The lesson of Dunka

If the Pike River were discharging over 1,000 milligrams per liter of sulfates into the waters of Lake Vermilion on a regular basis, property owners on the lake would rightfully be up in arms.

So what’s kept property owners on Birch Lake quiet, as Unnamed Creek discharges water containing as much as 1,800 mg/l of sulfates emanating from sulfide-bearing waste rock at the former Dunka Mine? It’s an easy question to answer. They didn’t know.

As Minnesotans, we’ve long prided ourselves on the idea that we take care of our environment. We tell ourselves all the time that we have the toughest environmental rules anywhere. We assume, quite naturally, that we can rely on our state regulators to enforce those strict rules and that we can rest comfortably knowing our waters are protected.

But as our front-page story on the Dunka Mine reveals, perception doesn’t always match up with reality. As Minnesotans, we could well be excused for believing that when our Pollution Control Agency issues a permit to a mining company, that the permit actually controls pollution. Imagine our surprise to learn that the permit for the Dunka Mine, now in the hands of Cliffs Natural Resources, contains no effluent limits in most cases. For contaminants like copper, nickel, and sulfates, as well as other pollution parameters, such as hardness and conductivity, the current permit allows Cliffs to essentially discharge any amount of pollution. To comply with its permit, the company is required merely to collect water samples once a month, have those samples tested, and report the results to the MPCA.

MPCA officials acknowledge that those test results show routine violations of water quality standards. And yet nothing changes as the years go by.

MPCA officials say the data will be useful when the agency issues a new permit for Dunka. That permit, under federal rules, will need to eventually bring Dunka into compliance with water quality standards. But Dunka’s current permit expired over a decade ago and there’s no timeline for when a new one might actually be issued. Which means the agency will continue to quietly document Dunka’s violations, while doing nothing to actually clean up the water.

Certainly, the fault here doesn’t only lie with the MPCA. Agency officials are subject to the dictates of the Legislature and the Governor. When the agency proposed to issue a new draft permit for Minntac’s tailings basin earlier this year, the Legislature, led by legislators from the Iron Range, stepped in and blocked the move because it would have required the company to eventually meet Minnesota’s strict sulfate standard of 10 mg/l.

This is what it looks like when a major industry captures the workings of government. In places like Texas and Louisiana, state regulators look the other way while the oil and chemical industries foul the air and water in those states. In West Virginia, state regulators are equally toothless when it comes to regulating coal mining. In North Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana, it’s the same story with coal mining as well as oil and gas development.

Resource extraction means big money for some, and jobs for others, and it all equals immense political clout in the hallways of state capitals. In the face of that, politicians routinely choose political expediency and put environmental protection on the back burner.

We can argue about the choice the politicians make, but we can’t reasonably argue about the utter disconnect between the promise of Minnesota’s tough environmental laws and the reality of environmental regulation in the state.

Dunka, more than anything, should be a wake-up call. We may have enacted strong environmental laws back in the 1970s, but our political leaders today lack the will to enforce them. For those who care, the time for complacency is over.