Public Hearing About Draft MinnTac Water Quality Permit
About 250 concerned people filled the Iron Trail Motor’s Event Center for a Minnesota Environmental Protection Agency public information meeting about a draft permit affecting new sulfate standards in the wild rice lakes and groundwater leading from the east and west sides of the tailings basin at US Steel’s Minntac plant in Mountain Iron and the planned ways US Steel is going to meet them, including a massive new retaining wall, water treatment, and extensive water quality monitoring.
The draft permit covers the Minntac tailings basin, wastewater disposal systems and the surrounding landscape, an area of approximately 8,700 acres. The permit says that Minntac must limit sulfate in its wastewater discharge and follow multiple compliance schedules for the tailings basin and nearby surface and groundwater.
To meet these requirements Minntac is proposing a first of it’s kind water treatment system on the west side of the tailings basin. A cutoff wall that will reduce seepage from the tailings basin and water treatment technology on the east side of the basin.
The MEPA is concerned about elevated levels of sulfate that are above the newly revised standards in groundwater that makes its way to Little Sandy Lake over about a 45-year period. The new cutoff wall, which will stretch for more than three miles and reach depths of more than 80 feet until reaching bedrock, is expected to reduce seepage from the basin by more than 80 percent.
The permit will also require active treatment technologies to extract contaminated groundwater. Due to the complexity of the new treatment methods, the compliance schedule is currently set by the MEPA for 45 years, with the expectation that as technology improves, the timeline will be moved up significantly.
The cutoff wall has a much sooner deadline, with the cutoff wall and water treatment technology installed within 11 years, and two years later, sulfide limits must be met.
The majority of the crowd Tuesday night expressed concern for the financial impact to the region and to US Steel. They asked questions of the MEPA panel to justify the new standards and asked questions about the requirements. A few people attending the meeting took the opposite approach, expressing concerns that the MEPA’s new standards aren’t stringent enough. The meeting lasted about two hours.
Among the members of the audience asking questions Tuesday night was RAMS President Barb Kalmi, who had concerns about the timing of the permits and MEPA permitting in the past. Retired miner and environmental activist who asked about enforcement policy, and USW District 11 Staff Representative John Arbogast, who talked about the importance of the region to the citizens who live on the Range and then asked if the MEPA was factoring in the economic impact that new regulations will have on the Range, as well as the future of mining.
The Minnesota Environmental Protection Agency is still accepting public comment on the draft permit until early October.
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