"So where is the Walz administration, the Senate, and Legislature in what's going on here? And are they going to stand with the tribes?”

public comment at the April 4 annexation public hearing at Grey Cloud Island Township

The next chance to share thoughts is at the April 19 annexation public hearing at Cottage Grove City Hall, with meeting at 7 p.m.

Grey Cloud Island Township could be about to shrink, pending an official annexation hearing April 19 at the regular Cottage Grove Council meeting, at City Hall.

For years and decades now, the Town of Grey Cloud Island and Lower Grey Cloud Island (in Cottage Grove) have both played host to mines for road and construction materials as owned by Holcim, a Switzerland-based concrete company with Eagan, Minnesota office locally.

“Holcim has put in a petition to annex 119.5 acres of its land to Cottage Grove,” Grey Cloud Island Supervisor Richard Polta said at an April 4 annexation public hearing held at the Grey Cloud Island Town Hall. “From what we understand this is in the Cottage Grove mayor and City Council’s hands…and if they vote to accept this petition, then it goes before an administrative law judge. And that administrative law judge basically has the authority to do whatever they want,” Polta said. With mines in both municipalities, Holcim has cited the form of government in Grey Cloud Island as inadequate to a number of issues, considered a pretext by the township to seek out a more friendly municipality, having been denied variances on its Grey Cloud Island Township mining operation. But while the mines in Grey Cloud Island and Cottage Grove are both owned by Holcim as petitioner for annexation, they are not the same.

The mine on Lower Grey Cloud is a sand mine, digging up the soft deposits left behind at the river in time. It is largely quiet. Not so the mine on Upper Grey Cloud.

The mine on Upper Grey Cloud—in Grey Cloud Island Township—is a gravel pit mine, exposing Palezoic rocks from near the dawn of time. In order to dislodge them, it uses blasting, blowing up larger connected rocks into smaller, disconnected ones.

Attending to  Grey Cloud Town Hall April 4 meanwhile as counterpart to a similar hearing April 19 at the Cottage Grove City Hall, the meeting was attended by many notables, including Representative Rick Hansen and relatives of several notable figures associated with the island’s history.

Among the latter were Barry Hand of Newport (descendant of Hazen Mooers), Cody Rowan (descendant of Thomas Robertson), and members of the Prairie Island community including Shelley Buck and others, related directly to Grey Cloud Woman.

All with personal ties to the island’s namesake were opposed to annexation by Cottage Grove, while Representative Hansen brought up the likelihood of a DNR role as well.

So what might it mean for the City of Cottage Grove, in the interim?

Details are contained in the most recent mining permit for Upper Grey Cloud, approved Feb. 23 of this year.

In the first place, it would annex and assume responsibility for a large portion of the gravel pit associated with the mining in itself. In the second, it wouldn’t control the area of greatest export and loading, this being a barge along the river, with material also trucked out on County Road 75. With lower bench mining in the middle and north areas of the pit, the bottom where Holcim seeks annexation would see potential full bench mining, and new blasting.

With mining now several decades old in Grey Cloud, one thing is for sure.

Should it come to it, the township is ready to fight, although Grey Cloud Town Board Supervisor Richard Polta sought to clarify something April 4.

“Keep in mind when you talk to Cottage Grove, if you go to the meeting or you call them or email them or whatever, they did not come to us looking to annex us. Keep that in mind. They’re not the wolf here. The person causing the problem is a Swiss corporation named Holcim now. That is what instigated this, not your Cottage Grove officials,” Polta said. “As far as we know.”

The public hearing of April 4 over, the next chance to share thoughts is at the April 19 annexation public hearing at Cottage Grove City Hall, with meeting at 7 p.m.