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WaterLegacy welcomes media inquiries.
Media Contact: Paula Maccabee, Executive Director and Counsel
Phone (office): 651-646-8890
Phone (cell): 651-775-7128
Email: paula@waterlegacy.org
WaterLegacy in the News
MEDIA RELEASE: WaterLegacy Withdraws Outdated Petition to Remove Minnesota Authority to Issue Water Permits for Mining
WaterLegacy | August 25, 2025
“WaterLegacy has withdrawn and voluntarily dismissed its July 2, 2015 Petition to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to remove Minnesota’s delegated authority under the Clean Water Act to issue surface water pollution permits for mining facilities (Petition). WaterLegacy told the EPA this Friday in a brief letter that its decade-old Petition was outdated and “no longer accurately reflected” current conditions in Minnesota.”
Iron Mining Association of Minnesota hosts community event on MPCA sulfate standards
Northern News Now | August 19, 2025
“While the IMA opposes the standard, Paula Maccabee from Minnesota-based nonprofit, WaterLegacy, says they’re in place for good reason.
“The Administrative Law Judge and Chief Judge determined that it was necessary to keep that standard to comply with the Clean Water Act,” said Maccabee.
She said if the standard isn’t met, it will hurt wild rice production.
“It will weaken the seed production and eventually it decimates it,” said Maccabee. “So an area that was once abundant and could feed wildlife, or a whole family, would have just a few sparse stalks.””
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: "We have a sacred duty to protect water and Manoomin (wild rice)"
Aitkin Independent Age | August 13, 2025
“Talon’s proposed nickel mine would dig thousands of feet into the earth and discharge sulfates into surface water. The mine threatens to pollute water, wild rice and fish with sulfate and other chemicals and reduce water levels in shallow lakes. Pollution and dewatering would first harm lakes and rivers in the region then spread to downstream Mississippi and St. Croix rivers. If these waters are polluted, our fish become too toxic to eat, our wild rice dies and our health will suffer.
This is not just an environmental concern. While we come from different spiritual backgrounds, many of our beliefs share a teaching of reciprocal care. All living beings are part of God’s creation and caring for that creation is a sacred duty.”
To protect wild rice, Minnesota moves to cut off pollution from taconite basins
The Minnesota Star Tribune | July 27, 2025
“Many tailings basins today are complexes of multiple cells. Interior dikes criss-cross open water and solid expanses of brown and yellow tailings.
In more than one case, these tailings basins are relying on plans and environmental studies from decades ago to continue their expansion. That’s happened at Milepost 7, a Cliffs-owned basin. Concern that the basin’s dams could fail has spurred two lawsuits from the group WaterLegacy. As a result of one of those suits, a court ordered the DNR last year to consider redoing the environmental impact statement from 1976.
As these basins expand, state permitters at the DNR “simply will not look again at the scientific facts,” said Paula Maccabee, executive director of WaterLegacy.”
Draft permits would require Keetac meet sulfate standard by 2030
Duluth News Tribune | July 17, 2025
“Paula Maccabee, executive director and counsel for WaterLegacy, told the News Tribune that it was “a good thing” the variance was denied and that the MPCA did not jettison wild rice standards when drafting the permit.
Still, she wants to make sure there is a plan for enforcement.
“There needs to be action on the ground,” Maccabee said. “I like the paperwork, but paperwork is not going to reduce sulfate or restore fish habitat.””
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