State: EPA wrong to reverse Mesabi Nugget ruling
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency on Tuesday said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should stick to its original decision to allow an iron pellet facility near Hoyt Lakes to exceed water pollution limits until 2021.
The EPA approved the state's water quality variance for Mesabi Nugget in 2012, allowing the facility to exceed water quality standards for four pollutants: hardness, bicarbonates, conductivity and total dissolved solids.
But the EPA reversed itself earlier this month following a lawsuit by tribes and environmentalists. The agency told state officials they didn't provide enough evidence to justify the timeframe for the variance.
MPCA officials said earlier this month that they were still reviewing the EPA's decision, but now Commissioner John Linc Stine says the EPA was wrong to disapprove the variance, saying the agency's original approval was justified.
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"We worked hard over many months with the EPA's regional staff on the variance in 2012," Stine said in a statement. He said his agency values its relationship with regional EPA staff but has decided to "strategically oppose" the EPA's move.
"Our decision to grant the variance was based on sound science and careful reasoning, and we are fully prepared to defend it," Stine said.
MPCA officials said the dispute is new territory because the EPA has never reversed itself on a water quality variance. Stine said later in an interview that Mesabi Nugget and perhaps other companies affected could challenge the EPA's decision in court and that it was important for him to clarify the MPCA's position.
"From our perspective it fully meets everything that we understood we were required to do to grant the variance. We do not find in the EPA's logic a sufficient reason for them to have changed that," he said.
The reason for the variance, according to MPCA officials, was to give Mesabi Nugget enough time to identify, install and test a set of treatment technologies "that cannot simply be bought off the shelf."
The system would treat water from a mine pit on the property, which was formerly occupied by LTV Steel. Officials noted that the variance allowed for the possibility that the company might meet the standards earlier than 2021.