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. 8:21 pm, May 27, 2021 ×
Steam rises out of the stacks at United Taconite in Forbes. (File / News Tribune)
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 t
Vehicle emissions rule draws GOP pushback
Minn. Republican lawmakers look to strip pollution control agency of the power to set new vehicle emissions standards, and block Gov. Walz s Clean Cars initiative. Author: John Croman Updated: 1:59 AM CST March 11, 2021
ST PAUL, Minn. The Walz administration s move to bring more electric vehicles into Minnesota is facing pushback from Republicans at the State Capitol. Simply put, they want the legislature to take charge of setting vehicle emissions standards in Minnesota.
GOP Senator Andrew Mathews of Princeton has a bill that would strip the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, or MPCA, of the power to set vehicle emissions standards.
Nobles County adopted resolution Feb. 16 opposing the rule based on untrue information, according to state agency. 10:09 am, Feb. 24, 2021
WORTHINGTON Following Feb. 16 action by the Nobles County Board of Commissioners to oppose the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s efforts to advance its Clean Cars Minnesota Rule, the MPCA is responding to inaccuracies in the resolution.
For starters, the resolution adopted by the county states the MPCA’s rule will require only low-emission vehicles (LEV) and zero-emission vehicles (ZEV) be sold in the state by 2035.
In reality, the proposed rule does not at all restrict the sale of internal combustion engines in 2035 or any other year.
It s the way those goals are accomplished that makes it hard to jump on board.
Gov. Tim Walz wants more Minnesotans to buy electric and hybrid vehicles, which would be good for Minnesota and help at least a little in addressing climate change. And we are late adopters, in the state and in the country.
But it s generally a good idea when you want a change in a marketplace to provide some incentives. Clean Cars Minnesota is a proposal by a regulator, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA). And regulators only make and enforce rules.
Those rules, which follow California s on emissions, are aimed at car manufacturers, but it s Minnesota s car dealers who are doing the worrying.
Environmental News For The Week Ending 16January 2019
This is a collection of interesting news articles about the environment and related topics published last week. This is usually a Tuesday evening regular post at
GEI (but can be posted at other times).
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Note: Because of the high volume of news regarding the coronavirus outbreak, that news has been published separately:
Summary:
New US Covid infections for the week ending January 16th were 8.5% below those of the week ending January 9th, so it appears that the incidence of new cases mat have peaked and is turning down, at least for the time being. One caveat to that, though, is that we don t know how many of the prior week s cases were from reports that had been delayed over the holidays. For a check on that, we can compare new cases from the week ending January 16th to those from the week ending December 19th, two weeks which sh