Iron County Will Once Again Consider Evicting LCO Camp

For the third time, the Iron County Board will talk about evicting a Lac Courte Oreilles (LCO) research camp near the proposed iron ore mining area at a meeting on Thursday evening.

The board will spend some of the meeting in closed session. Iron County Clerk Michael Saari said the board will hear from the county’s corporate counsel, a zoning attorney, and the attorney for their insurance company about eviction options.

Saari said the board members don’t know yet what those options are, but that after the closed session they could take action.

It would be the third time the board has considered evicting the camp, albeit never getting to the point of ordering the LCO Harvest and Educational Learning Project and its half-dozen people to leave a five-acre site on public forest land.

Project spokesman Paul DeMain says he’s in the dark about tonight’s meeting. LCO hasn’t been notified about it.

“Iron County can go through the motions of whatever it wants, and we’ll respond to it the best we can,” said DeMain. “We haven’t been invited to the table ever.”

The camp was first approved by the Iron County Forestry Committee last May, which then rescinded its support in July, ordering the project closed. In December, the county’s insurance company told the county to back off because of possible legal costs.