Leech Lake Band, Indigenous activists push back on planned wood plant in Cohasset

The Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe says a proposed $440 million Iron Range wood-products plant threatens treaty rights and natural areas, and should be studied more closely or scrapped altogether.

"We've been doing everything we can within the confines of the legal process to oppose this," the band's interim legal director, Chris Murray, said at a forum on the proposed mill last month. "This is not the right place for this project, and this is not the right project to put anywhere."

Huber Engineered Woods is planning a 750,000-square-foot oriented strand board mill in Cohasset, Minn., near the Boswell Energy Center. The mill would be built a mile east of the Leech Lake Reservation and source about 400,000 cords of wood annually, largely from a mix of public and private forests in the region.

Last year the state Legislature exempted the project from needing to complete an in-depth environmental impact statement up front — a decision that drew complaints from a rival mill, environmentalists and business groups. The Cohasset City Council could still require the lengthier review if it finds Huber's shorter environmental study is inadequate.

"We have a right to have it proven to us that this is not going to hurt us; I don't think they can prove that," said Winona LaDuke, executive director of environmental and Indigenous group Honor the Earth.

Huber revised and expanded its initial environmental assessment worksheet after "extensive stakeholder engagement" that began last summer, including several meetings with Leech Lake and other bands, the company said.

"Each time, Huber Engineered Wood (HEW) asked for input and feedback," company president Brian Carlson said in a statement. "With the feedback received, HEW made adjustments and added significantly more detail in the revised environmental assessment worksheet — on emissions and greenhouse gas issues, detail on wood supply and sustainability, wetlands and tribal rights."

In an analysis completed for Huber's environmental study, the head of the University of Minnesota's Department of Forest Resources wrote that the mill would increase statewide timber harvest to about 3.2 million cords per year, which is still "2.2 million cords below the estimated maximum harvest level for both timber and non-timber resource sustainability."

That statewide analysis doesn't account for a higher concentration of logging in the immediate vicinity of the mill, said Honor the Earth environmental counsel Jamie Konopacky.

"Statewide the numbers might make sense, but we're looking at a shift of timber harvest to an area that has already been devastatingly logged," Konopacky said. "What we need is an expert analyzing this one potential path they've identified — the majority of this wood coming from a few counties in northern Minnesota."

The Leech Lake tribal government passed a resolution in December calling for a closer study of how an increased wood harvest in the area would affect treaty-protected hunting and fishing rights on public lands surrounding the reservation.

"In 1855 the Ojibwe signed a treaty with the United States that reserved our rights to hunt and fish and gather wild rice in this area outside of our reservation," Band Chairman Faron Jackson Sr. wrote in a recent editorial. "This Huber mega mill will diminish these rights and harm the environment that we all share. We urge everyone in Minnesota to take a closer look."

Huber plans to have the mill in operation in 2025 and said it will employ 150 people. The proposal's backers say it is an economic salve for the region as Minnesota Power shuts down and converts its last coal-fired power plants at Boswell by 2035.

Written comments on the plant's environmental assessment worksheet are due by the end of the day Thursday.

The Cohasset City Council will hold a public hearing and vote on the environmental review's adequacy on March 8. Depending on the outcome, the decision could be appealed to the Minnesota Court of Appeals.

Additional public hearings will be held for a number of local, state and federal permits needed before construction begins.