REGIONAL — The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is seeking public comment through June 14 on a new draft air emissions permit for U.S. Steel’s Minntac taconite operation in Mt. Iron. Rave reviews appear unlikely, however, as critics are already raising questions about the agency’s apparent unwillingness to enforce state mandates regarding mercury emissions on one of the largest employers in northeastern Minnesota.
Mercury emissions, which contribute to fish consumption advisories, particularly in northeastern Minnesota, have increasingly become a sore point with anglers and tribes. A state rule, designated as 7007.0502, mandates strict mercury emission reduction plans for existing industrial facilities, but the MPCA has shown a consistent inability to prompt the state’s taconite industry to get on board with the new requirements.
At over 1,000 pages, the new draft air emissions permit for Minntac is heavy on dense, technical language but fails to enact tightened standards for emissions of mercury, despite the agency’s position that U.S. Steel has viable, commercially available technologies that can do so, and at a cost the company can afford.
That’s a missed opportunity, according to Paula Maccabee, an attorney with Duluth-based WaterLegacy. While Maccabee has focused mostly on water discharges, air emissions of mercury are known to contribute to the concentrations of mercury in fish from Minnesota lakes as the mercury precipitates out of the atmosphere. Maccabee notes that once a new permit is issued, no matter how weak, it gives legal cover for companies against lawsuits for their pollution.
According to the MPCA, the state’s taconite industry accounts for about 75 percent of point source mercury emissions in the state and about 50 percent of all mercury emissions.
Maccabee recently met with a group of northeastern Minnesota residents, including several from Lake Vermilion, who are concerned that the proposed permit gives Minntac free rein to delay any clean-up of its mercury emissions.
Under a state plan, known as a Total Maximum Daily Load, or TMDL, analysis, completed back in 2007, taconite facilities were required to submit mercury reduction plans by Dec. 30, 2018 — plans that would demonstrate how they would cut mercury emissions by 72 percent from baseline levels by Jan. 1, 2025. Other industrial mercury emitters in Minnesota had already been required to act three and a half years earlier. The taconite industry got extra time, but it did little to move the ball forward.
While Minntac complied with the deadline to provide a mercury reduction plan, the plan failed to commit to mercury reductions, arguing that none of the available technologies were viable. The MPCA, in a strongly worded deficiency letter in 2023, identified three commercially available technologies that it believed the company could afford and that the company’s own representatives concluded could achieve a 72-percent or better reduction in its mercury emissions without negatively impacting their processes or the quality of their taconite pellets. The MPCA, in rejecting Minntac’s plan, found that complying with the mercury reductions required would cost a tiny fraction — less than 0.35 percent — of the parent company’s total revenue. That analysis concluded that the total capital investment required for Minntac to achieve an 85 percent reduction in mercury would total $41 million, with an annual operating cost of approximately $29 million. According to the MPCA’s analysis, the annual operating cost amounts to 0.13 percent of the company’s annual revenue. The one-time capital expenditure would amount to approximately 0.19 percent of revenues.
The MPCA included that financial analysis in a 2023 comment letter to the Environmental Protection Agency, which urged federal regulators to impose stricter mercury standards on the taconite industry.
“The MPCA strongly supports stringent mercury control standards and urges EPA to set more stringent mercury limits for this source category than identified in the proposal. The MPCA believes that EPA must set more stringent mercury standards up to the 85 percent reduction capability of activated carbon injection (ACI) identified by EPA in the proposal,” wrote Assistant MPCA Commissioner Frank Kohlasch in the June 28 letter.
Yet, while the MPCA was pushing for stricter federal regulation, it was forgoing its own legal authority to act. The emissions permit the MPCA is now proposing for Minntac incorporates no additional mercury controls, despite the agency’s conclusion that those emissions could be reduced by 85 percent without overburdening the company financially.
When questioned about the apparent disconnect, the MPCA provided the following statement:
“We remain committed to achieving air emissions mercury reductions from all sources in the state, as called out in our 2007 Statewide Mercury TMDL and our Mercury Emission Reduction Rule and our grant to U.S. Steel to study mercury emission controls. We and stakeholders have known that achieving the results would not be easy. We are also navigating a complex interplay between federal rules and actions, litigation, our state rule, and our need to reduce mercury reaching Minnesota’s water and fish.”
MPCA officials note that there are other means of encouraging companies to reduce their emissions. “Permits are only one tool to achieve lowered emissions. The MPCA continues to work with U.S. Steel on its mercury reduction plan as required by Minnesota’s Mercury Emission Reduction Rule,” concludes the agency in its statement.
Yet U.S. Steel has a long history of resistance to efforts by state regulators to clean up their operations in Minnesota. And without an enforceable standard in their permit, Maccabee says there’s little hope of meaningful progress.
“Without enforceable limits, it’s just hopes and prayers,” she said.
Maccabee notes that the state missed its targets for mercury reductions by 2025 because of the lack of progress from the taconite industry. The industry is likely to face even less pressure to act now that President Trump has suspended the federal mercury reductions plan for at least two years. “
Maccabee said the state has authority to act, with or without the EPA. In fact, she says, the state rules don’t appear to give the MPCA discretion on the matter. “The rules say the reductions must happen. It’s not a goal. This isn’t an area where the MPCA has discretion to let Minntac off the hook. The rule is clear. The need is clear. We’re just looking for safer fish to eat.”