REGIONAL — President Donald Trump’s July 17 announcement that he was delaying implementation of stricter air quality standards for the taconite industry could well prevent the state of Minnesota from meeting its previously approved efforts to substantially reduce mercury emissions by 2025.
That commitment, approved by the federal Environmental Protection Agency in 2007, required reductions in mercury emissions from regulated industries across the state, including the taconite industry. The reductions are part of an effort reduce mercury levels in lakes in northeastern Minnesota, where mercury is more likely to bioaccumulate in fish tissues than in other parts of the state, where it can harm humans who consume significant amounts of fish.
“There is a strong connection between the Minnesota Department of Health’s fish consumption advisory and lakes, rivers, and other bodies of water that have excess mercury,” notes the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, or MPCA, on its website. The MPCA uses a pollution threshold, known as the Total Maximum Daily Load, or TMDL, as a guide as the agency seeks to gradually ratchet down mercury emissions toward a long-term goal of reducing the mercury content in fish tissues in northeastern Minnesota.
Reaching that goal is likely to take longer due to Trump’s recent executive order, given that the taconite industry is one of the state’s largest emitters of mercury, particularly as many utilities in the state have phased out coal-burning power plants, another major source for mercury pollution.
“While the state has made significant progress in mercury reduction through those efforts, Minnesota’s ability to meet the mercury emissions reduction targets in the TMDL will require additional reductions from all sources, including the taconite iron ore processing facilities,” said an MPCA spokesperson when contacted by the Timberjay. “We are continuing to assess how this presidential proclamation impacts our statewide mercury reduction goals, but, at a minimum, the Trump administration created additional regulatory uncertainty with its announcement.”
Pushed to take action
While the EPA has generally been seen as reluctant to implement or enforce stricter air quality standards in recent decades, the agency has, on occasion, been forced to do so through court challenges by environmental groups that have argued the agency is shirking its responsibilities.
A 2020 ruling by the D.C. Circuit Court in the matter of Louisiana Environmental Action Network v. EPA put added pressure on the agency to address a wide range of known toxic emissions that it had not regulated previously, and it responded by issuing new standards affecting emissions from a number of industries, including taconite operations.
“This action addresses gaps in the regulation of hazardous air pollutants,” stated the EPA at the time.
According to the EPA, hazardous air pollutants are those known to cause cancer or other serious health effects.
“Exposure to these substances has been demonstrated to cause adverse health effects, including chronic and acute disorders of the blood, heart, kidneys, reproductive system, respiratory system, and central nervous system. Some of these substances are considered carcinogens,” according to the EPA.
By 2024, the EPA had issued its final standards, which would have required the taconite industry to reduce emissions of several air toxins, including a 33 percent reduction in mercury.
Questionable claims
Under federal law, the president does have the ability to delay implementation of new pollution standards for up to two years under certain conditions. In announcing the delay, Trump stated that the technology to meet the new standard “is not available,” which is one of the criteria that allows for a delay.
Trump’s claim, however, appears to be at odds with the facts. Paula Maccabee, chief legal counsel and policy director for Duluth-based Water Legacy, calls the claim “pure nonsense.”
Maccabee notes that when the EPA issues new standards, they are known as MACT rules, which stands for Maximum Achievable Control Technology, and they are based on known existing technologies. Maccabee noted that the companies who commented in opposition to the new standards, primarily U.S. Steel and Cleveland Cliffs, never claimed the technology wasn’t available. Instead, she said, “they found various creative ways to raise issues about costs and measurement, some of which the EPA accepted and some they did not.”
The EPA, in its 2024 economic analysis of the impact of the standard on the industry, cited several existing applicable technologies, some of which have been used on a commercial scale for decades. Indeed, the EPA implied that some of the taconite facilities, like Minntac, had already installed some of the equipment, which they indicated would reduce the capital costs of complying with the new standards.
Trump, in announcing the delay, cited those costs of compliance as another factor in his decision. He stated that the new rule “risks forcing shutdowns, reducing domestic production, and undermining the nation’s ability to supply steel for defense, energy, and critical manufacturing.”
However, an economic impact analysis by the EPA suggested the financial impact of compliance was relatively small when viewed against the annual revenues of U.S. Steel and Cleveland Cliffs, which own and/or operate all the existing taconite plants in the country.
According to the EPA analysis, U.S. Steel could expect to pay a total of about $14 million per year in total annualized cost to comply with the new standard, which amounts to about 0.06 percent of its annual sales of approximately $21 billion. Cleveland Cliffs would pay considerably more, at $54 million per year, or about 0.24 percent of its annual sales.
“The total annualized cost per sales for a company represents the maximum price increase in the affected product or service needed to completely recover the annualized costs imposed by the regulation,” notes the EPA in its analysis. “Based on this estimate, the maximum necessary price increase caused by the final regulation is small relative to the size of the industry.”
A spokesperson for U.S. Steel told the New York Times that the delay was “fair, reasonable, and necessary.” Amanda Malkowski told the Times that U.S. Steel’s decision to seek a delay in implementation of the stricter standards is consistent with the company’s support of “revisions to regulations that are within EPA’s statutory authority, based on sound science, and are technically feasible.”
A region sensitive to mercury
Northeastern Minnesota’s unique geology and water chemistry makes lakes in the region particularly sensitive to the impacts of mercury deposition, which occurs as precipitation settles heavy metals like mercury out of the atmosphere. While mercury falls on lakes across the state, the prevalence of wetlands, like bogs, in northeastern Minnesota and the limited buffering capacity of lakes in the region make mercury particularly dangerous. Such conditions allow mercury that falls to convert to methylmercury through the actions of bacteria in lake and stream sediments. Methylmercury readily bioaccumulates in fish higher up in the aquatic food chain, which can then affect people who consume the fish.
Most lakes in northeastern Minnesota now have fish consumption advisories as a result of mercury contamination.