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Environmental News

MPR News is your source for environment news from Minnesota and across the country.

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Getting to Green is an MPR News series that shares stories about Minnesota’s clean energy transition, including what needs to be done to get there.

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As PolyMet mine comment window closes, all eyes turn to EPA

As PolyMet mine comment window closes, all eyes turn to EPA

Although the Department of Natural Resources has already received over 40,000 comments, there's one particular letter everyone following the project is waiting for: the EPA's.
by Elizabeth Dunbar

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Wild rice study reveals more questions for state officials

Wild rice study reveals more questions for state officials

Three years after the Legislature ordered a study on how a key pollutant affects wild rice, state officials said more questions remain about whether and how Minnesota water quality standards should change.
by Elizabeth Dunbar and Dan Kraker

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Appetites: Local chefs, foodies, pitch in to save pollinators

Appetites: Local chefs, foodies, pitch in to save pollinators

Minnesota chefs and other foodies who don't want to live in a world without fruit, seeds, and nuts, are determined to do something about it.
by Tom Crann

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Critics of PolyMet mine want state to extend comment period

Critics of PolyMet mine want state to extend comment period

The Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy and Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness last week sent letters to the state Department of Natural Resources and the federal agencies overseeing the study, citing missing data associated with the nearly 2,200-page document.
by Elizabeth Dunbar

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Elizabeth Kolbert on Earth's 'Sixth Extinction'

Elizabeth Kolbert on Earth's 'Sixth Extinction'

We're experiencing the sixth mass extinction right now and this one is entirely our doing. Elizabeth Kolbert painstakingly details just what's going on.

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3 weeks after New Mexico nuclear dump leak, crews venture into facility

3 weeks after New Mexico nuclear dump leak, crews venture into facility

Officials acknowledge they are in uncharted territory in responding to something that has never happened since the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant opened in 1999. The site is important to the nation's efforts to clean up decades of Cold War-era waste, and administrators are eager to resume operations once they are convinced it's safe to do so.

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EPA reverses itself on iron facility pollution

EPA reverses itself on iron facility pollution

In a notice filed Monday in federal court, EPA officials said they were voluntarily vacating the agency's approval in December 2012 of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's variance for Mesabi Nugget, which produces iron pellets at a plant near Hoyt Lakes. The EPA instead plans to reject the variance, the filing said.
by Elizabeth Dunbar

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How Minnesota animals survive the winter

How Minnesota animals survive the winter

Phil Jenni, director of the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, joins us to take listener questions regarding Minnesota wildlife.

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Are you confident the proposed PolyMet mine would avoid polluting Minnesota’s water?

Are you confident the proposed PolyMet mine would avoid polluting Minnesota’s water?

“[The] DNR has described a mine that functions perfectly, exactly as intended, that has no problems whatsoever…but they don’t explore scenarios in which something goes wrong.” — Kathryn Hoffman, an attorney for the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy “Minnesotans have until Thursday to comment on the environmental analysis of the proposed PolyMet mine, a huge…
by Michael Olson

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Scale of PolyMet technology leads to more questions

Scale of PolyMet technology leads to more questions

Minnesotans have until Thursday to comment on the environmental analysis of the proposed PolyMet mine, a huge document containing detailed plans on how the company would keep pollutants from the mine and tailings basin out of nearby lakes and rivers. That plan hinges on new technologies and engineering that PolyMet added after its last proposal was sharply criticized four years ago.
by Dan Kraker

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