Complaints: CenturyLink failed to respond to cable marking

ST. PAUL (AP) — State officials are investigating CenturyLink after receiving hundreds of complaints that the utility failed to respond to requests to locate and mark underground cables.

Minnesota Public Radio News cited a state Office of Administrative Hearings document which shows CenturyLink faces more than $780,000 in fines for alleged violations of a law intended to protect the safety of people and the utility infrastructure.

State law requires property owners and professional contractors to notify the Office of Pipeline Safety before digging. Utilities must respond to the notification, often by marking the location of underground infrastructure.

CentryLink provides internet, TV and phone service in Minnesota. It said a contractor change has resulted in delays which it is working to resolve.

Minnesota man avoids prison sentence after mistaken identity

BUTTE, Mont. (AP) — A Minnesota man narrowly avoided a five-year prison sentence in Montana after officials mistook his brother’s criminal history for his own.

The proposed sentence for Aduo Omot was part of a deal with prosecutors in which he agreed to plead guilty to felony theft after his arrest for possession of a stolen sport-utility vehicle at a hotel in the community of Rocker in January.

The length of the sentence was based on his history of past felony convictions, The Montana Standard reported.

But a pre-sentencing investigation before the 27-year-old Worthington man’s sentencing hearing found the criminal record was really his brother’s. Omot had a few prior misdemeanor convictions, but no felonies.

Omot’s public defender, Josh Demers, said his client did not recall the past offenses the record attributed to him, but Omot didn’t seriously dispute them because he appeared to be confused about the difference between felonies and misdemeanors.

“It’s kind of scary that Minnesota screwed up the records like this,” Demers said.

District Judge Robert Whelan gave Omot a three-year deferred sentence Wednesday that allows him to return home to Minnesota. Under that sentence, Omot can have his record cleared by meeting the terms of his probation.

Whelan wished Omot good luck.

“This will allow the defendant to become a productive member of society again,” Whelan said.

Omot repeatedly said that a woman in Minnesota simply gave him the SUV. He told officials that he was on his way to Seattle to see his family, and he had been staying at the Montana hotel for six days before he was arrested on Jan. 28.

He spent 106 days in the Butte jail after he failed to make a court appearance.

The first records check with prison officials in Minnesota revealed a long list of prior felonies, including some for violent offenses.

Twin Metals plans dry storage for waste at mine near Ely

ST. PAUL (AP) — The developers of a proposed copper-nickel mine on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness said Thursday they plan to use a potentially safer dry method of storing mine waste instead of the kind of wet tailings pond more common in the industry.

Twin Metals Minnesota said its underground mine near Ely would use “dry stack” storage for about half the mine’s waste, calling it the most environmentally friendly approach for the site. The method contrasts with the conventional tailings basin at the planned PolyMet mine and processing plant near Hoyt Lakes, where the slurry will be contained by an earthen dam. The other half of Twin Metals’ tailings would be put back underground in old portions of the mine.

Dry stacking involves removing most of the water from the tailings after the copper, nickel and platinum-group metals are extracted from the ore. Twin Metals would then stack and compact the finely ground tailings, which by then would be the consistency of sand, into a hill about 120 feet tall, on top of a liner, with a system designed to capture moisture that seeps from the structure. It would eventually be covered with native soil and vegetation.

Experts say dry stacking would eliminate the chance of a catastrophic dam failure, like mine dam collapses in recent years in Canada and Brazil, and that it offers a better chance of eliminating the need for long-term or perpetual water treatment after the mine closes.

While environmentalists pushed unsuccessfully for dry stack storage at PolyMet, they criticized Twin Metals’ plan because the waste site would sit just a couple miles from the Boundary Waters, in the same watershed as the wilderness area. An earlier plan would have run a long slurry pipeline to a site near Babbitt that’s in a different watershed that doesn’t flow toward the BWCA.