Star Tribune
Grand Marais maple syrup producers tap into trouble with Minnesota DNR
Selling bikes is interesting, but being in the woods in spring, gathering maple sap, is addictive, a distinction Mark and Melinda Spinler know well.
The Spinlers live about 7 miles outside of Grand Marais, the small town on the North Shore that was more quaint than trendy when the couple moved there in 1984.
Mountain biking wasn’t yet a thing when the Spinlers arrived in Grand Marais. But they were into it, and opened the town’s first bike shop, which they operated for about 30 years before selling it.
Now, instead of two-wheelers, they peddle wood-burning stoves. Also, Mark has a chimney-cleaning business. And together, come March, he and Melinda, both 65, decamp to two relatively small stands of maple trees — one they own and one the state owns — to begin a process that will produce about 270 gallons of syrup, which they market to local businesses.
“Northern Minnesota is a wonderful place to live,” Melinda said. “But a hard place to make a living.”
Mark Spinler returns his chain saw to the sugar shack on his Grand Marais, Minn., property after trimming some downed limbs that had fallen on the network of tubing he uses to collect sap from maple trees. (Jeff Wheeler/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
It’s the syrup business that has embroiled the Spinlers in a standoff with the Department of Natural Resources that speaks to a larger debate about public lands and their proper use. Similar issues have affected northeast Minnesota residents since at least 1926, when the border region that would become the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness was first established as a roadless area.
But the Spinlers’ brouhaha has nothing to do with paddling or camping.
At issue instead is a 13-acre tract of relatively isolated state land adjoining their property that they have leased from the DNR for about 25 years.
Talon Metals, the company proposing an underground nickel mine near Tamarack, Minn., has backed away from a novel plan that would have used a subway-digging machine to carve an underground loop to reach the ore.
Instead, Talon, which hopes to one day supply the materials for Tesla’s electric vehicle batteries, will dig a straight path down to those minerals. The revised environmental assessment worksheet filed Dec. 12 incorporated public, state and tribal feedback, said Jessica Johnson, the vice president of external affairs for Talon.
“We’re reducing the amount of ground disturbance and the amount of rock that we need to handle and manage,” Johnson said.
By no longer using a tunnel boring machine, Talon has sidestepped early concerns from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources about waste rock, potential contamination of water and an untested technology for mining. But building a single, diagonal shaft underground also means that Talon will be blasting rock closer to the surface, at 100 feet below as opposed to 300 feet below.
Talon is still studying how many sulfides will be in the waste rock between the surface and the nickel it is seeking, the company said in filings. Sulfide minerals that can interact with air and water to create acid mine drainage, or release sulfates that are toxic to wild rice.
The company also abandoned a proposal to pile waste rock outside on top of liners, and now says it will store excess rock inside a central building — or ship it along with ore to a processing plant it intends to build in North Dakota.
Several parts of the facility have been moved inside this building, and the central mine shaft will also reach the surface indoors. Johnson described the concept as a “mine in a box.”
But the new design also introduces new questions, said Paula Maccabee of the environmental group WaterLegacy. She questioned how Talon would be able to supply enough fresh air for workers in the mine when the main opening is enclosed. Previously, the loop design had two openings at the surface of the ground.
The St. Paul school board on Thursday agreed to take the district’s property tax levy to the limit once again — this time to the tune of a 7.9% increase in 2025.
The action came at the tail end of a spirited truth-in-taxation season that found homeowners venting at hearings about the high cost of government in St. Paul, and a week after the City Council voted to lower Mayor Melvin Carter’s proposed increase in the city’s share of the tax bill to 5.9%.
Jane Prince, a former City Council member, appeared before the school board earlier this month to ask members to ease the bite on homeowners. Between 2015 and 2024, she said, St. Paul Public Schools raised its levies by 50%, compared with a 39% hike in Minneapolis.
On Thursday, Tom Sager, the district’s executive chief of financial services, cautioned that a move by the board to levy taxes in an amount less than that allowed by the state Department of Education could lead to a corresponding decrease in the amount of state aid it receives in some funding categories.
Board Member Carlo Franco said Thursday he hoped that the district could one day get to the point of lowering its levy increases in response to homeowners decrying “big taxes” in St. Paul.
“Our commitment is to make sure that those ‘big taxes’ translate into big outcomes and big successes for our kids,” Franco said.
The owner of a city’s $275,300 median-valued home will see a $142 increase in the district’s share of the property tax bill, or 11.5%. Changes in individual property values, as well as levies set by the county, city and other tax bodies, are among the other factors determining one’s final overall tax bill.
Star Tribune
18-year-old from North Dakota charged in north Minneapolis shooting that killed teen girl
An 18-year-old from West Fargo, N.D., has been charged with killing a 17-year-old girl this summer in a shooting at a north Minneapolis gas station that injured another person.
Erick Corday Scott was charged Thursday in Hennepin County District Court with second-degree murder for the death of Lonnaya I’zanay Warren-Lloyd, of Minneapolis. Scott has no criminal history in Minnesota but, since turning 18 in April, he has been charged with three different crimes in North Dakota: felony conspiracy to commit robbery with a firearm; misdemeanor fleeing a police officer on foot; and unlawful possession of a firearm as a violent felon.
The firearm possession charge was filed on Dec. 12 and Scott is in custody at the Cass County jail.
Katie Nechiporenko, an assistant Cass County state’s attorney for North Dakota, said that while Scott hasn’t been convicted of a felony as an adult, he has a juvenile record that can be used to enhance adult sentencing on the most recent firearm charge.
“It’s just for certain crimes as they relate to guns,” she said. “It’s North Dakota’s carveout.” Nechiporenko said she has not been contacted by Hennepin County about the murder charge against Scott.
Messages were left with Scott’s lawyer in North Dakota. No attorney was listed for him in Hennepin County.
According to court and police documents:
Police responded to the Super USA gas station around 11 p.m. on July 7 after reports of a shooting. They found Warren-Lloyd in the front passenger seat of a parked car with multiple gunshot wounds. She was transported to North Memorial Hospital where she died.
