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The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has issued a long-delayed proposed permit for a major taconite mine on the Iron Range, less than a week after environmentalists sued over the state's oversight of the mine.

 
The draft permit would regulate polluted water discharged from the tailings basin of Minntac, the state's largest iron ore mine located in the town of Mountain Iron.


 
Last week three environmental groups sued the state over 

 alleging the state is allowing the facility to pollute water and damage wild rice beds in violation of the Clean Water Act.


 
"It's an interesting first step," said Hudson Kingston, a staff attorney with the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit. "It's not what we were suing for, we're suing for a schedule for the issuance of a final permit that complies with the Clean Water Act."
 

Hudson added that the permit has deficiencies, and is still likely in violation of federal law.

 
MPCA officials said they've been working on the draft permit, and that its release, so soon after the lawsuit was filed, is coincidental.
 


Minntac's tailings basin has been operating under a permit that expired in 1992.

Environmental News

Dan Kraker

Author

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has issued a long-delayed proposed permit for a major taconite mine on the Iron Range, less than a week after environmentalists sued over the state's oversight of the mine.


Regulators release draft environmental permit for Iron Range mine

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