Minnesota's taconite industry not on pace to meet state's mercury reduction targets by 2025

Plans submitted by mining companies show an industrywide reduction of 15% by 2025, far less than the 72% required by the state.


The Iron Range’s taconite plants say they can’t meet the state's mercury reduction requirement because it’s too expensive and/or not technically possible, putting the state at risk of missing its 2025 mercury reduction goal set more than a decade ago.

Minnesota has made strides in curbing mercury emissions, mainly through the retirement and retrofitting of coal-burning power plants, but to come close to reaching its goal of 789 pounds of mercury emissions each year across all sources by 2025 — a 93% reduction from 1990 levels of nearly 11,300 pounds of mercury per year — the iron ore mining and pellet industry is required by the state to reduce its mercury emissions by 72% by 2025: from 806 pounds per year (the maximums from 2008 and 2010) to 226 pounds per year.

However, according to plans filed in 2018 by the state’s taconite plants, only two operating plants have agreed to reduce mercury emissions, resulting in an expected industrywide reduction of just 15%, or down to 685 pounds per year, by 2025.



“It’s disappointing and it’s frustrating that we’re not on track to meet those goals,” Craig McDonnell, the MPCA’s assistant commissioner for air and climate policy, said in an interview. “Nobody enters into negotiations thinking you’re going to set a goal that you can’t meet. So in 2009, my presumption would be that everybody thought we could meet this — we’re not on pace.”

Read more: https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/business/energy-and-mining/7046709-Minnesota’s-taconite-industry-not-on-pace-to-meet-states-mercury-reduction-targets-by-2025