Carol Becker wrote: "I think it is inaccurate to imply that the City Council voted to allow the Konderator. The City fought the project, losing in court when the business owners sued the City. After the City lost (I believe both the lawsuit and the appeal), the attorney's believed that we would lose again and the potential for damages were large enough that we would have essentially paid for building the Konderator. It is technically accurate that there was a vote for the Konderator but only to avoid a huge legal settlement after a very long fight." A little reality check here. I repeat that the City Council voted 12-1 to issue a permit for the Kondirator back in about 1990. However, its decision was predicated on an environmental review, which American Iron balked at, thus the law suit. Joe Biernat was not the CM then and was not part of that decision. The opposition at the Council level came only after the residents yelled and screamed about it and the pols got nervous. I repeat that it was the Park Board that first opposed (and still opposes) the Kondirator metal shredder. In 1994, after Biernat became CM, there was a "closed door" Council session about the metal shredder issue. Some neighborhood activists were "leaked" info from that meeting (not from Biernat) that the Council was about to negotiate to move American Iron (and the metal shredder) up river to the Upper Harbor terminal. While I was not at the meeting and cannot personally verify the nature of the meeting, I can tell you that the source from whom we received the info was a meeting participant. When I contacted Biernat to ask him what was going on, I was told to lay low because "everything will be settled in six weeks." When I insisted that a public meeting needed to be held to inform the community of the deliberations, he said I was just "trying to scare people." From that time forward, Biernat never worked with the community groups fighting the metal shredder. However, he has consistently made public statements against the Kondirator and voted to take the lawsuit to the highest court in Minnesota. Subsequent to the closed Council meeting, we approached our legislators who introduced legislation asking for a full blown environmental review. The MPCA was assigned the task of reviewing the project, including visiting similar installations in Europe. Among other things, the MPCA stated they could not review installations in Germany because no one at the MPCA spoke German. The MN Dept of Health said that the incremental increases in lead emissions did not constitute a health hazard. 'Nuf said about the validity of the study. The MPCA's clean bill of health for the metal shredder on the river was challenged in court by the combined legal efforts of the City and the Park Board. Ultimately, a judge decided that no harm would be done to humans, wildlife or the river from the metal shredder. The last City Council vote was against taking it to the MN Supreme Court, to settle for millions of dollars, and the Kondirator fight was over. To date, the metal shredder has not been built. There is no new zoning for the upper river corridor, and business interests have succeeded in getting a state bill introduced that would prohibit the City from rezoning the upper river corridor. Biernat recently praised the expansion of the Graco facility on the riverfront in his St. Anthony West neighborhood as important to the city for jobs and taxes. He made no mention of the Critical Area Act (designed to protect the "critical area" of the shoreline) or the impact on the environment. As far as I know, no environmental review was conducted. The DNR has not responded to repeated requests for information on environmental reviews for this project. The Kondirator debacle is a prime example of the ripple effect of bad decisions by those elected to represent us. For more than 150 years, the upper river corridor has been viewed as nothing more than an industrial park and a shipping channel. Decision after decision has perpetuated that view. Each time an environmental or land use decision turns out to be bad for us and the river, we are told "we will never make that mistake again." But, of course, we do. Fran Guminga Bottineau, where the Kondirator fight began with Randy Kouri ten years ago Ward 3 _______________________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - Minnesota E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
