The proposed changes are “akin to tearing up Section 401 and throwing it in the trash,” wrote Katrina Kessler, assistant commissioner for water policy and agriculture at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA). The changes will “directly harm state and tribal water quality,” Kessler wrote.
Local authorities have also raised concerns over a strict deadline the new rules would impose. From the date a developer proposes a new project, state regulators would have exactly one year to approve it, deny it or impose conditions. No extensions would be allowed, even if developers leave proposals incomplete or fail to respond to requests for information, leaving Minnesota officials worried that developers could simply run out the clock with delays.
Minnesota’s business community, however, welcomes the changes, [...]
Given how MPCA was negligently pliant, if not willfully disposed to bend PolyMet environmentally dangerous proposed mining effluent requiremenhts in a way that declined to police tightly heavy metal and other discharges, MPCA seems not to be the agency claiming ability to do things better. That said, DNR and not MPCA appears to be the lead agency on the Twin Metals EIS review, so let's see how one State agency might show better public responsibility than another. If the TRumpians had their way, his henchpersons would call all the shots and States with sterner requirements would be sidetracked into a powerless cringe, as the Trumpians lay waste to our lands. That worry seems a sound reason to want overlapping jurisdiction with any proposed conduct of business held to meet the stricter of regulatory regimens, State or federal. That seems best, where mistake cannot be undone as with sulfide mining being permitted to happen or being forestalled at least until another day, but not now, in anything like a half-assed fashion, as was to be the sloppy situation with PolyMet before PolyMet's fan loaded up via citizen activism and judicial wisdom.
There is a lesson in all of that, and discerning the lesson is not difficult. Let Minnesota protect Minnesota being the idea, with a federal oversight at play too, so that the stricter of constraints would govern. There is nothing wrong with that. Dual authority, business constrained to conform to whatever environmental protections are most truly protective, is the only policy making sense.