LAKE SUPERIOR

Future of EPA lab in Duluth remains unclear

Jimmy Lovrien — Fri, 30 May 2025 11:13:00 GMT

DULUTH — Approximately two dozen early-career researchers have been forced out of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s laboratory over the last month when the Trump administration cut a grant and didn't renew a contract to fund their programs.

Meanwhile, the lab’s federal employees — like other EPA employees throughout the agency — have been given the option to retire early, leave voluntarily or apply for a limited number of jobs at other divisions within the agency.

More than two months after the Trump administration’s plans to cut the EPA’s Office of Research and Development were first reported by the New York Times, uncertainty still swirls around the future of EPA’s Great Lakes Toxicology and Ecology Division Laboratory, 6201 Congdon Blvd., which is part of ORD.

A portion of the reduction plan, shared earlier this year with the News Tribune by Science Committee Democratic staff, said the EPA planned to “eliminate” the ORD and expected 50%-75% of its more than 1,540 positions "will not be retained."

Earlier this month, the Trump administration submitted its budget to Congress, which called for a $235 million, or 45%, cut in ORD’s budget.

According to multiple sources familiar with the matter, and a recording of a May 2 virtual meeting obtained by the News Tribune, EPA officials told ORD employees that they could apply to approximately 500 job openings at other offices within the EPA.

Job applications for the new positions and decisions on early retirement or the so-called deferred resignation program were all due a week later, on May 9.

Questions about relocation for the new jobs, however, linger. While one official said the 130 new jobs within the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention would not require relocation and gave Duluth as an example of a place the staffer could remain, a slide showing the organization the newly created Office of Applied Sciences and Environmental Solutions, which account for 300 of the new jobs, only listed locations in Oklahoma, Ohio, North Carolina and Washington, D.C.

Officials said another 30-50 positions would be available at the Office of Air and Radiation and told staff at ORD they could also apply for new positions in the Office of Water.

Questions on the future of ORD were often answered by officials who said the latest plans didn’t directly affect ORD and that more reorganization plans were coming.

Less than a week later, as the May 9 deadline loomed, ORD staff were told, “If you’re interested in remaining with the Agency, we encourage you to apply for any and all of the positions you may be qualified for,” according to an email reviewed by the News Tribune.

However, any mass layoffs appear to be on hold after a federal judge earlier this month blocked the Trump administration from large-scale reductions in force or agency reorganizations of federal agencies, including the EPA, “without partnering with Congress.”

Even so, the lab’s workforce has dropped by about 25 over the last month when a grant was cut and a contract left to expire, both of which allowed early-career researchers to work alongside EPA scientists at the lab. Prior to that, there were 176 employees at the lab, 68 of whom were federal scientists, and the remaining 108 were post-doctoral researchers, student contractors and facility staff, according to an EPA fact sheet updated in April.

It’s unclear how many employees took an early retirement or deferred resignation.

In response to the News Tribune’s request for an interview on what the agency’s reorganization effort and cancellation of the grant and contract meant for the future of the Duluth lab, an EPA spokesperson responded with a brief statement.

“At ORD (Office of Research and Development) and throughout the agency, EPA is continuing to invest in research and labs to advance the mission of protecting human health and the environment,” a spokesperson for the EPA said.

Contract not renewed

A five-year National Student Services Contract between the EPA and Oak Ridge Associated Universities that allowed earlier career researchers to work alongside EPA scientists at seven ORD labs and offices, including Duluth, expired May 14 and a new contract was not approved.

ORAU did not respond to the News Tribune’s request for comment. Multiple sources estimated that approximately 20 researchers, ranging from undergraduates to postdocs, at the Duluth Lab were let go when the contract expired. On its website, ORAU has removed employee spotlight pages that once highlighted the work of its researchers working with the EPA. It also replaced a page of contract information with a thank-you message.

“ORAU would like to thank EPA for 10 years of successful partnership managing the National Student Services Contract (NSSC),” the website said this week. “We would also like to thank all of our employees who worked side by side with the hardworking federal employees at EPA.“

DOGE, EPA cut UMD training grant

Last month, the EPA cut a $3.5 million grant that trained undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Minnesota Duluth in chemical risk management and water quality protection.

The grant began in November 2023 and was expected to last five years, but it ended abruptly April 30, with a notice from the EPA stating the grant was terminated immediately because the “objectives of the award are no longer consistent with EPA funding priorities,” a UMD spokesperson said.

More than $800,000 had been obligated when the grant was cut, with almost $300,000 already paid to the university, according to USASpending.gov.

The Department of Government Efficiency, President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s effort to slash federal spending and programming, now lists the cutting of the grant as a savings on its so-called “Wall of Receipts.”

In a statement, Donn Branstrator, professor of biology at UMD, said the school requested “an orderly closeout” so it can continue the contract until next spring.

“Water quality protection is of vital importance for Minnesotans and people across the country, and the EPA and UMD scientists have a long and productive track record of collaboration in research and student training,” Branstrator said. “Without this funding, the region and the nation will lose out on the training and career development of current and future scientists committed to protecting the environment.”

A UMD spokesperson said one postdoctoral investigator and four graduate students from UMD were in training when the grant was cut, and another two graduate students were expected to begin in the fall. The grant cut affects an additional 15 undergraduate students, seven graduate students and three postdoctoral investigators who would have been trained in aquatic toxicology and ecology.

Lawmakers seek answers

A letter sent in April by U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, both Democrats from Minnesota, to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin demanding answers about the future of the Duluth lab has not been answered by the agency, Smith’s office said. The two sent a follow-up letter to Zeldin urging him to respond to their earlier letter and confirm the EPA would not attempt to reduce staff at the Duluth lab while the court's injunction on large-scale reductions in force and reorganizations is in effect.

In a statement Thursday, Smith said the lab in Duluth and its work on clean and safe water were irreplaceable because of its access to Lake Superior.

“I’m extremely concerned that workers at the lab aren’t getting the clarity they deserve about what’s going on. They are being left in the dark, not knowing if their jobs are safe,” Smith said. “The Trump administration needs to listen to the federal court order temporarily halting any proposed cuts to the lab, but unfortunately this administration has shown a blatant disregard for rule of law and court orders. I’m disappointed the Trump EPA can’t answer a series of simple questions about the future of the lab and these workers, but I’m not giving up.”

In a separate statement Thursday, Klobuchar echoed the need to keep the Duluth lab open.

“The Duluth lab is critical for the Northland and the Great Lakes in a big way — ensuring safe drinking water and supporting our recreation and shipping economy — which is why I continue to press the administration to keep the lab open,” Klobuchar said.

“While the courts have stepped in to block these across-the-board changes, we must continue to protect our Northland and the Great Lakes," she said. "I support making the government more efficient, but it must be done in a way that is based on facts and science, without threatening our economy or putting public health on the line.”

State Sen. Grant Hauschild, DFL-Hermantown, also wrote a letter to Zeldin in April, but had not received a response as of Tuesday, a spokesperson for his office said.

U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Minn., said he recently met with EPA Region 5 Administrator Anne Vogel.

“Congressman Stauber did express his desire for the Duluth Research Lab to remain open due to the important research they perform around the Great Lakes," a spokesperson for the Hermantown lawmaker's office said Thursday. "There is no new update on the status of this lab, and Regional Administrator Vogel relayed to the congressman that this decision ultimately remains with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin."

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Duluth EPA lab’s future uncertain under plan to cut research arm

Jimmy Lovrien — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 17:20:33 GMT

DULUTH — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed eliminating its scientific and research arm and up to 75% of its staff, leaving the future of the agency’s Duluth freshwater laboratory and its more than 100 employees uncertain.

The proposal for the EPA to eliminate its Office of Research and Development, first reported Monday by the New York Times, is part of the “reduction in force” plans required throughout the federal government by the Trump administration. The potential cuts were outlined in documents reviewed by Democrats on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

The ORD includes the Great Lakes Toxicology and Ecology Division laboratory, 6201 Congdon Boulevard in Duluth, which is world-renowned among aquatic scientists for developing scientific protocols used worldwide to measure how toxic chemicals affect the environment.

What these cuts would mean for the Duluth lab is unclear.

A portion of the reduction plan shared with the News Tribune by Science Committee Democratic staff said the EPA planned to “eliminate” the ORD and expected 50-75% of its more than 1,540 positions “will not be retained.”

As of 2021, the Duluth lab employed 136 people, according to the agency.

Reached by phone Wednesday, Dale Hoff, director of the Great Lakes Toxicology and Ecology Division in Duluth, said he couldn’t discuss the future of the Duluth lab.

“Anybody who’s read that article knows as much as I do,” Hoff said, referring to Monday’s New York Times article.

During a virtual town hall meeting Tuesday, ORD officials told the EPA’s science and research employees, including those at the Duluth lab, that dismantling the ORD would likely require an act of Congress, according to two people at the meeting.

Political appointees left career ORD officials out of the reduction-in-force discussions, the ORD officials told attendees.

At a separate town hall Tuesday for Center for Computational Toxicology and Exposure sites, which includes labs in Duluth and Durham, North Carolina, employees were told to download and save personnel files, writing samples and anything else they might want from their EPA computer, the two people said.

U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., the ranking member on the science committee, said in a statement that the Trump administration was trying to kill the EPA and the ORD, but that doing so would violate the law.

“EPA’s Office of Research and Development is in statute," Lofgren said. "Eliminating it is illegal. … EPA cannot meet its legal obligation to use the best available science without ORD, and that’s the point. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are putting their polluter buddies’ bottom lines over the health and safety of Americans.”

U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, a Hermantown Republican whose district includes the Duluth lab, did not respond to the News Tribune’s request for comment on whether he supports the plan to eliminate ORD or if he is concerned about the potential loss of EPA jobs in his district.

Asked what the plan meant for the Duluth lab, EPA spokesperson Molly Vaseliou said the agency was “taking exciting steps as we enter the next phase of organizational improvements” and that it was “committed to enhancing our ability to deliver clean air, water, and land for all Americans.”

“While no decisions have been made yet, we are actively listening to employees at all levels to gather ideas on how to better fulfill agency statutory obligations, increase efficiency, and ensure the EPA is as up-to-date and effective as ever,” Vaseliou said.

Jack Kelly, who worked as chief of the ecology branch at the Duluth lab from 1998 to 2015, told the News Tribune that EPA’s reduction in force plan targeting the ORD was “really, really upsetting.”

“The country has invested in the training, schooling and development of these people to serve a purpose — protecting humans and the environment,” Kelly said. “There’s been a great amount of money invested in this … to throw that away is beyond ridiculous in my mind.

To him, the lab is a place where methods were developed to track the quality of the Great Lakes, standards were established on pollutants, and new chemicals that come along were evaluated, like PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), commonly known as "forever chemicals."

“On a personal level, just right away, I object to the not-very-subtle and, frankly, quite ignorant characterization that comes with this,” Kelly said. “My entire life’s pursuit in environmental research and protection is pretty useless and just wasteful spending?”

Kelly said the employees at the Duluth lab work there because they are committed to protecting the environment, even though they could probably make more money elsewhere.

“It’s hard to swallow the idea that you just toss this out with the garbage,” he said.

John Morrice, of Duluth, worked at the EPA lab in Duluth for 15 years as a research biologist studying Great Lakes ecosystems. He retired 12 years ago but worked under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

While Republicans often targeted EPA’s regulatory enforcement side, Morrice said the agency’s science and research arms were largely left alone.

“There is a need to have better science to underpin the establishment and enforcement of chemicals in our waters as part of the Clean Water Act … the (Duluth) lab has set up teams to try to address that need,” Morrice told the News Tribune. “These are ongoing projects that I don’t think universities and academia are really in a position to pick up the slack if the lab were to disappear.”

He cited evaluating and assessing St. Louis River Estuary restoration efforts, creating water criteria for Great Lakes coastal regions, and studying the responses of fish and other organisms to different chemicals among the lab’s “huge successes” over its nearly 60-year history.

Established in 1967, the lab predates the EPA by three years. Its roots go back a few more years.

In 1961, U.S. Rep. John Blatnik, D-Minn., sponsored an amendment to the new Federal Water Pollution Act to create federal water quality labs in key areas of the United States. Blatnik picked Duluth (in his home district) as the Great Lakes site.

Legend has it that a new congressional aide named Jim Oberstar helped pick the site. Oberstar worked for Blatnik and the powerful House Public Works Committee that Blatnik headed. Later, after he was elected to Congress and served on the same committee, Oberstar returned to visit the lab often, extolling its work.

Construction began in 1965 when the lab was under the Federal Public Health Service. By the time it was dedicated two years later, it was part of the Water Pollution Control Administration. It joined the EPA when President Richard Nixon established the agency in 1970.

Most recently, its work focused on developing baseline scientific data/protocol for testing chemical impacts on organisms.

Without the lab, Kelly said, “We’re talking about not just a loss to the scientific community. We’re talking a loss to the population of the United States … they (the Duluth lab) speak to all kinds of issues of how we need to live and protect the environment so that we protect ourselves.”

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In 2012, an experienced pilot vanished over Minnesota's North Shore. What happened to Michael Bratlie?

Jimmy Lovrien — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 17:00:00 GMT

Editor's note: This archival Vault article was first published Aug. 30, 2022.

TWO HARBORS, Minn. — Michael Bratlie took off from the airport in South St. Paul on June 8, 2012, and flew his two-engine plane up to Lake Superior and along Minnesota's North Shore.

A radar track of the Lakeville, Minnesota, man’s flight shows him following the shore, but the red line indicating his path ends abruptly near the Silver Creek Cliff Tunnel and Encampment Island north of Two Harbors.

There’s been no sign of him — not in the initial, exhaustive search and not in the decade since.

It’s believed Bratlie — then 67 years old, with more than 17,500 flight hours recorded as a bush pilot and a retired Northwest Airlines and U.S. Navy pilot — either crashed his twin-engine Piper PA-31 Navajo into the thick forest or into Lake Superior.

“We couldn’t find any debris. We were looking for oil slicks and debris fields and pieces of plane along the shoreline and all that,” said Carey Johnson, the Lake County sheriff from 2007 until he retired in late June. “And we never were able to come up with stuff that was related to the plane.”

According to the National Transportation Safety Board’s final report, released in January 2016, Bratlie took off just after 2 p.m. from South St. Paul Municipal Airport. He was flying within a half-mile of the Lake Superior shoreline at an altitude of 2,800 feet. As he approached Two Harbors, he descended and eventually reached an altitude of about 1,600 feet at 3:27 p.m. — his last recorded position.

He was reported missing at 10:25 p.m., the report said.

“The airplane reportedly had one of its two engines replaced and the pilot was to fly for about 4 hours to break-in the engine. The airplane did not return from the flight and was reported overdue,” the report said. “The airplane is missing and is presumed to have crashed.”

He did not file a flight plan, the report said. And a News Tribune story during the initial 2012 search said searchers weren’t able to detect the signal from the plane’s emergency beacon transmitter, which automatically sends a distress signal in a crash, meaning it was was not working, the connection to the antenna failed or the plane sunk in the lake, degrading the signal.

Lt. Col. Stan Kegel of the Minnesota Wing of Civil Air Patrol, the U.S. Air Force’s civilian auxiliary, rotated in and out of the role of incident commander during the 13-day search.

He said the Civil Air Patrol initially began its search with the available radar data, which was incomplete. It sent them into Wisconsin east of the Twin Cities. But after a day or so, improved radar data and data from Bratlie’s cellphone pointed them to the North Shore, specifically the area between Two Harbors and Silver Bay.

Ultimately, the Civil Air Patrol logged more than 600 personnel days and 600 air hours searching Lake and Cook counties and parts of St. Louis County by air.

“It’s a very heavily forested area, rugged terrain for sure. Obviously, Lake Superior was in consideration,” Kegel said. “It’s a difficult search when you’re looking down at basically solid forest. You’re looking for something that looks out of place. You’re looking for something that doesn’t look natural, something that looks disturbed.”

If they saw something noteworthy, they’d send a ground crew to check it out. Many other agencies also participated in the search.

Six weeks after her husband disappeared, Diana Bratlie wrote to the Duluth News Tribune, urging people recreating in the area to keep an eye open for signs of her husband. She made a similar plea in a May 2013 letter in the Lake County News-Chronicle, urging readers to report anything unusual to police.

Phone numbers and an email address believed to belong to Diana were no longer in service and a Facebook message from the News Tribune was not returned last week.

“Our family continues to hope he is somewhere in the remote area around Two Harbors or Silver Bay. We miss him terribly,” she wrote in the News Tribune in 2012. “With that in mind, I would like to ask anyone who is hiking, ATVing, fishing or just enjoying the beautiful north woods to be aware that Mike is still missing and to please keep an eye out for any sign of him or the plane.”

“That’s what we’ve always kind of thought. Are we going to someday have a hunter that stumbles upon wreckage?” Johnson said. “That has yet to happen.”

It wouldn’t be unprecedented.

In November 1990, a deer hunter found the remains of a float plane and its four occupants that had crashed nine years earlier in a spruce swamp 10 miles north of Island Lake.

And in September 1994, two hunters found a helicopter that had crashed the March before in forest and swamp land near Wisconsin Rapids, in central Wisconsin.

But Lake Superior poses a whole different challenge.

On Sept. 24, 1969, an Air Force jet trainer crashed in Lake Superior near Duluth during training operations. The plane and its pilot were never found.

Even after scanning areas of the lake with sonar and sending an underwater remote control camera into its depths, there was no sign of Bratlie or his plane. Johnson said he believes that’s where the plane could be.

Johnson believes because Bratlie was an experienced pilot, he would have been able to gently put his plane down in the water in the event of losing one or both of his engines. It was a maintenance flight to test a new engine, after all. A soft landing like that would have kept the plane intact, leading to no debris field.

“I am thinking it is more possible that it did go down in Lake Superior because of the day and the weather and all the rest of that,” Johnson said. “But just nobody one saw it — you didn’t hear it, you didn’t see it.”

In the years since, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office has occasionally received tips. A woman spotted something shiny on a cliff, but it turned out to be ice. And a sheriff’s deputy was fishing near Encampment Island and saw three distinct lines of bubbles coming up from the depths of the lake. He marked the location so it could be investigated, but a search of the area was fruitless.

The Civil Air Patrol would return again, too. In October 2012, it moved a planned training to the North Shore so it could both train and search for Bratlie when trees were bare, but it didn’t turn up anything.

“We pour a lot of ourselves into this and, obviously, it's our great hope that we find someone alive and rescue them, or in the absence of that, we hope to at least provide some closure and help resolve the situation,” Kegel said. “And so it's deeply disappointing when that's not the way it turns out.”

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Lake Minnetonka in the North Woods? Ely cabin owners push back against resort plan

Dan Kraker / MPR News — Sat, 10 Aug 2024 12:44:00 GMT

A $45 million proposal to remake a historic fishing lodge near Ely into a modern resort just two miles from the edge of the Boundary Waters is generating pushback from residents who fear it would transform the area’s quiet, wilderness-oriented culture into something more akin to the boat-filled party atmosphere of Lake Minnetonka in the Twin Cities suburbs.

A pair of developers — one from Duluth, one from Brainerd — with financial backing from an Indiana-based firm, is proposing to transform the Silver Rapids Lodge, built in 1919 on a rocky split of land between White Iron and Farm Lakes, into a resort featuring a new lodge, restaurant and bar, indoor pool, hot tub and tiki bar.

Most controversially, the plan calls for 49 new “fractional share” cabins that would each be purchased by four different owners. Each owner would have the opportunity to stay at the cabin for a quarter of the year, and could rent it out when they’re not there.

The proposal also envisions up to 90 boat slips, including one for each of the new cabins.

At a county zoning commission public hearing about the project last month, residents detailed a laundry list of concerns. They ranged from invasive species, to increased boat traffic and vehicle traffic along the Kawishiwi Trail connecting the resort to Ely, to noise and light pollution, to the resort’s water supply.

Commissioners scheduled an Aug. 8 follow-up meeting to gather more information from developers. They also are expected to take up a petition signed by more than 300 people calling for a more detailed environmental review of the proposal.

“Let’s slow down, look at other examples and work to get Silver Rapids a sustainable improvement plan that is scaled to fit, not force a tacky, cheesy mini Disney” onto a “very special once in the world location,” wrote Mary Garbutt, who owns a cabin on White Iron Lake.

Developers are asking Lake County for two zoning changes, one to expand the resort, the second to subdivide undeveloped land on the property into small lots for the fractional share cabins.

“Change is scary, and I respect that” said Sandy Hoff, President of F.I. Salter Real Estate in Duluth and one of the project developers, who said he hopes to break ground on the project this fall.

“And I respect the fact that they have this wilderness environment, and they don’t want a Lake Minnetonka type environment to evolve up there,” Hoff said. “I am very confident that’s not what’s going to happen."

Bring the shine back

First built more than a century ago along the rocky narrows that connect Farm and White Iron Lakes about a 10 minute drive east of Ely, the Silver Rapids Lodge is showing its age.

“I mean look at this, the way these buildings are,” said Rod Gruba as he steered his pickup through the property recently. “These shingles are shot. I mean, this whole facility has just been let go.”

The 70-year-old general contractor and retired Fall Lake Township board member lives nearby on White Iron Lake. His family owned and ran the resort from 1975 until 1992.

“I got a passion for it that basically it was in my family for 18 years, and I’d like to see it come back to a facility that’s liked by the area, is what I want,” Gruba said.

Hoff said he and his partner “saw the opportunity to bring it back to life” when they purchased the resort two years ago. “To bring the shine back to the diamond that is Silver Rapids Lodge,” as they wrote to the county in their application.

Hoff said as they began talking to neighbors, they heard old stories of people eating prime rib at the restaurant. People told him they’d love to be able to drive a boat there, dock it, and have a drink or a meal.

The challenge, he said, is the present resort is at the end of its functional life. Additional plans include replacing a small motel, modernizing existing cabins and removing a campground and RV sites along the lakeshore.

The fractional cabins would be built in three phases over several years. Hoff said they would be small, under 1,000 square feet. Not, he stressed, large lake homes. He said that model, similar to a timeshare, gives people an opportunity to buy property in Ely who may not be able to afford a larger cabin or lake home.

“Because first, the fractional share reduces their cost, and then the opportunity to generate income off of that unit,” through the resort’s rental pool, which, Hoff said “helps them underwrite that cost,”

Unwanted change

Many nearby residents welcome an updated resort with a new restaurant. But the scale of the current proposal has sparked an outcry from many locals who fear that newcomers will fundamentally alter the serene North Woods environment they treasure.

“I don’t think people understand the gravity of how many boat slips they’re looking at, and the potential of the number of additional watercraft that will be on here,” said Bill Wagner, who bought a cabin on White Iron Lake three years ago.

The software engineer from Chaska worries puttering pontoons like the one he steered toward the resort recently will be replaced by jet skis and ski boats.

“What you’re going to see over here, you’re going to see that hillside populated with housing that's going to be looking down right here. And you can see right up there is where the tiki bar is going to be. And you can just imagine ... that sound, it gets projected out this way.”

On the other side of the resort, Charlie and Marilyn Marsden own a cabin on Farm Lake, along a narrow, mile-long channel.

The Marsdens worry their grandkids won’t be able to paddle canoes along the narrow stretch of water, because of increased motor boat traffic.

“It’s going to change,” said Charlie Marsden. “We understand that things change over time. One of the things that’s awkward is when you’ve got something that’s really wonderful, you like to share it. We share it with friends. We share it with grandchildren. If you share it with too many people, you end up losing the thing you’re trying to share.”

“Especially with the whole culture of what they’re trying to build at Silver Rapids,” said Marilyn Marsden. “A tiki bar, a pool, a hot tub, is not consistent with the culture that exists here now.”

Hoff believes those fears are unfounded. He said the current clientele of the resort, and people who have inquired about the new development from the Twin Cities, Des Moines and Chicago, are looking for that Boundary Waters-type experience.

“They can go anywhere and find a lake that they can run their big speed boat. That’s anywhere. This is a unique experience that is more nature-minded and wilderness,” Hoff said.

Locals are skeptical. They say if that was the case 90 boat slips wouldn’t be needed — only a stack of canoes.

Maggie Jesme is a 33 year old nurse who grew up in Ely and moved back a couple years ago. She said she welcomes an updated Silver Rapids, especially a new restaurant. But she said the kind of housing being proposed — aside for five workforce cabins planned for the project’s final phase — is not what Ely needs.

“What we don’t have a shortage of is housing for tourists and for people who can afford to come and stay in our town for the weekend,” said Jesme. What Ely needs is affordable housing for people who live there year-round, she said.

Jesme stresses that she doesn’t have a NIMBY attitude — a “Not in my Backyard” approach to the development. She wants what’s best for her hometown.

But others argue as Ely has embraced a tourism-dependent economy it should support projects such as this.

“One way or the other the decision has been made that we’re going to develop an economy based on tourism,” said Kevin Lawler, who owns a cabin on Farm Lake about a half mile from the resort.

“And if we’re going to do that, I think we’ve got to stop saying ‘no’ to every development project that supports tourism, if we want to be in a town that has grocery stores, hardware stores, restaurants and things like that.”

Environmental review

County staff noted at the July meeting the proposal appears to require an Environmental Assessment Worksheet, because of the number of housing units proposed along the lakeshore.

“We’re not really trying to to change a lot of people’s minds and get people fired up,” said Hudson Kingston, legal director for the environmental group CURE, who submitted a petition with more than 300 signatures requesting the review.

“They’re already fired up. We’re serving the community to get the proper review that they would want, and which we think is called for under Minnesota law.”

Kingston also has a personal stake in the issue. He lives near the resort in a cabin his grandparents built. He said the county could decide to put protective conditions on the permit.

“But I think our position is that they have to know what the dangers are before they can fashion the right conditions.”

Hoff contends the review isn’t necessary. He said they’ve already replaced the resort’s septic system, which was out of compliance. They also have plans to remove leaking underground tanks, install a stormwater system and landscape a steep gravel pit that covers a large part of the site.

“From an environmental standpoint, we are going to be transitioning this to something that people are going to be really proud of,” Hoff said. “And so while I respect the concerns of people, take a deep breath and I think if you support us, you’re going to be really pleased to see how we're going to clean up the neighborhood.”

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DNA test confirms big Lake Superior fish was splake, not record brookie

John Myers — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 13:48:09 GMT

DULUTH — Upon further review, a fish that fooled experienced anglers and biologists alike into thinking it may be a new Minnesota state record brook trout was indeed a splake, a human-invented hybrid between a lake trout and brook trout, according to DNA test results.

Mike Ince of Aitkin caught the 6.93-pound fish on June 7 on Lake Superior along the North Shore near Duluth, and anglers on board believed the coloration and fight of the fish made it seem like a natural brookie. The fish also had a very square or straight-back tail fin, hinting toward brook trout.

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources fisheries staff who inspected the fish said they weren't sure.

“It definitely had the square tail of a brookie, but it also had the real silver color of a laker. … To be honest, I’m just not sure,” Cory Goldsworthy, DNR Lake Superior fisheries biologist, said at the time.

To make matters more confusing, the fin clip pattern seemed to suggest it was a brook trout released in Wisconsin.

To settle the matter, Goldsworthy sent a sample of the fish to the University of Minnesota, where a DNA test ended the mystery. The fish was a splake. That means the state record for a kept brook trout will stand at 6 pounds, 5 ounces. The state record splake is 13 pounds, 5 ounces.

New state fish records being set

While the brook trout record was not broken, anglers have been busy setting new records in Minnesota, thanks to an expanded list of fish species eligible for new catch-and-release records and the DNR essentially throwing out some old kept-fish records the agency classified as sketchy.

The Minnesota DNR in March expanded the catch-and-release record category to add additional species and also made more space for records in the certified weight category by creating a separate category for records established before a certified scale was required to document a fish’s weight.

The DNR has confirmed a fish the News Tribune wrote about last month as the new state record coho salmon. The 12-pound, 5-ounce fish was caught June 1 in Lake Superior by Austin Stoltenburg of Iron. Stoltenberg was fishing with his dad and a family friend on a foggy morning out of the McQuade Road Small Craft Harbor. It was the first fish of the day and the first coho Stoltenberg ever caught.

The coho bested two late-season records set in 2023 for giant coho on Lake Superior, also caught near Duluth. Biologists and anglers say a bumper crop of smelt and cisco in Lake Superior, some of the largest populations ever of the smaller fish, are enabling trout and salmon to get bigger faster in the usually cold, infertile lake.

Other new kept-fish state records set already this season, since a verified, certified scale was required, include:

Black crappie — 3 pounds, 9 ounces; May 9, Cedar Lake, Rice County; caught by Nolan Sprengeler of Plymouth. Mooneye — 2 pounds, 1 ounce; May 11, Wabasha Creek, Redwood County; caught by Robert Tufts II of Franklin. Yellow bass — 1 pound, 3 ounces; May 11, Clear Lake, Jackson County; caught by Dennis Dagel of Lakefield.

State records approved for new catch-and-release record fish categories include:

Brown trout — 30 inches; April 15, Lake Superior, St. Louis County; caught by Dan Zeleznikar of Duluth. Lake trout — 42 1/2 inches; April 21, Lake Superior, St. Louis County; caught by Kelsey Vanderheyden of Stanchfield. Shovelnose sturgeon — 34 1/4 inches; March 8, Mississippi River, Goodhue County; caught by Tyler Young of Lakeville. Shovelnose sturgeon — 35 inches; March 12, Minnesota River, Scott County; caught by Elliott Feldman of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. Smallmouth bass — 22 3/4 inches; June 25, Basswood Lake, Lake County; caught by Xavier Bradley-Rael of Omaha, Nebraska.

DNR officials say they have seen a burst of interest in anglers submitting entries for new state record categories.

“Seeing all these new records is fantastic, and we’re really pleased with how anglers have participated in the program so far,” said Mandy Erickson, fisheries program consultant. “We expect to keep posting more records as more anglers hear about how to certify a record and as more time passes.”

Complete record information and instructions for how to certify a state record fish, are available on the Minnesota DNR state record fish webpage at mndnr.gov/recordfish.

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Some Lake Superior anglers still mistake coho salmon, steelhead trout

John Myers — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 12:00:00 GMT

DULUTH — The fish experts at Minnesota Sea Grant are offering anglers an easier, quicker way to tell the difference between steelhead rainbow trout and coho salmon, two lookalike fish caught in Lake Superior and its tributary streams.

Sea Grant has a free decal that explains the visual differences between the fish that often can be caught at the same times in the same places on the same lures across much of the big lake.

It's important for anglers to know the difference. While Lake Superior anglers can legally keep up to five salmon per day in Minnesota and Wisconsin waters, they may be able to keep just one wild steelhead or none at all.

The University of Minnesota Duluth-based Sea Grant officials developed the decal with input from members of the Minnesota Steelheader and Minnesota Trout Unlimited organizations and staff from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. The fish images are by Joseph Tomelleri, a nationally acclaimed fish illustrator.

The decals started going out along the North Shore in 2022 for anglers to stick to their boat windows or tackle boxes. Now, they are available online for a quick reminder. You can download a digital copy of the decal for easy reference on your phone, or order a hard copy decal, at seagrant.umn.edu/programs/fisheries-and-aquaculture-program/steelhead-v-salmon.

In Wisconsin waters of Lake Superior, only one steelhead is allowed per day for anglers to keep and it has to be at least 26 inches long to keep. In Minnesota waters of the big lake, anglers must release all wild steelhead caught. Only hatchery-raised and stocked steelhead, with a clipped adipose fin on the rear top of their back, may be kept in Minnesota.

And because Lake Superior coho historically didn’t get really big, and because they taste great, many misidentified steelhead smaller than 26 inches are kept. Biologists note that it really doesn’t do much good to have protective rules on steelhead if anglers keep them thinking they are coho.

Misidentification of trout and salmon has always been an issue at some level on the big lake and its tributary rivers. But it may be more of an issue as an increasing number of novice Lake Superior anglers venture out onto the big lake who have less experience catching Great Lakes trout and salmon.

Wild steelhead are holding their own at the western tip of Lake Superior. While down from their peak population of 50 years ago they are reproducing well in some North Shore streams and in Wisconsin’s Bois Brule River.

Minnesota’s catch-and-release wild steelhead regulation has been in place since 1997 to protect wild steelhead and allow them to spawn in an attempt to increase their abundance after their numbers crashed. The regulation has been successful in stopping the decline of steelhead along the North Shore.

“The availability of a digital version on the Minnesota Sea Grant website should help ensure the continued successful rehabilitation of wild steelhead in Minnesota’s portion of Lake Superior,” said Davin Brandt, president of Minnesota Steelheader.

While the misidentification problem probably isn’t enough to push steelhead numbers back down, it still happens often enough to warrant increased education for anglers, said Don Schreiner, Minnesota Sea Grant fisheries expert and a former Minnesota DNR fisheries biologist. Creel surveys conducted by DNR fisheries staff and checks by Minnesota DNR conservation officers both show that more than a few anglers are still making the mistake.

“Even though the catch-and-release steelhead regulation has been in place for over 25 years, many anglers still misidentify and inadvertently harvest steelhead,” Schreiner said. “We wanted to develop a tool that is readily available while on the water to protect wild steelhead from unintended and/or illegal harvest.”

Tips of the fin, tail (and mouth)

Schreiner says the most sure-fire method to tell steelhead from salmon apart is by pinching their bottom rear, or anal, fin. When compressed, the more pronounced steelhead fin will touch the body beyond the fin base. The shorter, less pronounced coho tail will compress to touch the fish body in the middle of the fin base.

Veteran Lake Superior anglers can usually identify a steelhead by its general appearance. Steelhead caught on the big lake are usually hefty, bigger than three pounds, and almost always jump during the fight.

Coho tend to be 3 pounds or smaller and don’t jump as much. But, thanks to a record crop of cisco and smelt for salmon and trout to eat, coho have been growing larger the last two summers, well over 3 pounds in many cases, including new Minnesota state record cohos set in September 2023 and, tentatively, again in May this year.

Those larger coho may be confusing the issue even more, Schreiner said.

“I don't think anglers can be reminded of this too many times. It may be especially important this year with the large number of coho being caught that are well over three pounds,” Schreiner said.

Another tip: Unlike salmon, steelhead don’t easily lose their scales when they are flopping on the floor of the boat or being handled. Coho shed scales most of the time.

You can also check the tail. Steelhead have a mostly straight, flat or square-back edge to the tail. Coho have a more pronounced fork or V-shape to the back of the tail.

Another way to quickly identify a steelhead is to check the color of the inside of its mouth. The inside of a steelhead’s mouth is white. The inside of any coho or Chinook (king) salmon’s mouth is dark gray or black.

“The mouth and tail fin criteria are good if you have both fish in hand and can compare them side by side since they are both somewhat subjective. ... How much of a fork is a fork?” Schreiner said. But what if you have just caught one? The anal fin is always telling, he said. “When compressed against the body, does the tip extend to or beyond the base, steelhead, or does it fall within the base, salmon?”

Lake Superior fishing regulations Minnesota waters Wild, unclipped steelhead rainbow trout — Catch and release only. Stocked, clipped-fin rainbow trout, steelhead or Kamloops — Daily and possession limit of three, minimum size 16 inches. Brook trout and splake — Daily and possession limit of one with a minimum size of 20 inches. Brown trout — Daily and possession limit of five with only one over 16 inches. Lake trout — Daily and possession limit of three. Salmon — Daily and possession limit of five, all types. Walleye — Daily and possession limit of two, minimum length of 15 inches.

You must have a Minnesota fishing license and trout stamp to fish in the Minnesota water of Lake Superior. For complete regulations, go to dnr.state.mn.us and search fishing regulations.

Wisconsin waters Trout (steelhead rainbow trout, brown, brook or splake) — Daily and possession limit of five, which only one can be a rainbow and only one can be a brook trout. Minimum size for rainbow is 26 inches and for brown trout and splake is 15 inches. Lake trout — Daily and possession limit of three, 15-inch minimum and only one may be longer than 25 inches. Salmon (all types) — Daily and possession limit of five. Walleye — Daily and possession limit of five, minimum size 15 inches and only one may be over 20 inches.

You must have a Wisconsin fishing license and trout stamp to fish in the Wisconsin waters of Lake Superior. For complete regulations, go to dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/fishing/regulations.

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Lake Superior produces another Minnesota record coho salmon

John Myers — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 13:43:10 GMT

DULUTH — Lake Superior's western waters have been hot for fishing the last couple seasons thanks to record smelt and cisco populations, the little fish that bigger fish love to eat, leading to some very fat big fish being caught.

Austin Stoltenberg, 12, of Cherry, caught a 12.36-pound coho salmon June 1 off Duluth that appears to be a new state record, smashing the 10.92-pound previous record coho set on Labor Day 2023 by David Cichosz, of Wabasha, Minnesota.

“And I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s broken again later this summer," said Cory Goldsworthy, Lake Superior fisheries supervisor for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. "I would expect that it will be, maybe a couple more times."

Stoltenberg’s big salmon was weighed on a certified scale at a Super One grocery store in Duluth’s Lakeside neighborhood at 12.36 pounds. It was weighed again, at this point frozen, in Tower at 12.31 pounds. DNR fisheries staff in the Tower office confirmed it was a coho. The paperwork was submitted to the state's record fish program at the DNR office in St. Paul.

“It jumped maybe once and then came right toward the boat, so I didn’t think it was that big at first,” said Austin. “It’s the first coho I’ve ever caught.”

Austin was fishing with his dad, Ryan Stoltenberg, and his dad’s friend on that foggy Saturday morning. They launched at the McQuade Small Craft Harbor boat landing and started trolling toward Duluth. Very slowly.

It was the Stoltenbergs' first Lake Superior trip of the season and their first fish of the day.

“I had just put out the first line and was starting to work on the second line when a fish hit the first one,” Ryan Stoltenberg said. “We really just started fishing. … I thought maybe at first it was a king (Chinook salmon), but as soon as they flipped it out of the net and onto the boat, I knew it was a coho.”

Coho salmon tend to shed scales rapidly once caught, and this fish was spreading them across the floor of Stoltenberg’s deck boat.

The morning was so foggy that fishing boats were randomly honking their horns to let others know they were nearby.

“We couldn’t even see shore just a little bit out,” Austin noted.

The giant coho hit on a blue spoon trolled behind a blue flasher, and the fish hit while the lure was still on the surface.

“I noticed a bunch of minnows breaking the surface, so I said, let’s start fishing right here. And it hit that quick,” Ryan Stoltenberg said. “Go figure … first trip, first fish, new state record.”

The Stoltenbergs plan to have the big fish mounted by a taxidermist.

Massive amount of forage fish

Before last year, the previous coho record had been held for 53 years with little variation in size. An average coho on the big lake weighed 2-4 pounds in recent decades as the fish struggled to find food in frigid Lake Superior.

But massive numbers of native cisco (often called lake herring) and invasive rainbow smelt hatched in 2022 have created an unprecedented amount of food for Lake Superior trout and salmon to gorge on, biologists say. That’s allowed the big ocean-native salmon to get bigger faster than any time since they were first introduced in the 1960s, while native lake trout also haven't seen this much food in decades.

“We may well see the Chinook (salmon) record broken later this summer,” fish that would have to top 33 pounds, 4 ounces, Goldsworthy said. “And we should see the lean lake trout responding to all this forage as well over a few years. It just takes the lake trout longer (to grow) because their metabolism is so much slower than a salmon.”

Netting surveys by the U.S. Geological Survey found the 2022 year classes of cisco and smelt were the largest since the surveys began some 50 years ago.

Anglers are reporting huge masses of smelt and cisco showing up on their fish-finding sonars, clouds of little fish never before seen in western Lake Superior. Yet, despite all that food swimming around, the waters off Duluth and Superior have seen some of the best sport fishing ever.

“That continues to surprise me. With that much food out there, I predicted we’d see a couple years of slower fishing,” Goldsworthy said. “But just the opposite is happening. The fishing has been great.”

The 2022 year class of cisco will soon be getting almost too big for most trout and salmon to eat but will be fine for netting by North Shore commercial anglers for years to come. Meanwhile, the 2022 class of smelt is not only more plentiful but also growing larger, producing a banner season for smelt netters in May, when the fish made their spawning runs. Anglers now report cleaning fish with stomachs packed full of smelt.

“We usually see smelt 4 or 5 inches (long), maybe six,” Goldsworthy said. "But we saw quite a few up to seven, even eight inches this spring. There were some really good smelt pulls this year off Park Point. And there were people taking coolers full of smelt during the day out of the Knife (River). I’ve never heard of that before. It usually is only a night thing.”

New state record brook trout or nice splake? DNA will tell

Meanwhile, yet another state record may be forthcoming from Lake Superior. Mike Ince, of Aitkin, caught a 6.93-pound brook trout off the North Shore near Duluth on Friday, June 7. He was fishing with local anglers Matt King and Steve Blanck on Blanck’s boat, “Blanck Check,” when Ince reeled in the big trout.

“I was pretty sure it was a brookie by the square tail,” King, an avid Lake Superior angler and owner of Fisherman's Corner bait and sporting goods store in Pike Lake, told the News Tribune.

“It didn't fight like a lake trout at all,” said Ince, who keeps his own fishing boat at a Duluth marina.

The three guys were pre-fishing for the Captain's Platter Fishing Tournament held last weekend.

Brook trout are rarely caught at the western tip of Lake Superior. The colorful trout are native to streams along the upper North Shore and around Isle Royale but also have been stocked by natural resource agencies in the Apostle Islands area. Considering the fin clip pattern, Ince said the fish may have been part of the Red Cliff Band's brook trout stocking effort in 2014 or 2015.

But because the clipped-fin identification system used for stocked brook trout and splake are similar, and because the splake is a hybrid cross between brook and lake trout, fisheries experts just aren’t sure what Ince caught: brookie or splake. The three species can interbreed, and splakes can take on both the color and body shape of both parent species.

“It definitely had the square tail of a brookie, but it also had the real silver color of a laker. … To be honest, I’m just not sure,” Goldsworthy said.

DNR biologists at first thought that the fin clip pattern on Ince’s fish was unique to brookies, but then found out that Michigan may have released splakes with the same clip pattern.

To end the suspense, Goldsworthy took a scale from Ince’s trout and sent it to a University of Minnesota laboratory for DNA testing. Results should be available in a week or two.

Ince caught the fish on a Challenger-brand stick bait in a color pattern called “Kevorkian” that has purple, blue and pink hues.

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Around Isle Royale in 20 years: A photographer's journey by kayak

John Myers — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 11:00:00 GMT

DULUTH — Tom Haas remembers his first summer on Isle Royale. He was 19 and scored an internship with the National Park Service to take photographs that might be used to document and promote the little-known park.

It was 1967, and his park ranger boss wanted photos of the island’s iconic wolves and moose. Haas was given a bulky, old-school, single-frame camera that had to be loaded with new film for each photo. Black-and-white film was far cheaper at the time, so that’s what Haas had to work with.

With the tripod required to keep the giant camera still enough to take in-focus photos, the contraption weighed 20 pounds. Moreover, the 135-millimeter fixed lens made everything in the distance seem small.

It didn’t take Haas long to figure out that it wasn't working to capture candid shots of wildlife from afar. But the big, bulky camera, with its black and white film and decades-old technology, was perfect for capturing other magic on the island — portraits of its fascinating summer residents, still-lifes of boats, lighthouses and kitchen stoves, and dramatic landscape shots of shoreline, waves and rocks, plants and forests.

Haas didn't know it, but that summer job in high school, and that old camera, would lead him on a yearslong adventure on and around Lake Superior’s largest island. He would go on to buy a large-format camera for $40 and spend the next 20 years kayaking around and photographing the island and its people, one frame at a time.

Haas took nearly 4,000 images on Isle Royale, most of them gathering dust for more than 30 years until he and his wife, Jeannie Thoren, decided some of those pictures needed to see the light of day again. The result of their effort is an unmatched, historical collection that captures both the island's natural and cultural history.

From those 4,000 negatives, Tom and Jeannie made hundreds of prints, spreading them across the upstairs in their eastern Duluth home. Over an entire winter, they decided on 275 of their favorites for Tom’s new 240-page coffee-table-sized photo book, “Isle Royale, A Photographer’s Circumnavigation, 1967-1987,” available this month in bookstores and online.

Book captures island’s people, places, personality

If Ken Burns ever produces a documentary on Isle Royale, this is where he will get his historic photos. Because they are in black and white, and taken with a camera format designed a century ago, the photos have an other-worldly aura.

While taken 40-50 years ago, some of these photos seem to hark back to the 1800s, in part because of the old nature of the wooden boats and humble buildings on the island.

“Prior to working at Isle Royale, I had only shot with 35mm film, some for high school yearbook production, and some wildlife,” Haas explains on his website. “Once I discovered the clarity and detail a larger-format film can produce, I was hooked.”

Haas said the big camera’s limitations made him learn patience as a virtue in photography.

“You wait for the sun to get where you need it to be in the sky. Wait for the wind to go down,” he noted.

But it’s not just the mechanics of old film and old cameras that make the photos special. Haas developed an eye for subjects that make his photos pop with personality, from old kitchen wood stoves and wooden boats to water-worn rocks and the weathered faces of island fishermen.

Through the many years, Haas was on the island, only about 75 seasonal residents and maybe another 75 Park Service staff were spread across the 45-mile-long archipelago. Everyone knew everyone, and Haas fit right in.

“I lived with some of these people, and I’d come back every year to visit them. And some of them were alone by then and needed help just maintaining their camps,” Haas told the News Tribune in an interview in his living room.

He developed a special bond with several families and bachelor fishermen, widowers and widows who had no one else at their remote locations scattered across the island's sheltered coves and bays. He helped them mend and set their nets for herring, Lake Superior’s small but tasty native fish that sold for about 50 cents per pound at the time.

“The islanders were extraordinarily welcoming, hospitable families, and the commercial fishermen and women knowingly risked their lives in simple boats every day they spent on the water,” Haas writes on his website. “Over time I also found myself serving as both an errand boy for and companion to these folks, performing plenty of odd jobs along the way.”

While Haas started his Isle Royale adventures in a Park Service-issued canoe, he eventually purchased his own folding, German-made, two-seat kayak called a Klepper. It served as his transportation but also had room for his heavy camera gear in the second seat. He found the craft was perfectly suited for the rough seas that could envelop the island. It was mobility and safety on a shoestring budget, Haas recalled.

Haas paddled up and down Isle Royale’s shore and wandered about the island’s interior, from Gull Rocks to Rock of Ages and everywhere in between.

“I paddled the entire length of the island in one day, just to see if I could do it,” Haas said.

But most of his travels were at a much slower pace, aimed at scouting photo subjects and memorizing the face of the island’s shoreline.

He became a mostly self-taught artist of photography, carefully setting up his contraption wherever his eye told him would best capture the moment and the place.

He later toyed with the idea of becoming a professional photographer, making a career out of it, but his early efforts to sell prints didn’t amount to much.

“I consider it a hobby,” said Haas, now 75. “Then it was fun, not work.”

East Coaster falls in love with Lake Superior

Haas was born in Norwalk, Connecticut, in 1948 and went on to attend college at the University of Connecticut. He intended to study science but used much of his time teaching himself photo-developing techniques in the biology department’s little-used dark room, where he developed his skills in turning negatives into prints.

Worried about being drafted into the Vietnam War, Haas said he hung around Isle Royale and the North Shore even after his internship, and kept returning, in part “because it’s closer to Canada,” where he planned to escape, if drafted, as a conscientious objector to war.

“I went to the island to wait out the draft … but after that, I didn’t want to leave,” Haas said.

But even when the draft threat ended, Haas knew he wanted to stay on Lake Superior. Most years in the 1970s and '80s he was on the island from May into October, about the same time the island was visited by longtime summer resident families and with Park Service staff. The island essentially shut down, closed to people, in winter and early spring.

When Haas wasn’t on the island he spent time in Lutsen, working at Minnesota’s first big ski resort and learning how to cross-country and downhill ski. He then drifted down to Duluth where he’s lived ever since, landing a job managing Continental Ski Shop and eventually becoming a national representative for Fischer skis.

When he wasn't taking photos, Haas could usually be found kayaking in summer and skiing in winter. He got so good he even won the 1977 American Birkebeiner ski race in Hayward.

Haas and Thoren — a Marquette, Michigan, native enshrined in the U.S. Ski And Snowboard Hall of Fame for her pioneering work designing women's ski gear — met formally at a ski industry convention in Las Vegas in the 1970s. They immediately struck a relationship over skiing and, even more so, Lake Superior and Isle Royale.

“Tom fell in love with Lake Superior, the North Shore, Lutsen, with skiing … with the island. ... We both knew this area was home," Thoren said. “There we were in Las Vegas talking about Lake Superior.”

Tony Dierckens, Duluth author and the owner of Zenith City Press, said he met Jeannie and Tom when they needed help bringing their photos together for the book. Dierckens has a side business, X-Presso Books, aimed at helping people self-publish their pet projects.

After seeing the treasure trove of Haas' images, Dierckens knew it was a personal project that needed to go public.

“After I met them I just thought these photos needed to be out there, nobody else has anything like this. ... Nobody else could,” Dierckens said. “I really think this is an important project. These are absolutely beautiful photos.”

Haas considers himself fortunate to have been in the right place in the right era. Many of the people, fishing camps and boats once familiar on the island are gone now. He eventually sold his $500, 50-year-old kayak for $1,400 in 2022, and he hasn’t been back to the island in a decade.

But Haas is lucky. He not only has great memories of his time on Isle Royale, but has a book with 275 of his best photos to help him, and the rest of us, remember.

“It was a great experience, not just as a 19-year-old kid,” Haas said. “But to be able to keep going back, year after year, and keep taking photos. ... I was fortunate.”

Buy the book “Isle Royale, A Photographers Circumnavigation, 1967-1987” By Tom Haas 240 pages, 275 black and white photos Published by X-Presso Books, Duluth. Available at bookstores around the Lake Superior region and at tomhaasphotography.com for $80. Meet the photographer

Tom Haas will sign his books at Zenith Bookstore, 318 N. Central Ave., Duluth, from 1-3 p.m. June 15.

Note: This story was updated at 11:25 a.m. Friday, June 7, 2024, to correct the year Tom Haas won the American Birkebeiner and the website where his book can be published. It was originally published at 6 a.m. Friday, June 7. The News Tribune regrets the errors.

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21,000 gallons of process water spill at Northshore Mining

Jimmy Lovrien — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 13:30:36 GMT

SILVER BAY, Minn. — A pipe at Cleveland-Cliffs' Northshore Mining's taconite plant ruptured Wednesday, releasing approximately 21,000 gallons of process water until it was shut down 11 minutes later.

According to a spill incident report submitted to the state by a Northshore employee, the spill occurred between 2:41 p.m. and 2:52 p.m. Wednesday and emerged from an 8- to 10-foot gash in a metal pipe. The employee said the water reached Lake Superior. The initial report said 144,000 gallons spilled, which Cliffs officials corrected late on Thursday.

"The water is recycled water with some fluoride and miscellaneous substances but nothing of particular concern or note," the incident report said. Additional details were not provided.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, which sent a copy of the incident report, said it is aware of the spill.

"The MPCA is currently evaluating the situation to determine impacts," spokesperson Michael Rafferty said. "This is an ongoing investigation."

Cliffs spokesperson Patricia Persico told the News Tribune that a "process water pipeline undergoing routine maintenance developed a leak upon being returned to service and (the) pipeline was immediately shut down.

"We are working with MPCA to determine if any impacts to the environment occurred," she said. "There was no impact on Northshore plant operations."

In October 2000, a pipeline carrying taconite tailings — fine pieces of waste rock left over after the iron is extracted from the ore — ruptured, sending 14,000 tons of tailings into the Beaver River as the breach went undetected for 19 hours.

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North Shore streams, and their steelhead trout, are running

John Myers — Wed, 10 Apr 2024 15:16:41 GMT

KNIFE RIVER — Two feet of snow melting fast, coupled with a half-inch of rain Monday, were just the ticket to finally loosen the last ice on North Shore streams, sending water tumbling down into Lake Superior and sending fish upstream.

Streams closer to Duluth opened the first week in April, while streams farther up the shore opened this week, said Cory Goldsworthy, Lake Superior fisheries manager for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

DNR crews captured their first spawning steelhead rainbow trout of the season in a North Shore river fish trap Monday. Many more will follow soon.

“They're in the river. It’s started,” Goldsworthy said.

The rush of water — the first this spring — was also enough to blow gravel bars out of the mouths of several North Shore rivers, like the Lester, where the rocks had been blocking fish passage upstream.

While the first few days of open water usually see rivers run fast and dirty, that period is passing quickly this spring because the streams and their headwaters were so low before the late-March snowstorm and because the ground was so dry and able to soak up much of the moisture.

The Knife River skyrocketed from frozen just over a week ago to 1,600 cubic feet per second during Monday’s rain but then dropped back quickly to a fishable 800 CFS by Tuesday afternoon.

“Conditions are just about perfect right now. The water is high, but it’s normal-high for spring runoff,” Goldsworthy said. “We haven't had normal for a few years.”

As air temperatures reach the 50s and water temperatures into the 40s, and with ample flow but no flooding, steelhead will begin moving out of Lake Superior and upstream to spawn, starting on streams closest to Duluth at first, then, later, farther up the North Shore.

“It still needs to warm up a little more," Goldsworthy said Tuesday. "The magic water temperature is 40 degrees for it to really get going. We were at 36.5 degrees today. But the forecast looks good. ... When I was growing up we always said, if the temperature outside is in the 50s and we get a little rain, grab your fishing pole and go.”

A little rain every few days helps keep the rivers at the right level.

The next two weeks in April could be the peak of the steelhead run, Goldsworthy said. That’s very different from last year, when deep snow on the ground lasted into May in some areas and the spawning run was a month later than usual.

On Tuesday, after the rain ended, eager anglers were already showing up on the Stewart and Knife rivers.

“It’s early, I know, and it’s still pretty high,” said Todd Boche, of Bloomington, Minnesota, who was trying his hand for steelhead on the Knife River on Tuesday morning. “But my wife and I needed to get out of the Cities for a few days. … And there's a chance one or two fish will be moving up. So why not try?”

You can keep these, eventually

DNR crews this week are stocking 140,000 clipped-fin, hatchery-raised steelhead trout in the Lester and French rivers that came from the eggs of wild Lake Superior steelhead caught in DNR fish traps in recent years.

Those 2-year-old stocked trout were about 6 inches long and will be legal to keep when they get bigger, probably in two more years. Those fish must be 16 inches to keep, and some of the fish from the stocking program, which began in 2018, should be returning to rivers to spawn now and should be big enough to keep this spring.

It is illegal to keep any wild, unclipped steelhead in Minnesota.

Smelt? Not yet, but soon

The very first reports of smelt beginning to show up along the Shore Shore of Lake Superior were filtering in early this week, but both the big lake and tributary stream temperatures are still too cold for a major run near the Twin Ports.

“When we hear that they are hitting over in Ashland, and we haven’t seen much of that yet, then it’s usually about a week or two until they start showing up over here," near the Twin Ports, Goldsworthy said.

North Shore streams are popular destinations for smelters with dip nets while the waters off Wisconsin Point and Minnesota Pont sand beaches can be a good place for large hauls using seines.

The smelt show up in earnest when the water temperature hits 40 degrees. “And we aren’t there yet,” Goldsworthy said.

Lake ice-out still ahead of normal

The recent precipitation provided a needed spurt of energy not just for the streams and their fish but also to help finish opening up northern Minnesota lakes.

Most lakes in the southern two-thirds of Minnesota opened a month or more earlier than average and most of those set all-time records for early ice out, topping even 2012, which had held many records until now.

Island Lake Reservoir just north of Duluth lost its ice on March 17, a record-early date and five weeks ahead of the April 17 median date, according to data from the Minnesota DNR’s State Climatology Office.

Lake Osakis in western Minnesota, which has 157 years of records — among the longest in the state — dating back to 1867, set a record early ice-out date of March 8. That’s nearly six weeks ahead of the median date of April 19 and more than two months earlier than the latest ice-out of May 14 in 1950.

Big Sandy Lake north of McGregor set a record early ice-out on March 16, exactly one month earlier than the April 16 median date in the 94 years since records have been kept, starting in 1930.

As is usual, lakes in far Northeastern Minnesota are losing their ice later, where thicker ice, a bit more snow and colder temperatures hung on longer. Little Jessie Lake in Itasca County lost its ice on April 8, another record but only 16 days ahead of its median date.

Fewer records will likely be set in the Arrowhead region, unable to match the non-winter and warm spring of 2012. But even Arrowhead lakes are still expected to lose their ice a couple of weeks earlier than normal this year, especially with temperatures into the 60s in the forecast.

Large swathes of Lake Vermilion were open as of Wednesday but, with some ice still floating around, official ice-out hadn't been declared. The big lake won't set a record — that was March 28, 2012 — but will beat its median ice-out date of April 30. The latest Vermilion has lost its ice was May 23, 1960.

Greenwood Lake in Cook County is, on average, the last lake in Minnesota to lose its ice, with a median date of May 9. It has happened as late as May 24 (2014) and as early as April 10 (2012).

The latest ice-out on record in Minnesota is for Gunflint Lake, on the Ontario border, which didn't lose its ice until June 3 in 1936.

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