More mercury in fish

Who wants more mercury in northeastern Minnesota lakes? President Donald Trump, apparently. That’s the only conclusion from the administration’s recent announcement that Trump was delaying implementation of the so-called Taconite Rule, which is supposed to require our region’s taconite plants to reduce emissions of mercury and other toxic chemicals into our air.
The new rule, which was promulgated by the Biden administration would have cut mercury emissions by 33 percent, at a cost that would be barely a rounding error on a financial report for the two companies involved, U.S. Steel and Cleveland Cliffs.
The administration justified its decision, in part, claiming that the technology to make the additional reductions was not commercially available, even though the technologies have been available and widely used for decades. Yet the Trump administration rarely lets reality get in the way of its ideological agenda, which in this instance is focused on enhancing corporate profits at the expense of the environment.
Those of us who catch and consume fish in northeastern Minnesota are the ones who will pay the price. Mercury contained within emissions, from any source, are eventually deposited on land and water. In lake and stream sediments, sulfur-reducing bacteria convert elemental mercury to highly toxic methylmercury, which readily bioaccumulates in fish tissues. This isn’t some recently invented claim by environmentalists. This is well-established science dating back decades, the consequences of which were demonstrated in horrific fashion in Minamata City, Japan, in the 1950s. Google Minamata disease if you would like to learn more.
The fish consumption advisories put out by the Minnesota Department of Health for virtually every lake in our region are designed to prevent such catastrophes here, where many residents eat a large amount of locally caught fish. We know from an MDH study of blood samples from newborns, which are routinely used to check for a variety of genetic abnormalities, that ten percent of Minnesota infants born within the Lake Superior basin, have mercury levels higher than normal. Those levels were even higher for those infants born in the summer, a time of year when consumption of locally caught fish tends to rise in our region. Elevated mercury levels were found more frequently in Minnesota than in either Wisconsin or Michigan, where similar testing was done.
While taconite plants are far from the only source of mercury in our atmosphere, the massive furnaces they operate for pellet production are a significant local contributor. As coal-burning power plants have been shut down in recent years in Minnesota, mercury emissions from that source have declined. Making progress on emissions at taconite plants could continue that progress.
Debates over emission controls are frequently framed as jobs versus the environment, which was another argument the Trump administration deployed to justify further delay of implementation of the new rule. But that argument doesn’t hold water here. An economic analysis conducted by the EPA determined that the cost of implementing the additional controls on taconite plants in the region would amount to no more than 0.25 percent of annual sales for Cleveland Cliffs, and just 0.12 percent of sales for U.S. Steel. These are companies, incidentally, that are now heavily protected from international competition, through tariffs, so there would be no difficulty in recovering the additional cost of these controls through miniscule price adjustments for their products.
To put it in small business terms, the Timberjay would need to raise its advertising rate by a bit less than five cents a column inch or bump the annual subscription price by 65 cents to make up an incremental cost increase of similar size. That’s an increase customers would never even notice.
Far from costing jobs, implementation of the Taconite Rule would have created jobs in the building and installation of the control devices along with the ongoing maintenance. The air pollution control industry, by itself, employs just under 100,000 people in the U.S. Unfortunately, it’s an industry that’s likely to be facing a challenging period with an administration that seems to prefer pollution to employment.
There will be winners, of course, as a result of the president’s actions. Top executives and major shareholders of U.S. Steel and Cleveland Cliffs may see a slight bump in their compensation packages or dividends because they can delay action on these emission controls.
The rich get richer while the rest of us are forced to settle for more mercury in our walleye. That, more clearly than anything, demonstrates the priorities of the Trump administration.