Minntac Water Could Go Down St. Louis River
By John Myers, Duluth News-Tribune, Minn.
Mar. 21–U.S. Steel is drafting a plan to pump 7.2 million gallons of wastewater out of its taconite tailings basin into the St. Louis River every day.
Minntac has decided the St. Louis River is a better option than the Dark River, a trout stream that was the company’s original choice, or the Sandy River, which would have sent the excess water into Lake Vermilion.
The company revealed its decision to local groups and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency in recent weeks, said John Armstrong, spokesman for U.S. Steel, Minntac’s parent company.
The company is expected to submit the plan as a draft permit application in June.
“We don’t have anything formal from them yet, but that’s the way they are leaning at this point,” said Jeff Udd of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s industrial permitting office in Duluth.
But the St. Louis River option is far from a done deal and has opponents of its own. The plan must face several public hearings and be approved by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency staff and citizen’s board.
Minntac has been asking to let more water out of its tailings basin for years. The plant uses about 250,000 gallons of water every minute for the taconite-making process, including separating ore from rock, cleaning air pollution scrubbers and then moving waste rock into the tailings basin — a giant storage area ringed by more than nine miles of dikes that can hold 18 billion gallons of water.
For 30 years, Minntac has recycled much of that water back through the plant. But the repeatedly recycled wastewater is becoming choked with solids and corrosive chlorides, and the company wants to let some of it out. Using cloudy water to make pellets can affect their quality and foul plant equipment.
The basin is not in danger of overflowing, but company officials say discharging water — 7.2 million gallons a day, 2.6 billion gallons per year — would extend the basin’s life.
The problem is that the water contains sediment, chlorides and sulfates, and the sheer volume makes it an issue no matter where the company looks for an outlet.
The PCA in September finished its Environmental Impact Statement on the issue but didn’t decide which direction the excess water should flow. Public comments have criticized the Dark River and Sandy River options because of increased water flow, higher temperature, sediments, sulfates and possibly mercury that could affect fish, wild rice and people far downstream.
The company’s new, preferred option would send the water south, into the West Two Rivers Reservoir, which flows into the St. Louis River system and, eventually, into Lake Superior.
“That’s the direction the EIS essentially pushed them, the option with the least environmental impact,” Udd said. “Of course, that doesn’t mean there’s no environmental impact.”
The PCA could decide to do nothing, allowing no additional diversion allowed out of the Minntac tailings basin. Another option for the agency is to require a treatment plant to clean the water before it’s released. Only one other Minnesota taconite plant, Northshore Mining in Silver Bay, is required to treat water that leaves its tailings basin.
“Treatment always has been an option that could be required” in the permit, Udd said Monday.
Sulfates are considered a possible human health issue because they can trigger mercury in the streams to become toxic. That mercury, called methyl mercury, can build up in fish and in people who eat fish.
Environmental groups are expected to oppose the discharge south because the St. Louis River is the largest U.S. tributary to Lake Superior, which has stringent mercury emission limits.
But company officials say they can meet those limits because tests show taconite tailings effectively bind mercury and take it out of the water. The company also is testing a reverse osmosis treatment system for water going into the tailings basin in an effort to remove sulfates, Armstrong said, before they become an issue.
“We don’t think mercury is an issue at all on this,” Armstrong said Tuesday. “We believe the levels will be lower than rainwater.”
About 4 million gallons of Minntac water already seeps out of the tailings basin each day, allowed under a current permit. The revised PCA permit would allow the company to make a direct discharge into a river.
A public meeting on Minntac’s plans are expected in Virginia in April. Depending on public reaction, the company is expected to submit its formal permit application in June. PCA staff is expected to make a decision on the permit by November when more public hearings will be held before any staff decision goes to the PCA citizens board for a final vote, probably in about a year.
“The PCA board already has decided it will get this no matter what happens,” Udd said.
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Copyright (c) 2006, Duluth News-Tribune, Minn.
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