MPCA Comment Deadline: January 12, 2024, at 11:59 pm

For decades, under pressure from polluting industries–including mining, coal, and corporate agriculture–the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) resisted admitting that Minnesota’s wild rice waters are impaired due to sulfate. MPCA failed to take the tough regulatory action needed to control sulfate, restore wild rice, and reduce mercury contamination in Minnesota waters.

In MPCA’s Draft 2024 Impaired Waters List and related documents, MPCA proposes:

1. Identification of approximately 2,400 Minnesota wild rice producing waters.
2. Listing 20 additional wild rice waters impaired due to sulfate, for a total of 55 Minnesota wild rice waters impaired due to sulfate.
3. No commitment to study and establish sulfate limits to restore wild rice waters impaired due to sulfate.
4. An inadequate plan for reducing mercury contamination of Minnesota’s waters and fish.

MPCA’s draft impaired waters proposal takes important positive steps, but leaves huge gaps in restoring wild rice waters impaired due to sulfate and waters impaired for safe consumption of fish due to mercury.

We suggest, in summary, that you comment by January 12, 2024 and tell MPCA that:

1. You support MPCA’s efforts to identify 2,395 wild rice producing waters and add 20 new waterbodies to the list of wild rice waters impaired due to sulfate.
2. MPCA should also add Dark Lake, a wild rice lake in the Rainy River watershed contaminated by mining pollution, to the list of wild rice waters impaired due to sulfate.
3. MPCA’s current Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) plan to study and reduce pollutants in impaired waters is too weak to protect human health, ecosystems, and the exercise of treaty-reserved rights from sulfate impairment of wild rice and toxic mercury contamination of fish. MPCA should move quickly to:

Restore wild rice waters impaired due to sulfate. MPCA should: a) determine how much sulfate needs to be reduced for each waterbody impaired by mining pollution to comply with Minnesota’s sulfate standard, b) write mining permits with stringent sulfate limits, and c) enforce those permits. This new effort by MPCA would cut the number of Minnesota wild rice impaired waters approximately by half.

Restore mercury impaired waters and fish. MPCA should: a) recognize how sulfate pollution exacerbates the effects of mercury deposited from the air in its studies and plans to restore mercury impaired waters, and b) set firm deadlines to analyze watersheds and establish regulatory controls that reduce mercury to safe levels.

Please feel free to copy, edit, or use any part of this Summary or Talking Points in sending your comments to MPCA on the Draft 2o24 Impaired Waters List proposal. You can write comments in the space provided or upload a separate document or documents. Please let us know if you have problems using MPCA’s comment site.

Talking Points

• Support for MPCA’s Identification of 2,395 Wild Rice Producing Waters. MPCA’s evidence- based recognition of wild rice waters, including waters where wild rice is sparse due to sulfate pollution, is a meaningful positive step. Tribes have sought recognition of wild rice waters for decades, and WaterLegacy has joined in this advocacy for the past 14 years.
• Support for MPCA’s 2024 Addition of 20 Wild Rice Producing Waters Impaired Due Sulfate Exceeding Minnesota’s Standard. In 2015, the Minnesota Legislature passed a session law purporting to prevent listing wild rice waters impaired due to exceedance of Minnesota’s 10 mg/L wild rice sulfate standard. In 2021, the EPA overturned MPCA’s failure to list wild rice waters impaired due to sulfate, stating that this state law could not contradict the Clean Water Act. If MPCA’s 20 additional listings are finalized, there will be 55 waters on Minnesota’s list of wild rice waters impaired due to excessive sulfate.
• MPCA Should Add Dark Lake to Minnesota’s 2024 Draft Impaired Waters List. Dark Lake has been identified by MPCA (as well as by tribes) as a wild rice producing water. It is downstream of U.S. Steel Minntac tailings basin pollution in the Rainy River watershed. This listing is important to establish regulatory controls of pollution on the west side of the U.S. Steel’s Minntac tailings basin.
• MPCA Should Restore–Not Just List–Wild Rice Waters Impaired Due to Sulfate. The Draft 2024 Impaired Waters List says that a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) study of all pollution sources is needed for Minnesota’s wild rice waters impaired due to sulfate. However, MPCA has not committed to complete or implement any study that determines how much sulfate must be reduced to attain compliance with the sulfate standard.
• MPCA Should Move Quickly to Determine Sulfate Load Reductions and Regulate Mining Pollution to Restore Wild Rice Waters. Sulfate discharge from mining pollution is the sole or predominant cause of about half of the wild rice waters sulfate impairments listed by MPCA. The most efficient and common sense way to restore these waters is to set and enforce sulfate discharge limits in mining National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits to reduce sulfate and achieve compliance with Minnesota’s wild rice sulfate standard.
• MPCA Should Admit that Sulfate Exacerbates Mercury Contamination. Peer-reviewed science establishes that sulfate pollution and alteration of wetland hydrology exacerbates the effects of air deposition of mercury. TMDL studies and plans to restore mercury impaired waters must all consider the effects of sulfate pollution and other aggravating factors that increase mercury release from wetlands and sediments and mercury methylation.

Please comment on Minnesota’s Draft 2024 Impaired Waters List by January 12, 2024.

For additional background:

MPCA’s Draft 2024 Impaired Waters List can be found here.

MPCA’s List of Wild Rice Producing Waters can be found here.

More information on the St. Louis River mercury TMDL and Impaired Waters can be found here.