Friends and neighbors,

Recently I had an opportunity to publish a column on Minnesota's sulfate standard for MINE edition of the Mesabi Tribune. This is an issue I hear about often around the district and one that is very important to our region, so I wanted to share my column with you below. If you have any questions, please reach out any time.

It is a privilege to serve you!

Sincerely,

Senator Keri Heintzeman

SUBJECT: Minnesota’s outdated sulfate standard threatens Iron Range jobs and communities

By: SENATOR KERI HEINTZEMAN

For decades, Minnesota’s Iron Range has been at the heart of American mining and steelmaking. Generations of families have built their livelihoods in the industry, producing the raw materials that keep our economy strong and our country competitive. Yet today, those jobs and communities face a serious threat, not from global competitors alone, but from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s (MPCA) decision to enforce an outdated and unproven environmental standard.

Let me begin with this: we all want a clean environment. We all want clean water. We all want clean air. That is especially true where we live, work, and raise our families.
For well over a decade, the MPCA has been wrestling with the science of sulfate and its supposed effects on wild rice. After all that time, the agency cannot say that enforcing the old standard will make wild rice healthier and still hasn’t created a new standard based on all that research. What we do know is that other factors such as water depth, sediment, and competing vegetation play a major role in the health of wild rice. Unlike those well-documented factors, the role of sulfate has never been established.

Despite that lack of proof, the MPCA now wants to begin enforcing a rigid and outdated sulfate number on modern permits. This would threaten entire industries and communities without showing any benefit to wild rice. This literally makes no sense.

Why would a regulatory agency cling to a 50-year-old number when the science is unsettled and there is no proven or affordable technology to meet the requirement? Requiring compliance with the standard will waste millions, if not billions, since the MPCA cannot even say that it will improve wild rice.

The controversy centers on Minnesota’s sulfate standard for wild rice waters. This rule, written in the 1970s, has never been updated despite repeated legislative directives. In 2011, 2015, and 2016, state law required the MPCA to revise the standard to reflect modern science. The agency made one attempt, but that rulemaking effort collapsed in 2018. Since then, no progress has been made.

Now, instead of fulfilling its duty to revise the outdated rule, the MPCA is pressing forward with plans to strictly enforce it, giving facilities like U.S. Steel’s Keetac plant an unreasonably short compliance schedule. Even the MPCA itself admitted in 2015 that “because the cost of treating wastewater to remove sulfate is extremely high, it is reasonable and very important to minimize the possibility of applying a standard that is more stringent than necessary to protect the wild rice beneficial use.”

Governor Mark Dayton echoed the same concern, warning that an “impossibly low standard” could devastate industry without any guarantee of improving wild rice conditions. Even MPCA commissioners, when asked directly whether installing costly technology would make wild rice flourish, could not give an answer. Their response was the same: “We don’t know.”

The economic stakes of this policy are staggering. At a September public meeting, experts testified that the cost of building and operating a sulfate-compliant system at Keetac over 20 years carries a net present value of $1.3 billion. According to those calculations, Keetac would operate at a net loss if forced to comply.

For workers and families, the impact translates into lost jobs. The added expense would raise the cost of every ton of taconite pellets by $17.50, an impossible burden in a global market already dominated by fierce competition. With 620 steelworkers already laid off and international competitors undercutting American production, this is the worst possible time to impose costs that could shut down plants and hollow out communities.

Union leaders, local officials, and citizens have made their voices clear. Strict enforcement means closures, layoffs, and devastating consequences for the region. As the director of the Iron Mining Association, a fourth-generation Iron Ranger, testified, “If we don’t mine it here, we don’t have an American steel industry.”

The unfairness of this approach extends well beyond mining. The implications for municipal wastewater facilities are even more concerning. What happens if cities and small towns are required to comply with a wild rice sulfate standard that is drastically lower than the 250 milligrams per liter allowed in drinking water?

By federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) criteria, wastewater treatment costs must remain affordable at less than 2 percent of a community’s median household income. If compliance would push costs beyond that threshold, a municipality would be eligible for a variance. In other words, even the federal government recognizes that there are limits to what can reasonably be required of families and communities.

Yet Minnesota’s proposal disregards this fairness principle. Enforcing an unproven standard could force cities across the state to spend millions upgrading facilities, driving up household and business utility rates far beyond what they can afford, with no evidence of environmental benefit. This is bad science, bad policy, and bad for people.

This is why it makes no sense for the MPCA to force a “one size fits all” sulfate standard of 10 milligrams per liter into permits. Each site is different. Each waterbody has unique conditions. A blanket rule ignores reality and imposes unworkable costs with no demonstrated environmental gain.

If the MPCA insists on having sulfate limits in these permits, those limits must be realistic. They must be specific to the site. And companies must be given a reasonable timeframe to comply. Anything less is unworkable and unfair.

Meanwhile, the MPCA must return to its unfinished job: updating the sulfate standard in light of modern science. Minnesota ultimately needs a standard that is both scientifically sound and practically achievable. Until that work is done, strict enforcement of a flawed number cannot be justified.

The core problem is simple. Minnesota’s sulfate standard is outdated, unproven, and unjustified. Even the agency charged with enforcing it cannot demonstrate that it helps wild rice. Yet it insists on treating a 1970s-era rule as though it were backed by current science and affordable technology.

This disconnect is not only unreasonable but dangerous. Strict enforcement of a rule with no proven benefit undermines trust in environmental regulation, alienates working communities, and risks billions of dollars in losses. It is policy by inertia, not by science.

No one disputes the importance of protecting Minnesota’s wild rice. It is a cultural, ecological, and economic resource. But stewardship cannot come at the expense of fairness or common sense. Enforcing an outdated rule does nothing to help wild rice, yet it threatens the industries and municipalities that support thousands of family-sustaining jobs and provide essential public services.

We should not be forced into a false choice between wild rice and mining, or between wild rice and affordable utility bills for families and businesses. Both can and must be protected. The path forward is balance. That means updated science. That means realistic limits tailored to actual sites. That means reasonable timelines that recognize today’s economic realities.

The MPCA must abandon its attempt to force compliance with a one-size-fits-all standard. It must withdraw its proposal to strictly enforce the outdated rule and instead recommit itself to modernizing the standard as state law has long required. Until then, any regulatory action must reflect three undeniable facts:

The current sulfate standard is outdated and not supported by modern science.
Enforcing it cannot be shown to benefit wild rice populations.
No economically feasible technology exists today to meet the standard at scale.

Recognizing these truths is the only way to avoid catastrophic consequences for workers, families, municipalities, and communities across Minnesota.

Minnesota has always been proud of its natural resources and its hardworking people. Mining and local infrastructure are cornerstones of our state’s economy, identity, and contribution to America’s strength. Our miners, families, and communities deserve policies that are balanced and based in science, not outdated rules from half a century ago.

The MPCA’s current path threatens to erode Minnesota’s role in the national steel supply chain and put thousands of jobs at risk, while draining billions of dollars from communities without any proven environmental benefit. This is not just bad policy, it is unacceptable.

The better choice is balance: protecting wild rice while ensuring the future of mining and keeping water bills fair and affordable for Minnesota families. Minnesota can and must strike that balance. But it cannot do so by clinging to an obsolete rule that even the MPCA admits is unproven. The time has come to chart a reasonable and realistic path forward, before irreparable harm is done to our workers, our communities, and our state’s future.