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	Podcast:		Local Features by WXPR
	Episode:		A Bright Future: Former U.P. Mine Site to Be Redeveloped as 300-Acre Solar Array
	Category:		Government & Organizations
	Duration:		00:04:58
	Publish Date:		2020-12-10 12:06:00
	Description:		On a sunny day last week in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Kevin Sundholm picked up a small handful of marble-sized pellets of iron ore from the ground. “Those pellets would go through there and they would get baked,” he said, gesturing at the abandoned foundations of the former Groveland Mine complex near Felch, in Dickinson County. “You can see the remnants up on top of the silos there,” Sundholm said. He knows the lay of the land. He worked here more than 40 years ago. For decades, the complex produced these pellets from the ore taken from the adjacent open-pit mine. Loads of pellets were taken by train to Escanaba, then by ship to steel mills in Ohio. “Basically, there [were] 90 to 100 cars of ore pellets that went out of here every day,” Sundholm said. “This place ran 24/7/365. They put out a good [iron ore] pellet, a specialized kind of pellet here that was used in the steel mills.” But that all ended abruptly in January 1981. Today, the site is just one of countless decommissioned
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