septentrionalis). They are endangered. There’s a Long Eared Bat nesting site by Cohasset that is going to get destroyed during construction. Bapakwaanaajiinh, the bat, is an epic character in Anishinaabe mythology, illustrating that mysterious and small creatures can change the world. This specific bat species also was impacted by the Line 3 project. It was one of the primary endangered species the pipeline rolled over. There’s only so many times you can knock out an endangered species and expect it to live. And despite the fact that this bat is just a little critter, bats are important. After all, the coronavirus we are all dealing with came from a bat.
In fact, the coronavirus was traced to a bat whose habitat was squashed in China. I’d like to learn from one of the lessons on leaving the wild things alone. The United Nations has reiterated that biodiversity matters not only to planetary health, but also human health. The reality is that mega projects are fragmenting forests and creating ecological havoc. Clearcut damage makes the forest more at risk in windstorms, which increase with climate change. Protecting the integrity of the forest protects us all.
Paul Bunyan was already here. There were once 75 million acres of contiguous forest in the region, most of them have been cut to build railroads, St. Paul, Duluth and more. The northern forests built empires – the Congdon to the Pillsbury, Weyerhaeuser and more – all those empires were born from these forests. Those companies are the actual names of the fictional Paul Bunyan.
In the least, Bunyan needs do something epic to reverse his legacy. There is no sustainable harvest in the north woods. There’s a lot of aspen monocultures being cultivated by the DNR, that’s what the DNR Wildlife concerns are. That’s not a forest. The Leech Lake tribal government has been working for decades on forest restoration outlining “desired vegetative conditions’ and facing all of these logging interests, as well as a Chippewa National Forest (which was carved out of the reservation), all impacting Indigenous land knowledge and care.
In short, there’s already a good deal of pressure on the forests up north. Leech Lake reservation sits between two large mills in Bemidji and Grand Rapids and is the focus of heavy logging pressure. These resources are extracted from the Reservation. However, the wealth derived from the harvest remans outside the Reservation and impacts tribal resources.
The 1855 Treaty Territory area used to be full of white pine forests and lush maple groves. These forests have been obliterated by the logging industry and today the turnover in forestry plants is rapid. Most of the mills in the north are struggling, or have turned over ownership, more than once in the last decade. That’s because the big trees are all gone. The time of Paul Bunyan is over.
Tribal Consultation
No one bothered to tell Leech Lake about the Frontier project. The Leech Lake Tribal government learned about the project from a press release. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be in Minnesota. To be clear, Governor Walz signed the 2019 Executive Order l9-24 affirming government to government relationship between Minnesota and Minnesota tribal nations, providing for consultation, coordination and cooperation.” The Executive order is intended “to establish mutually respectful and beneficial relationships between the state and Minnesota tribal nations..” Well, throw that one out the window. What’s amazingly clear is that Governor Walz did not conduct any consultation as required by his own executive order.
Tim’s Bad Gambles
“Very few opportunities come along where someone is looking to build a new plant,” Representative Tom Bakk said, as he went to bat for $28.5 million in subsidies for Huber. That may be because it’s a bad idea. But that didn’t stop them.
“You have a company coming into Minnesota looking at our environmental laws and telling everyone, telling Minnesota Power, telling the Legislature, ‘we’ll come in as long as you get rid of this one law for us,’” said Evan Muholland, Senior Staff Attorney for the environmental policy group MCEA. “And that just doesn’t sit right with us.”
As the Glasgow Climate conference came to an end in November, there was a greater than ever call to keep forests intact and cut carbon emissions. The Walz administration talked about the new plans for cars, but neglected to mention the big tar sands pipeline, and the new plans to clearcut the north for an out of state corporation. This fall, Walz talked about the clean car initiative, his new council on climate change, and then proposed to give away the northern forests with $80 million in subsidies from the state.
The Walz administration could do a lot better, in fact, they could change the future. Our prophecies as Anishinaabe people speak of this time and the choice of paths. Time for a real green path in Minnesota, not a scorched path. It’s time to grow back full forests, a wild rice economy and restore the north, not tear it further apart. That’s long term sustainability, and the Walz Administration could learn from the Leech Lake Environmental program, and other tribes like Red Lake, about their world class work to restore ecosystems and create green economies.
It may be time for Hempwood, that’s all sorts of wood made from compressed hemp, stuck together with, well soybeans. Can’t eat it, but you can make a lot out of it, including joists and something like OSB, made with hemp and soybeans. Besides that, hemp sequesters carbon faster than a forest and has great adaptability. It takes about 4 months for hemp stalks to reach maturity, while it takes trees at least twenty years. Let’s take a break from the southern charm of Huber and look across the forests. That’s where the wild things are and that’s where the bats live. And the Anishinaabe. This is the only place we have, Huber can go find another forest.
