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.
Amid the cacophony and chaos of the pregame preparation before a recent Minnetonka High School football game, an exceptional group of six girls is gathered together among the school’s deep and talented cheerleading and dance teams.
The cheerleaders, a national championship-winning program of 40 girls, dot the track around the football field. As the clock ticks down to kickoff and their night of choreographed routines begins, the six girls, proudly wearing Minnetonka blue T-shirts emblazoned with “Skippers Nation” and shaking shiny pom-poms, swirl around the track, bristling with excited energy.
Their circumstances are no different from any of the other cheerleaders with one notable exception: The girls on this team have special needs.
They’re members of the Minnetonka Sparklers, a squad of cheerleaders made up solely of girls with special needs.
A football game at Minnetonka High School is an elaborate production. The Skippers’ recent homecoming victory over Shakopee brought an announced crowd of 8,145. And that is just paying attendees; it doesn’t include school staffers, coaches, dance team, marching band, concession workers, media members and others going about their business attached to the game.
The Sparklers program, now in its 12th season, was the brainchild of Marcy Adams, a former Minnetonka cheerleader who initiated the program in her senior year of high school. Adams has been coach of the team since its inception, staying on through her tenure as a cheerleader at the University of Minnesota.
She started the program after experiencing the Unified Sports program at Minnetonka. The unified sports movement at high schools brings together student-athletes with cognitive or physical disabilities and athletes with no disabilities to foster relationships, understanding and compassion through athletics. Many Minnesota schools offer unified sports.
“I grew up in a household that valued students with special needs and valued inclusion,” Adams said. “I saw a need to give to those students. At Minnetonka, we have a strong Unified program, and this was a great opportunity to build relationships and offer mentorship opportunities.”
Elite runners are in a league of their own.
To get a sense of how far ahead elite runners are compared to the rest of us, the Minnesota Star Tribune took a look at how their times compare to the average marathon participant.
The 2022 Twin Cities Marathon men’s winner was Japanese competitor Yuya Yoshida, who ran the marathon in a time of 2 hours, 11 minutes and 28 seconds, for an average speed of 11.96 mph. He averaged 5 minutes and 2 seconds per mile.
That’s more than twice the speed of the average competitor across both the men’s and women’s categories, of 5.89 mph, according to race results site Mtec. The average participant finished in 4 hours, 26 minutes and 56 seconds. That comes out to an average time of 10 minutes and 11 seconds per mile.
And taking it to the most extreme, the fastest-ever marathon runner, Kelvin Kiptum of Kenya, finished the 2023 Chicago Marathon in 2 hours and 35 seconds, for an average pace of about 13 mph. Kiptum averaged 4 minutes and 36 seconds per mile.
Here is a graphic showing these differences in average marathon speed.
The school said in its lawsuit that both Hugo and May Township consider the land rural residential zoning, and that the codes identify a school as a conditional use. Hugo officials have generally supported the LCA plan, granting a building permit in 2022 that allowed LCA to invest $2.1 million into the former Withrow school for renovations.
The school said in its lawsuit that the existing septic system is failing and needs to be replaced, regardless of expansion plans.
The school said it notified neighbors of the property in 2022 and again in 2023 about its land purchase. About 50 residents in total attended those meetings, and just two expressed concerns over the issues of traffic and lights, according to the suit. The school met with the May Township board in May of 2023, and minutes from that meeting show that the board had no concerns beyond lighting at the time, according to the suit. The board asked if the school could use “down lighting” for its athletic fields and the school said it would.
In June, Hugo City Council approved a conditional use permit for the school, but the May Township board voted to extend the decision deadline to early August.
The suit says it was at a subsequent meeting in July that May Town Board Chairman John Pazlar objected to the plan for the first time, saying “the main concern, based on public comment, is to keep Town of May rural.”
The school said its plans for the May Township portion of its property had been submitted eight months prior to the July meeting, and that its plans met requirements of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
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