Star Tribune
New Nyala calf born at Como Zoo in St. Paul
The newest arrival at St. Paul’s Como Zoo is a male Nyala calf, which was born on Monday evening and was on his feet just 20 minutes later.
Weighing in at 14.1 pounds, the yet-to-be-named calf is the second to mother Stevie and father Stanley, who passed away in January, zoo officials said.
The couple’s first offspring, Meadow, was born just before Stanley’s death, and is “very curious about her little brother, but incredibly gentle and respectful,” said senior Zookeeper Jill Erzar.
Nyala, a species of spiral-horned antelope native to southern Africa, are known for their striking chestnut coats, adorned with white stripes and spots, the zoo said. Males develop spiral horns and a darker coat as they mature, the birth announcement said.
The newborn, his mother and sister are on view daily at the zoo, 1225 Estabrook Drive.
The state Department of Employment and Economic Development has announced a $440,000 grant to Oak Park Heights that the city plans to begin cleaning city water of the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) discovered in two city wells earlier this year.
The grant was one of six Community Energy Transition Grants awarded to communities with power plants that have closed or are scheduled to close due to the state’s conversion to 100% clean electricity by 2040.
The Allen S. King power plant will close in 2028, taking with it about a third of Oak Park Heights’ tax collections. Oak Park Heights Mayor Mary McComber said in a statement that the city will use the grant for a feasibility study and pre-design work to construct a new water treatment facility to remove PFAS contaminants from city water.
“We are grateful for DEED’s partnership and continued support,” McComber said. The six Community Energy Transition Grants announced this week totaled $5.21 million in funding for Oak Park Heights, Monticello, Red Wing, Cook County, Becker, and Sherburne County.
Superfund sites are investigated to determine the nature and extent of pollution. That has happened many times over the years at St. Regis, leading to the removal of some contaminated soil.
Some EPA studies and reports suggested the cleanup was done or nearing completion, but then the band’s own studies contradicted the EPA data. In the early 2000s, researchers with the University of Minnesota found evidence of a worsening situation that the EPA seemed to miss.
“It’s easy for a lot of people to say, ‘Well, they didn’t know any better when they were poisoning the water…when they were poisoning the land, they didn’t know any better.’ But they really did,” said Leo Anderson, who lived on a section of the Superfund site, as did his grandparents.
“One of the earliest memories I have of living on this site was that if you left a glass of water out overnight, in the morning there was an oil on top of it,” Anderson said.
“We had repeated stories of these companies putting freshly treated creosote wood right next to people’s homes,” he said. “They would pile it as close as they could to your home until you moved out and then they would continue working their way through the whole community. So this was not a mistake.”
A National Weather Service survey team will be in St. Louis County in northern Minnesota on Friday to assess damage and try to determine the strength of a twister that touched down Thursday afternoon.
“It was a confirmed tornado,” said Krystal Lynum, a meteorologist with the Weather Service’s office in Duluth.
Numerous photos and videos posted online showed the tornado that felled trees near Bug Creek Road just east of Cotton, and as it crossed Hwy. 53 near Canyon, Minn. between 4:45 and 5:30 p.m., Lynum said.
Shingles were torn from a two-story home and debris was strewn near Cotton, the Weather Service reported.
“Fortunately, a remote area with few buildings,” St. Louis County Sheriff Gordon Ramsay wrote in a Facebook posting. No injuries were reported, he said.
The two small towns are about 40 miles northwest of Duluth.
While not unprecedented, the September tornado in northern Minnesota is rare, Lynum said.
“Usually severe weather starts to end the last part of August, but it’s been so warm we are seeing severe weather in September.”
