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The plan to sell off 80,000 acres of state lands in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area makes no sense financially, but it does make sense politically.
Local government units are seeing through this, including the Town of Morse board of supervisors which voted unanimously to oppose the project.
Morse has added incentive with a number of 40 acre parcels up the Echo Trail, that currently generate tax dollars, being included in this project even though they are outside the BWCA. Kudos to the Morse supervisors for taking a stand and doing the right thing.
Supervisor Terry Soderberg correctly pointed out there were thousands of acres of school trust land originally established across the state. But greed and need over time reduced those to basically being eliminated in most of the state, other than the northern half. Those lands up north generate funds that go into a trust where the interest is used to help fund school districts. Ironically, most of that money goes to schools in the Twin Cities, which had nothing to do with where the money came from. So where did it come from?
The basic answer is mining. Most of the revenues generated year after year come from taconite mining operations and hopefully one day copper-nickel mining as well. But the thought of there being more mining in this state causes some to tremble and they will dream up any course of action to stop that. Does that include selling state lands in the BWCA? You’re darn tootin’ it does.
Those landlocked parcels could be swapped for other federal lands that are near mining operations, generating streams of revenue for decades and decades to come, long after those opposed are no longer around. And, we haven’t even mentioned how logging helps keep our forests healthy and returns monies to the trust fund when cutting is done on school trust lands.
So let’s not hide behind how this proposed land sale is beneficial to the state of Minnesota with a one time check, that’s horse hockey. And in the land of hockey, we know when something smells bad and should be avoided. Selling state BWCA lands instead of trading them reeks.
