Courtney Cochran
At the end of July, I started in my new role as the Duluth Organizing representative for the Sierra Club. I have lived in Duluth for nearly a decade and come from years of community organizing around local and statewide housing and homelessness policy. I am an avid outdoor lover and spend most of my free time paddling, swimming, and hiking around Northeast Minnesota and Western Wisconsin. I am excited at the opportunity to work for the Sierra Club and continue to fight for the health and wellness of my home, my neighbors, and my watershed. In my first few weeks, I was welcomed with a big dose of warm, Northern Minnesota hospitality through a Sierra Club members picnic and by the long-standing Duluth Clean Energy Team.
Besides the hospitality and dedication of our members and volunteer leaders, the thing that has struck me the most in my first 30 days with the Sierra Club is the urgency of this fight. Northeast Minnesota is the hotbed of industry in our state. The climate impacts are hitting us hard and fast up north. It can be hard to focus in the climate fight in Northern Minnesota when multiple sulfide mines, coal plants, natural gas plants, and oil pipelines are all looming and threatening our air and water quality. In this urgency, we continue to focus on growing our movement stronger through collaborative events such as the People’s Climate March and coalitions spaces. We continue to grow our work on sulfide mining and resisting pipelines and supporting other organizations leading this work as well.
Currently, our main focus in the Duluth area is moving Minnesota Power towards a clean energy future for Northeast Minnesota. Minnesota Power still uses a majority of coal energy to meet the energy needs of the region and has recently proposed a new natural gas plant in Superior, Wisconsin. Sierra Club’s Duluth Clean Energy Team is leading the charge in opposing the proposed natural gas plant and was vocal in the public comment period about the need to move away from fracked gas and towards clean, renewable energy as a region. Luckily, the Administrative Law Judge for the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission agreed with the public testimony. Judge Cochran stated in a July recommendation to the PUC that not only did Minnesota Power fail to prove the need for this expansion to meet the energy needs for the region, but there was no attempt to investigate clean energy options made by Minnesota Power.
We agreed with Judge Cochran and will continue to oppose this gas plant proposal as it the PUC considers their decision. The next hearing on the Superior Gas Plant Proposal will be on October 18th at 9:30am at Duluth City Hall. Join Sierra Club at this hearing and our October 1st Policy in a Pint at Hoops Brewery at 5:30pm to learn more about the Superior Gas Plant and how you can help stop the expansion of fracked natural gas as a key energy generator in Northeast Minnesota. In October, we will also be gearing up citizen engagement in Minnesota Power’s Resource Plan, which will determine their plan to meet the region’s energy needs for the next fifteen years. We will be working to push for retirement dates for the remaining Boswell coal units in Cohasset and expand wind and solar energy generation and need lots of voices to help us push for a clean energy future for Northeast Minnesota.
To learn more and get involved, contact Courtney at courtney.cochran@sierraclub.org.
Courtney Cochran is the Duluth Organizing Representative for the North Star Chapter