[image_credit]U.S. Steel[/image_credit][image_caption]In 2018, in the case of MinnTac, the MPCA issued a half-hearted water permit to replace one that expired in 1992, to head off an EPA enforcement action because of off-the-charts sulfate pollution that the EPA found in an inspection.[/image_caption]
My, how times have changed. Today’s MPCA is a servant of the mining companies, making strenuous efforts to avoid enforcing the Clean Water Act and preventing the Lake Superior Chippewa Bands or environmentalists from doing it, either. I will give you two very recent examples: the water discharge permits issued to PolyMet Mining and to MinnTac.
The raison d’être of the Clean Water Act is to regulate and limit point sources of pollution – the contamination of water – by chemical, biological, or physical agents. In general, if there is the risk of the discharge of a pollutant by a source, that pollutant is supposed to be limited at the point of discharge by a site-specific PCA permit that includes a water-quality-based effluent limit for that pollutant. So-called WQBELs are the heart of the Clean Water Act.
Neither the PolyMet permit nor the MinnTac permit as issued by the PCA has WQBELs.
The PolyMet water discharge permit, issued as the Mark Dayton administration’s PCA commissioner was headed out the door, was found objectionable by a senior staff member of the Environmental Protection Agency because, among other things, it lacked WQBELs. As we know, our PCA, along with political leadership at the EPA’s Region 5, suppressed the objections, and we would have never known about them if they hadn’t been leaked.
Also in 2018, in the case of MinnTac, the MPCA issued a half-hearted water permit to replace one that expired in 1992, to head off an EPA enforcement action because of off-the-charts sulfate pollution that the EPA found in an inspection. And again, we only found out recently, because of a Freedom of Information Act request to the EPA, that the MPCA and the EPA’s political leadership were behind the kid gloves treatment of MinnTac. The new permit didn’t have WQBELs. The lack of WQBELs is one of the reasons that the Minnesota Court of Appeals struck down the new permit; the old permit didn’t have them either.
[image_caption]Steve Timmer[/image_caption]
Both the PolyMet and MinnTac permits remain in litigation: PolyMet before the Court of Appeals and MinnTac before the Supreme Court. There are almost never do-overs when mining permits become final; Reserve Mining’s water discharge permit was a drawn out but glorious exception.
If the MPCA is successful in slipping the environment a mickey on either of these permits, there will be nothing for anybody, including the Lake Superior Chippewa Bands or the environmental nonprofits, to enforce. That’s because of something in the Clean Water Act called the “permit shield.” The shield allows a polluter to defend an action against it under the CWA by proving that it is in compliance with its permit, regardless of how improvidently or corruptly the permit was issued by the regulator. If you get the right regulators, they are not your regulators; they are your defenders.
That is what happened at a closed copper mine near Ladysmith, Wisconsin, known as the Flambeau Mine. Levels of copper and heavy metals pollution were discovered in streams surrounding the mine (it didn’t have stored tailings because the ore was all hauled off site) that exceeded limits that would have been permitted by the Clean Water Act and Wisconsin water quality standards. It didn’t matter, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals said in a suit brought by environmentalists, because the mining company was in compliance with its poorly written – and perhaps corrupt – permit.
It’s a pity, but we don’t get to elect the commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. We do, however, get to elect the governor. If you believe, as I do, that the reign of industry capture, inattention, and corruption at the MPCA must come to an end, Gov. Tim Walz needs to hear pointed questions from you. After all, it’s his administration now, and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s as well.
If enough people do that, perhaps we’ll return to the days of leadership on the environment exemplified by our regulatory leaders in the Reserve case.
Steve Timmer is a retired Twin Cities lawyer. His twitter handle is @stevetimmer.
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Well done, Steve. The republican senate with iron range DFL support has been crippling the permit process for years. Minnesota media rarely covers what is going on. We need Dean Rebuffonis instead of Mike Tices.
Sorry, Mike. I was referring to the Trib editor.
The review of these projects has not included all of the science and data that’s available. There is no reason to rush any of these decisions. A comprehensive review including the impact on regional health, economies, and environmental qualiy needs to be done. So far, to the chagrin of 8 professionals, and many businesses in the Northland, this has not happened. The mining companies and its supporters have made this a political rather than a technical issue. The MPCA and the Governor need to put politics and pride aside. We should expect a comprehensive review from our State Officials. Please contact them to ensure this review takes place!!
The above is supposed to read: to the chagrin of medical professionals — not 8 professionals.
Thank you again Mr. Timmer for educating us on our need to keep vigilant in Minnesota mining permits and environmental costs.
[Timmer]
“In general, if there is the risk of the discharge of a pollutant by a source, that pollutant is supposed to be limited at the point of discharge by a site-specific PCA permit that includes a water-quality-based effluent limit for that pollutant. So-called WQBELs are the heart of the Clean Water Act.”
[Duluth Tribune]
“According to the MPCA, U.S. Congress in 1990 required the EPA to set mercury emission standards by 2000, but it did not meet that deadline. The EPA didn’t set a mercury limit in its 2003 required hazardous air pollutant rule for taconite processing facilities. Then, in 2005, the Circuit Court of Appeals required the EPA to establish mercury emissions limits, the MPCA said.”
It appears our own MNPCA knows that compliance standards are being ignored. The recent demand for mercury limits in taconite mining has underscored the need to get our agencies back, working for the state’s people in protecting our environment.
1 gram of mercury can make the fish in a 20 acre lake unfit to eat. Native people living on the land already have more fish in their diets than most other Minnesotans. This is a social justice issue as well.
The COVID recession has affected mining layoffs, and the demand for steel is currently down. But we need to build better job opportunities and long-range goals if we want to protect our heritage.
cite Duluth Tribune for the above:
https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/business/energy-and-mining/6683568-MPCA-to-EPA-Its-time-to-set-mercury-limits-on-the-taconite-industry
Air and water are different things, regulated by different statutes, and to some extent, by different parties. The breaking up of the earth’s crust, as described in the DNT article, can result in airborne particles of pollution, such as mercury (from excavating, crushing, hauling tailings around, and storing them), which get deposited in forests, streams, and lakes.
People who understand this better than I do say that taconite operations put a lot of mercury into the air. Of course, coal burning power plants do, too, including Minnesota Power’s big coal plant at Cohasset, which serves taconite mines on the Range.
The breaking up of the earth’s crust also results in the direct deposit of pollutants like mercury (and sulfates) in surface and ground water. Mercury and sulfates are an especially deadly combination, because they form methyl-mercury, which is the bio-form that accumulates in fish and makes them poison to eat. I wrote about that once.
https://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2019/10/important-issues-before-the-court-of-appeals-on-polymet/
The MPCA professes bewilderment as to why the St. Louis River system is so much more infected with methyl-mercury than other streams. I think it’s because the St. Louis, part of the patrimony of the Lake Superior Chippewa, receives so much runoff from the taconite mines: mercury and sulfates. And I am hardly the only one who thinks that.
As the linked MinnPost piece describes, the MPCA had a chance to study this once, but it took a powder, even when somebody else, the EPA, was going to pay for it.
The mercury and sulfate pollution are likely to be orders of magnitude worse with a copper sulfide mine, such a PolyMet’s, so the MPCA surely didn’t want to study it. Seriously, it knew what it would find. A Total Maximum Daily Load study of the St. Louis would have almost certainly shown that the last thing the watershed needed was a copper mine.
As I say in the piece, the MPCA is the servant of the mining industry.
When it was reported that Detroit’s change in fresh water source caused the city water supply to be shedding toxic amounts of lead, the citizens of Detroit simply couldn’t un-do the damage to people’s health– especially neurological development in children and especially in their growing years.
What can people do when their state government (intentionally or not) harms their very citizens?
Is this any different for the Tribes and residents of the St. Louis River watershed? Children cannot get another chance to build optimum brainpower and neurologic health.
Will the courts allow the state to allow the poisoning ? Who pays for the damage and for the victims who lose their basic needs– clean water and basic health security?
It’s not just the mercury, or the sulfuric acid leaching into the groundwater and private wells, it’s the discharge of all the heavy metals as they become ground into smaller and smaller particles and made susceptible to runoff and concentrated tailings pond ingredients.
Heavy metals toxicity and the environment: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4144270/
If we had Republican leadership at the Executive level the last ten years, one could expect the MPCA to rubber-stamp whatever these mining companies want, whatever it would do to the earth. There is a presumption among Democrats that Democrat leadership is better about taking care of the land and water. Thank you Steve Timmer for exploding that myth.
I have heard again and again from Governor Walz, we have some of the strongest environmental rules in the world, here in Minnesota, so we can mine copper/nickel responsibly. If that is true, it is only because most of the rest of the world doesn’t protect the land or water when there is money to be made. It is not true, a blatant falsehood in fact, as the waters of Minnesota, from the point source pollution of farms and pristine residential-chemical turf grass, are more polluted than they have ever been, and there is next to no leadership in this state government left or right to do anything serious about it. Neither our Senators nor our Representatives at the Federal level are much help either (with the exception of Ms McCollum).
I suppose we have the government we deserve. Growing up I assumed we would get better about pollution over time. That was supposed to be what progress looked like. Most Minnesotans seem to believe that is how it is, if they think about it at all (most people don’t). The opposite is true, and part of me wonders, do we sense unconsciously that the ruination of the earth is imminent, there are so many of us wanting so much there simply isn’t close to enough, so whatever it takes to maintain the life we have grown accustomed to as long as we can, is what we will do, whatever the consequence?
Congresswoman Betty McCollum does deserves kudos.