Here in Minnesota, we like to tell ourselves that we do a great job of protecting the environment. We pass strong laws and have good folks working at our regulatory agencies. It all seems reassuring. But a close look at how the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has handled mercury emissions from U.S. Steel’s Minntac facility reveals something less reassuring — an agency that presents rigorous science, identifies workable solutions, has the legal authority to act, yet somehow can’t make any of it stick.
To understand it all takes a bit of background. Under state rules enacted 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.
U.S. Steel used that time to falsely argue it couldn’t be done.
The company submitted an alternative plan claiming that a 72 percent reduction was not technically achievable. They proposed, essentially, to keep doing what they were already doing and to “explore” and “continue to evaluate” other options. In other words, just more of the usual delay we’ve come to expect from U.S. Steel.
The MPCA didn’t buy it. In a detailed January 2023 letter, the agency systematically dismantled the company’s arguments. MPCA technical staff identified three technologies that Minntac’s own research concluded are commercially available, don’t impair pellet quality, don’t cause excessive corrosion, and can consistently achieve a 72-percent or better reduction in mercury emissions. One of them, the fixed carbon bed option, could achieve a 99-percent reduction according to Minntac’s own submitted data. That could have delivered real mercury reductions for northeastern Minnesota lakes.
Except U.S. Steel doesn’t want to pay for it and rejected the technology as too expensive. The MPCA countered with its own financial analysis of U.S. Steel’s parent company, finding that compliance costs would represent about one-tenth of one percent of annual company revenues. In short, meeting the standard is economically achievable. The only thing standing in the way is corporate greed, and bureaucratic timidity.
Meanwhile, mercury from taconite plants keeps falling into northern Minnesota lakes. It keeps accumulating in walleye and other fish in the region. It keeps triggering fish consumption advisories that fall disproportionately on tribal communities and rural families who depend on fish for food. Minnesota set a statewide mercury reduction goal of 789 pounds per year, a target the EPA approved back in 2007. Nearly two decades later, the state is still not meeting it, in large part because its largest point-source emitters— taconite plants— have been permitted to study, evaluate, and delay.
This isn’t a question of jobs versus the environment. U.S. Steel could afford to clean up its act and continue to operate. The company, however, would rather put the money it would cost to do so into the hands of shareholders. Those of us who live in the region are just supposed to accept more mercury in our fish.
When will state officials say enough is enough? As we report this week, Minntac’s air emissions permit is up for renewal. Yet rather than setting a feasible emissions standard and a firm date for compliance, the MPCA has proposed a new permit that, once again, rewards U.S. Steel’s intransigence.
MPCA officials had clearly hoped that action at the federal level would help them stiffen their spines. But when the feds issued their proposal to curb pollution from taconite plants in 2023, the MPCA expressed disappointment. In comments at the time, the MPCA told the EPA directly that its proposed mercury limits didn’t go far enough. Taconite plants represent roughly 75 percent of total mercury emissions from point sources in Minnesota, and about half of all mercury emissions statewide. The MPCA urged the EPA to require reductions up to the capability of activated carbon bed technology. That analysis, of course, is now moot as the Trump administration recently suspended mercury clean-up in the taconite industry for at least two years.
Even so, the state doesn’t need to wait. It has the authority under its 2007 mercury target to require U.S. Steel to clean up its act.
The MPCA has a clear legal mandate to act. Economic analyses confirm that the cost of clean-up is miniscule compared to the gross revenues of the company. And both the MPCA and U.S. Steel agree that there are viable control technologies. The only question is why the MPCA continues to allow Minntac to set the pace of its own compliance.
Without a clear standard and a firm date for improvement included in Minntac’s new emissions permit, nothing will change and mercury will continue to accumulate in northeastern Minnesota fish.