Star Tribune
New federal funding moves St. Louis River cleanup closer to completion
DULUTH — A project that marks the final stretch in a decades-long effort to cleanse a century of pollution from the St. Louis River received a major boost this week.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced more than $22 million to remove contaminated sediment in the river’s Thomson Reservoir in Carlton, Minn. The money makes up a large portion of the $36 million project, with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and PotlatchDeltic, a forest products company that once operated a paper mill in Cloquet, paying the remainder.
The funding “marks a crucial step toward the delisting of the St. Louis River Area of Concern, and ultimately its restoration as a healthy ecosystem,” EPA Great Lakes National Program Office Director Teresa Seidel said in a news release.
Federal bipartisan infrastructure law money will help pay for cleanup at the 330-acre Thomson Reservoir, constructed in 1908. The water is polluted by long-ago unregulated discharge from paper, matchstick, toothpick and building material manufacturing, along with sewage.
The federal and state environmental agencies, along with PotlatchDeltic, will work together to apply a layer of activated carbon pellets over 225,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment. The pellets bind to contaminants, preventing accumulation in bottom-dwelling organisms to protect aquatic life.
The reservoir project signals the final agreement between the state pollution control agency and the EPA to finish remediation work in the St. Louis River, the EPA said.
The largest of the river’s remediation projects is the U.S. Steel Superfund site, paid for by the EPA and U.S. Steel. It will reopen next summer as permanently protected green space with a 2-mile trail extension along the water, a 1-mile wheelchair-accessible loop circling a peninsula, bridges and interpretive signs honoring the Anishinaabe’s ties with the river.
The EPA has said cleanup and restoration work of the river should be finished by 2030, if not sooner. Work on the reservoir will begin this summer.
Star Tribune
Man sentenced to more than 30 years in murder of fellow resident at West St. Paul group home
A 43-year-old man was sentenced to more than 30 years in prison Friday for stabbing to death a fellow resident at a state-operated mental health group home in West St. Paul.
John C. Adams II was found guilty in September in Dakota County District Court of intentional second-degree murder in the death of David Rahn, 68, in 2020. Adams will get credit for 1,777 days already served on his 367-month sentence, and was ordered to pay $2,088 in restitution.
According to the criminal complaint, Adams stabbed Rahn dozens of times in the early morning of Feb. 17, 2020, at the home in the 1500 block of Christensen Avenue. After a staff member heard Rahn scream for help and called 911, police found Rahn unresponsive on the floor of his bedroom with stab wounds to his face, neck and back. He was pronounced dead at the scene, and his death was ruled a homicide.
Adams at first claimed self-defense and later said Rahn had stabbed himself. But the medical examiner found evidence that the victim had tried to fend off the attack. Police found a bloody kitchen knife and a pair of blood-soaked gloves inside bags left at a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses across the street.
Adams was convicted of third-degree assault in 2001 in Hennepin County for smashing a glass in a woman’s face in downtown Minneapolis. The court found him to be “a clear danger to the safety of others” and mentally incompetent to stand trial. His sentence was set aside in exchange for him being put under Security Hospital supervision for at least three years.
In October 2018, Adams was granted provisional discharge from the Security Hospital to the home on Christensen Avenue, but that discharge was revoked less than nine months later for violations of the discharge conditions.
The home of one of three group home operated by the state Department of Human Services for people civilly committed for a mental illness and then discharged from a DHS treatment facility.
Staff writer Paul Walsh contributed to this story.
Health insurer UCare has reached an agreement with HealthPartners clinics, which will allow thousands of patients to continue seeing the same doctors without switching health plans next year.
The two companies announced the agreement Friday evening. The terms are effective immediately.
“As mission-driven organizations, UCare and HealthPartners share a commitment to improving health outcomes for our community, and the organizations’ ongoing collaboration reflects that shared goal,” a joint statement said.
The clinics had been out of network for several years, but UCare had waived rules that would have blocked patients from making appointments. UCare said it would start enforcing the network rules Jan. 1.
Star Tribune
Man charged in Brooklyn Park homicide had connection to 2022 Mall of America fatal shooting
A 19-year-old Coon Rapids man, who played a role in a 2022 fatal shooting at the Mall of America, is facing murder charges in connection with an apparent targeted shooting earlier this month in Brooklyn Park.
Citing witnesses, surveillance footage and cell phone data, prosecutors say that Marquan D. Tucker waited in a parking lot Dec. 7 before opening fire on two people when they exited a business in the 8000 block of Brooklyn Boulevard.
The two victims returned fire, though one was wounded and the other, Ramone R. Blue, 23, of Stewartville, Minn., was killed. The complaint, filed Friday, offers no motive for the shooting.
The shooting happened about seven months after Tucker was discharged from court monitoring related to the 2022 fatal shooting of 19-year-old Johntae Hudson in a department store at the Mall of America, according to court records.
Tucker was charged with third-degree riot in the case and was adjudicated as delinquent, or found guilty, court records said. He was one of three teens who confronted or chased Hudson into the store where the shooting happened. The two teens who carried guns received long prison sentences.
Tucker was being held Friday at the Hennepin County jail. It wasn’t clear if he yet had an attorney.
According to the criminal complaint:
Surveillance video shows a black BMW pull into the parking lot in Brooklyn Park around 1:30 p.m. on Dec. 7. As the two victims exit a business, a man leaves the passenger seat of the BMW, hides behind another car and fires about 16 shots. The gunman then flees in the BMW.
