More underhanded crap from the sulfides-heads
These rules changes have been in the works at the Minnesota Pollution “Control” Agency for a while. It’s all getting a legal review, now.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) wants to avoid enforcing water quality standards that control pollution from mines, coal plants, and other polluters! MPCA has proposed rules to deregulate Minnesota mining pollution. What would MPCA’s rules do?
– Remove Minnesota’s numeric standards limiting typical mining pollutants, including chlorides, hardness, bicarbonates, conductivity, and salinity.
– Weaken Minnesota water quality standards that prevent excessive sulfate.
– Provide no limits on discharge based on protecting Minnesota waters. Protect water quality only for large downstream appropriators of water (using a minimum of 1 million gallons per year or 10,000 gallons per day).
– Narrow the protection of wildlife to “watering,” treating wildlife like livestock and removing wetlands from wildlife use.
WaterLegacy
This is of course just another example of the MPCA’s complete perversion, in recent years, of what it’s supposed to be about. I sometimes wonder what goes on in the heads of idealistic young people, not long out of college, who go to work there and see in a hurry what’s really going on. Or do those kinds of people even get hired there, any more?
(Way back when, when I worked for an engineering firm, I went to the MPCA’s main office once and did a demonstration of soil compaction testing techniques. My rapt audience – OK, not really “rapt,” I suppose, more like mildly interested and happy to get a little break from their desks – did indeed have the appearance and vibe of at least somewhat idealistic young people. But that was about 30 years ago.)
Word is that one of President-elect Biden’s first actions, on his first full day in office Thursday, will be snuffing out Keystone XL, once and for all. He’s already got an unprecedented climate team lined up. He clearly wants to go down as a great president for the environment. Hopefully that will extend to an interest in what’s been going on in Minnesota.
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