REGIONAL— In an unusual twist, the U.S. Steel Corporation is suing the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, ostensibly for failing to regulate the company in a timely manner.

The company, which operates Minntac, the state’s largest taconite mine and processing facility, has filed a Writ of Mandamus in district court in St. Paul, asking the court to order the state agency to complete certain regulatory steps that US Steel has been seeking for years.

“U.S. Steel has worked cooperatively and successfully with Minnesota’s elected leadership on many issues over the years, but we believe filing a Mandamus claim was our only option in this situation,” said Minnesota Ore Operations General Manager Larry Sutherland. “We felt compelled to take this course of action to ensure specific issues we’ve raised in the past – and MPCA has acknowledged the need to address – are fully resolved so they can be incorporated into our NPDES permit renewal.”

US Steel’s filing comes just weeks after the MPCA reached an agreement with environmental groups, led by the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, that required the agency to issue a new draft permit to replace Minntac’s existing tailings basin water discharge permit, which expired in 1992 and has never been renewed. The stipulation agreement between the MPCA and environmentalists was reached as settlement of a lawsuit filed by the MCEA days earlier. The agreement, signed in November 2016, requires the MPCA to issue a final permit to Minntac within nine months, but that timeline could be delayed were the court to act favorably on U.S. Steel’s writ.

“It’s frustrating,” said Aaron Klemz, spokesperson for the MCEA. “We’ve already waited 25 years for a new permit and now this lawsuit is just about more delay,” said Klemz. “They’re basically seeking an injunction against our stipulation agreement.”

U.S. Steel contends that the MPCA has failed to act on company requests for modifications to its water quality standards and the classification of certain streams into which Minntac’s tailings basin discharges wastewater. The company is also concerned that the MPCA is going back on its earlier commitment to complete a rule change regarding the wild rice sulfate standard prior to issuing any new mining permits. In effect, writes the company in its legal briefs, the “MPCA has put the cart before the horse.”

U.S. Steel contends that the permitting revision “should not proceed until the applicable water quality standards are established…”

Klemz said that argument lacks credibility, given that water quality rules are routinely reviewed and updated. “If it was true that the MPCA has to finish all its work on rules before permits can be issued, they would never get anything done.”

Company officials say they are trying to balance the competing interests at play. “We believe completion of the specific issues raised in our Mandamus claim will ensure the preservation of the environment and the competitiveness of Minnesota’s iron ore mining industry,” said Sutherland.

“U.S. Steel remains firmly committed to our core value of environmental stewardship, and we’ve proven that by investing more than $100 million in environmental activities at Minntac in the last 10 years,” said U.S. Steel General Counsel and Senior Vice President for Government Affairs Suzanne Rich Folsom. “Our actions today reflect our desire to continue working with MPCA in pursuit of a common goal: doing what’s right for the environment without causing unnecessary harm to the state’s economy.”

Klemz doesn’t see it that way. “We just want the MPCA to do their job. US Steel is suing to stop them from doing it.”