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Request not appreciated
Editor;
Apparently, my asking for an accounting of what actually came out of White Pine Mine over its lifetime, was not appreciated by some of our (Ontonagon) county commissioners at their monthly meeting, which is open to the public. Additionally, I told them that we need a smelter here at White Pine. Also, whatever was sent out to be processed elsewhere, especially the ‘mud’ at the bottom of the tank in the tank house, should be processed here. Forget shipping those jobs to Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, Tennessee, or anywhere else!!
None of this was reported in the August 26th edition of The Ontonagon Herald. The only mention was that I proposed that the three generating units be converted to clean coal. That is where the gases that come off of heated coal are burned instead of directly burning coal. I have worked in both a coal burning and a nuclear power plant as an equipment operator on an operations crew. Today, coal is crushed and washed with water and chemicals to remove impurities before it gets to the power plants.
At the meeting in White Pine earlier this year, concerning the White Pine North Project, there were concerns about using natural gas turbines at White Pine causing a shortage of natural gas for meeting the heating needs at MTU. This will no doubt affect residential users as well. At the present time when it is cold down South, MTU has to make up the shortfall with fuel oil which is more expensive.
Years ago, when White Pine Mine was shutdown, there was talk of moving the generating units to Ontonagon and hooking up to the main powerline there. What is needed is a high voltage transmission line that goes directly to White Pine. We should ask our congressman and senators to support this proposal.
With a high voltage transmission line, whether we convert the old generators to burn coal, clean coal, or biomass, if the mine is not operating, we can put power into the grid. At the present time, twenty percent of our power comes from nuclear plants 200 miles away. Having that line also gives an added incentive for getting some of the mini-Nukes that DTE is planning to put in our State. More later.
Paul Olson
Ewen
Ghastly Hypocrisy
Editor:
Here is President Trump's most recent ghastly hypocrisy.
The President is wooing defecting voters before the November election by stressing his education tax credit program. He specifically is calling for a "hard reset" of local education by placing parents in control of school choice decisions.
However, only a couple months ago he demeaned the nation's parents by telling young industrial workers in Michigan that he has done more for them than their parents ever did.
Trump wants parents to think they have local control over their own children unless and until he asserts Oval Office control over them instead.
They are not the real power in the land, he is!
Kimball Shinkoskey
Woods Cross, Utah
Copper Country employers should protect first-rep work
Editor:
Michigan Tech's Local Jobs Expo on September 4 is built around a valuable premise: students need real connections to local employers, not abstract career advice. AI changes what those first jobs need to provide. Stanford's August employment update found employment among U.S. workers ages 22-25 in highly AI-exposed occupations about 19% below the path of peers in less-exposed work, with reduced hiring driving much of the gap.
Copper Country employers should protect the first repetitions that build professional judgment. Let AI assemble routine material, then give junior workers the troubleshooting cases: check the output, identify the anomaly, test a correction and explain the decision to a supervisor.
Track the date each new hire handles the first exception independently. That milestone tells an employer whether AI is accelerating development or quietly stripping practice out of the job.
Local hiring succeeds when a first job becomes a path to expertise.
Gleb Tsipursky
Columbus OH
Gleb Tsipursky, PhD, a behavioral scientist, CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts, and author of The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work: From Resistance to Results (Georgetown University Press, 2026).