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Tuesday, September 10, 2019

"A federal watchdog agency is broadening its investigation into the handling of a key water pollution permit for PolyMet Mining's proposed Minnesota copper-nickel mine, giving the probe national scope. Without issuing any findings on the PolyMet case, the Inspector General of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has launched a nationwide audit of comparable water quality permits."

The headline quote: Seeing smoke, indeed a smoke screen of a snow job, mixing metaphors for a four hundred page MPCA water discharge permit absent any regulation of heavy metal effluent contamination, the EPA Inspector General thinks such PolyMet smoke implies there might be a nationwide fire.

It is something like that. Earlier Crabgrass posting [here and here] linked to a Steve Timmer item published as citizen input by MinnPost. Timmer's item provides key facts which will not be presented again here. The latest Strib report revises and extends coverage, with a promise of a second perhaps bigger shoe to drop beyond MPCA staff being caught doing extremely bad politics, with a threat of serious irreversible environmental mischief:

EPA is broadening the scope of its probe into PolyMet water permit -- The EPA's findings from the PolyMet case will be incorporated into a nationwide audit.
By Jennifer Bjorhus Star Tribune
September 9, 2019 — 8:27pm

[... the headline quote] Specifically, it will examine whether the permits adhere to federal law "based, in part," on the Inspector General's examination of PolyMet, which started in June. A memo announcing the move also cited additional hotline complaints that have been lodged since the one in January that launched the PolyMet inquiry.

The agency will fold its PolyMet findings into the national audit, which means it could be many months before anything is released.

The PolyMet permit is now the subject of three separate inquiries — one by the EPA, one by Minnesota's Legislative Auditor and one in Ramsey County court — after Minnesota environmentalists and a memo leaked to the Star Tribune revealed what have been called irregularities in its handling by federal and state regulators.

The expanded audit was announced in a Sept. 5 memo from Kathlene Butler, a director in the EPA Inspector General's Office, to David Ross, the EPA's assistant administrator for water.

"We initiated that work to determine whether the EPA followed appropriate Clean Water Act and NPDES regulations in Region 5 to review the PolyMet permit approved by Minnesota and issued in 2018," Butler wrote in the memo. "We will incorporate the results from our work assessing the PolyMet permit review into this nationwide audit of the EPA's NPDES permit reviews."

The National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) regulates pollutants such as mercury and lead that can be discharged from point sources, such as industrial plants, into surface waters such as lakes and streams.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency issued an NPDES permit to PolyMet last year over serious reservations by the EPA's Region 5 Office in Chicago, which oversees Minnesota's enforcement of federal pollution laws.

[links in original] The Bjorhus-Strib item presents much additional detail beyond its opening paragraphs as set out above. It is a saga of courage of staff people at the federal agency to see the law obeyed despite the unfortunate politics of our State's two Senators, Klobuchar and Smith, and Reps such as Emmer (not even his district) and Stauber, and the Ranger will to say screw the environment, the planet, we want today a handful of additional jobs when Taconite mining remains the heavy hitter and the threat of sulfide mining far exceeds any potential benefit, beyond profit maximizing by conscienceless copper barons; damn all the consequences. There is more at stake than Glencore's bottom line. Our earth. Our waters. A few short term jobs beyond what taconite mining and processing provides. Relatively, a tiny handful of jobs compared to the risks.

While opinions can differ, the Crabgrass opinion is that Klobuchar's conduct re PolyMet (and by extension re Twin Metals) is the death knell of her presidential (vice presidential) ambitions. Too political an animal, too little statesmanship.

UPDATE: On the death knell belief, do some reading. Here and here. Are you impressed? Another link, a different publisher.