Minnesota tribes say EPA’s taconite mercury emission rules don’t go far enough

WASHINGTON — The state’s Indian tribes are panning the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to impose tougher restrictions on mercury emissions from taconite operations, saying they would fail to prevent continued land and water contamination.

The EPA issued its final – and very first – regulations on mercury emissions from taconite plants last week. Tribes want the agency to go back to the drawing board and do better.

“We have witnessed first-hand the adverse impacts of industrial air pollution on our lands and health,” said Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Chairman Kevin Dupuis in a statement. “This rule is not enough. Our community needs stronger measures to safeguard our sacred natural resources, health, and way of life.”

The EPA initially estimated its regulations would cut mercury emissions produced by the taconite industry by half. But the final regulations issued last week estimated the release of that toxic element would only be reduced by about a third.

“That just isn’t enough,” said James Pew, director of federal clean air practice at Earthjustice. He called the EPA’s effort to comply with the Clean Air Act “too little, too late.”

“Regulations were set at the weakest level the law allows,” Pew said.

While the EPA regulates the chemicals and other heavy metals produced when taconite ore is converted into pellets that are about 60% iron, mercury was never regulated. In 2004, a court mandated the EPA issue regulations for mercury, but the agency failed to do so.

For 20 years, the EPA was prodded in court to adhere to the Clean Air Act and develop regulations to cut mercury emissions that are produced during taconite processing.

The Fond du Lac band, represented by Earthjustice, successfully sued the agency in 2020.

Other tribes, including the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, the Grand Portage Band of Chippewa and Michigan’s Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians also pressed the EPA to regulate mercury.

Water contamination

The tribe reminded the agency of the treaty rights obtained from the federal government that guarantee the tribes the right to hunt, fish and gather wild rice throughout the entire northeast portion of the state.

Yet the tribes say their traditional way of life has been threatened by mercury that has accumulated in the land and waters.

The tribe says that the waters in these states are so badly contaminated with mercury that the state has warned children and women of childbearing age against consuming freshwater fish more than once a month.

There are six taconite facilities in Minnesota and two in Michigan that will be affected by the new regulations. The Minnesota mines account for nearly half of the state’s mercury emissions. Most are owned and operated by U.S. Steel and Cleveland Cliffs.

The EPA estimates that these facilities emit 751 pounds of mercury a year, and the new regulations would reduce those emissions by 247 pounds a year.

After the EPA released a draft of its proposal in May of last year, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency told the EPA it “must set more stringent mercury standards than those identified in the proposal.”

It provided the EPA with an estimate of what additional scrubbers and other technology would cost the steel industry and said it could afford it.

“The capabilities of the potential technology support greater mercury removal than evaluated for facilities in this source category for comparatively small increases in total capital and annual costs,” the MPCA said in its public comments.

Cost complaints

Meanwhile, the steel industries pushed back on the promulgation of the new regulations, telling the EPA their cost to them would be prohibitive.

“For some emission units … the cost would exceed $5 billion per ton of mercury removed, which is effectively about $2.6 million per pound,” U.S. Steel told the EPA in its comments.

The steel industry had allies on Capitol Hill.

After the draft of the regulations was issued last year, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., joined seven other senators from iron- and steel-producing states in writing to the EPA Administrator Michael Regan that the agencies plan to cut pollutants “would dramatically undermine the domestic steel industry and national security while driving production overseas.”

“We support reducing harmful air pollution. We also support rules that are durable, realistic, and based upon proven technology and reflect a consensus view among stakeholders on how to best improve public health while protecting good paying jobs and supporting industries essential to our national and economic security,” the senators wrote. “These rules fail to meet those standards.”

The Iron Mining Association of Minnesota, which represents the taconite industry in the state, had no immediate comment on the new regulations.

“The claims about cost were just crazy,” Pew of Earthjustice said.

He estimated the cost of reducing emissions would be about $100 million, a tiny fraction of what the major steel companies make in revenues each year, which Pew estimated to be $40 billion, combined.  Nippon Steel is paying $14.1 billion to acquire U.S. Steel.

Pew said the only recourse right now for environmentalists and Minnesota’s tribes is to press the EPA to get tougher about policing mercury emissions.

“The EPA could fix this,” he said.Meanwhile, Dupuis, of the Fond du Lac Band, said, “we call on the EPA to recognize our treaty rights and work with us to develop solutions that protect our people and the environment we cherish.”