Star Tribune
Lake that flows to Boundary Waters placed on state’s list of polluted waters
Environmental advocates who are fighting new mines around a St. Louis County lake have convinced the state that it’s already polluted from decades of taconite extraction nearby.
This week, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency placed Birch Lake and part of a river that flows into it on the state’s list of impaired waters. The listing was based on data provided by Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness, which started testing the water in 2019.
Birch Lake is part of the watershed that flows into the protected Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. It’s also adjacent to a copper-nickel mine proposed by Twin Metals that has been stalled by the federal government over its potential to cause environmental harm.
Matt Norton, policy and science director for Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness, said Twin Metals’ plans helped to motivate the water testing.
“We think the evidence shows [Birch Lake has] been impaired for a long time. It’s good that it’s getting the attention that comes with this listing,” Norton said.
Kathy Graul, a spokeswoman for Twin Metals, declined to comment.
By including Birch Lake and part of the Dunka River on a draft of the impaired waters list, MPCA has indicated that enough sulfates have built up to harm the growth of wild rice.
Norton said the testing showed that only two tributaries of Birch Lake carry elevated sulfate. The Dunka River and an unnamed creek receive runoff from the Dunka taconite mine, which shuttered in the 1990s, and the occasionally operating Peter Mitchell pit, a Northshore Mining taconite operation owned by Cleveland-Cliffs.
The geology of the area has contributed to the problem in both places — in order to reach the taconite, miners had to strip sulfide minerals sitting on top. Those sulfides were put into waste piles that can leach sulfate when exposed to groundwater or rain.
Bruce Johnson, a former employee of the Department of Natural Resources and MPCA, said issues with tainted drainage coming out of Dunka were evident even back in the 1970s, when he was tracking the chemistry of the mine’s runoff.
A case study of the Dunka Mine prepared by DNR in 2010 reported that the mine’s former operator, LTV Steel, decided to filter seepage from waste rock by routing it through a constructed system of wetlands. This “passive” treatment was chosen over a more expensive water treatment plant because “mine drainage problems can persist for over 100 years.”
Johnson said that the wetland treatment may help with heavy metals, but, “it does not take care of sulfate.”
A MPCA spokesman did not answer a question about who would have to pay for any needed cleanup at Dunka. LTV declared bankruptcy in 2000; the company has since dissolved.
A spokeswoman for Cleveland-Cliffs did not respond to a request for comment on the listing of Birch Lake. The waters pumped out of the Peter Mitchell pit carry levels of sulfate that are seven to nearly 20 times the state’s limit.
The state’s sulfate limits are being enforced for the first time now, and potentially impact other taconite operations. Two other iron mines have recently asked the state to adjust the standard in water bodies where they send drainage.
But the specter of new hardrock mining for copper and nickel could change the landscape even further around Birch Lake.
Twin Metals’ original proposal to open a hardrock mine near the northern end of the lake was scuttled by a federal ban on drilling in the watershed and a decision by the Biden administration to cancel the company’s mineral leases. The company is appealing the lease decision.
Twin Metals also plans to drill at least six exploratory holes in another deposit on the south side of the lake, including to two spots adjacent to the Dunka Mine.
The impaired waters list is in draft form. If Birch Lake remains on the final list, Norton said the Clean Water Act requires the state to create a plan to stop the pollution. The MPCA would have to set a limit for the amount of sulfate flowing in — a “total maximum daily load” — and then impose new limits on contributors to this pollution, including Dunka and Peter Mitchell.
That may not happen soon. Birch Lake was listed in a low-priority group, meaning the state doesn’t intend to set a pollution limit for it in the next two years.
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and her daughter were among the throngs Friday as President Joe Biden delivered the apology that many Indigenous Americans thought would never come.
“I think he really said the things that people have been waiting to hear for generations, acknowledged just the horror and trauma of literally having our children stolen from our communities,” said Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. “It’s a powerful first step towards healing.”
Hundreds of boarding schools operated in the 19th and 20th centuries, separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to assimilate to European ways. Many children were abused, and at least 973 died, according to a report from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Other Minnesotans reacted similarly to Flanagan, saying they welcomed the apology but that additional action is needed to help Indigenous people move forward.
Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, wrote in a newsletter that the apology was “a welcome first step on the journey to healing.”
“There is no way to truly right historical injustices for the children buried at Carlisle, Haskell, and other schools, but these words set a new tone for the country and will help heal the anguish so many Natives have carried for so long,” Treuer wrote. “It gives me hope that we can come together to reconcile and heal our troubled nation.”
Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, the first Indigenous woman to serve in the state Senate, called Biden’s apology encouraging.
“This recognition of past wrongdoings is an important step towards healing relationships between the United States and the sovereign nations affected by these past systems,” Kunesh said in a statement. “This dark period of American history must be remembered and taught.”
“I have done everything in my power to remedy this situation, and it continues to get more and more violent by the day,” Moturi wrote. “There have been numerous times when I’ve seen Sawchak outside and contacted law enforcement, and there was no response. I am not confident in the pursuit of Sawchak given that Sawchak attacked me, MPD officers had John detained, and despite an HRO and multiple warrants — they still let him go.”
On Friday, five City Council members sent a letter to Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Brian O’Hara expressing their “utter horror at MPD’s failure to protect a Minneapolis resident from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
Council Members Andrea Jenkins, Elliott Payne, Aisha Chughtai, Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley went on to allege that police had failed to submit reports to the County Attorney’s Office despite threats being made with weapons, and at times while Sawchak screamed racial slurs. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
The council members also contend in their letter that the MPD told the County Attorney’s Office that police did not intend to execute the warrant for “reasons of officer safety.”
At a Friday afternoon news conference at MPD’s Fifth Precinct, O’Hara said police had been working to arrest Sawchak since at least April, but “no Minneapolis police officers have had in-person contact with that suspect since the victim in this case has been calling us.” The chief pointed out that Sawchak is mentally ill, has guns and refuses to cooperate “in the dozens of times that police officers have responded to the residence.”
O’Hara put aside the option to carry out “a high-risk warrant based on these factors [and] the likelihood of an armed, violent confrontation where we may have to use deadly force with the suspect.” The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside his home, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
ROCHESTER – The Federal Transit Administration has green-lighted an $85 million grant supporting the development of the city’s planned Link Bus Rapid Transit system.
The FTA formally announced the grant on Friday during a ceremonial check presentation outside of the Mayo Civic Center, one of the seven stops planned for the bus line. The federal grant will cover about 60% of the project’s estimated $143.4 million price tag, with the remaining funds coming from Destination Medical Center, the largest public-private development project in state history.
Set to go live in 2026, the 2.8-mile Link system will connect downtown Rochester, including Mayo Clinic’s campuses, with a proposed “transit village” that will include parking, hundreds of housing units and a public plaza. The bus line will be the first of its kind outside the Twin Cities — with service running every five minutes during peak hours.
“That means you may not even need to look at a schedule,” said Veronica Vanterpool, deputy administrator for the FTA. “You can just show up at your transit stop and expect the next bus to come in a short time. That is a game changer and a life-transformational experience in transit for those people who are using it and relying on it.”
The planned Second Street corridor is already one of the busiest roads in Rochester, carrying more than 21,800 vehicles a day, and city planners have talked for years about ways to reduce traffic congestion in the city’s downtown. Local officials estimate that the transit line, which will rely on a fleet of all-electric buses, will handle 11,000 riders on its first day of operation and save eight city blocks of parking.
Speaking to a crowd of about 100 people gathered on Friday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar said the project shows Rochester is thinking strategically about how it handles growth.
“If you just plan the business expansion, and you don’t have the workforce, you don’t have the child care, the housing or the transit, it’s not going to work very well as a lot of communities across the nation have found,” Klobuchar said.
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