Commission recommends mining ordinance approval

HURLEY — Iron County moved one step closer to having a mining ordinance on Tuesday when the Iron County Comprehensive Planning/Land and Zoning Committee voted to send the most recent draft of the ordinance to the County Board of Supervisors for approval.

“I think we’ve had the advice two attorneys, we’ve had four drafts, we’ve spent maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars of taxpayer money,” said Supervisor Victor Ouimette. “I move we recommend, to the full county board, the adoption of the ordinance.”

The county has continued to move forward with the development of the ordinance even after the Feb. 27 announcement that Gogebic Taconite — the company working on developing the mine site near Upson Wis., — was closing its Hurley office.

Several members of the both the county board and planning committee have expressed that the ore is going to remain in the ground and so even while G-Tac’s efforts have come to a halt, someone is going to want to mine the area and then the ordinance will be in place.

Once passed, the ordinance would establish the requirements that a company would have to meet when developing an industry in the county that falls under the ordinance’s jurisdiction, such as mining.” Basically if a company wants to come in and mine, they go through this application process and have a bunch of criteria (they have to meet), now those criteria are not necessarily set in stone. They are more there for the legislative body, which is the county board, to make sure those things are being looked at in the development process,” said Zoning Administrator Thomas Bergman at a public hearing held in April regarding the ordinance.

As the ordinance is a legislative act, it offers more protection for the county than an administrative act since a public body created the ordinance, Bergman explained.

Other action at the meeting included:

— The committee approved a request from Bergman for an extra week of vacation time a year, bringing the total time he is allowed off to four weeks. The request will now go before the Iron County Board of Supervisor’s Finance Committee.

— The committee directed Bergman to draft a resolution for the county board urging state lawmakers to vote against Joint Finance Committee Motion 520, which has language in it that would severely restrict the amount of control local governments would have over a variety of issues, including the regulation of lands that border rivers and lakes within their borders.