Unless the language or context clearly indicates that a different meaning is intended, the following words, terms, and phrases, for the purposes of sections 273.14 to 273.16, shall be given the meanings subjoined to them.
The word "person" shall be construed to include individuals, copartnerships, companies, joint stock companies, corporations, and all associations, however and for whatever purpose organized.
The word "deposit" means a body of iron-bearing materials which, in accordance with good engineering and metallurgical practice, should be mined as a unit.
"Low-grade iron-bearing formations" mean those commercial deposits of iron-bearing materials, not including paint rock, located beneath the surface of the earth, which in their natural state require beneficiation to make them suitable for blast furnace use, and which, after such beneficiation, produce in tonnage less than 50 percent of iron ore concentrates from the tonnage of low-grade iron-bearing formations delivered to a beneficiation plant and which formations must be mined in accordance with good engineering and metallurgical practice to produce such concentrates.
"Beneficiation" means the process of concentrating that portion of the iron-bearing formations entering the beneficiating plant.
"Concentrates" means such ores which by the process of beneficiation have been made suitable for blast furnace use.
The term "tonnage recovery" or "tonnage recovery of iron ore concentrates" means the proportion which the weight of concentrates recovered or recoverable after beneficiation bears to the weight of the low-grade iron-bearing materials entering the beneficiating plant.
Minn. Stat. § 273.14
(1993-2) 1937 c 364 s 1