WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Trump administration will consider rolling back newly set limits on mercury emissions from the Iron Range's taconite plants.
The mercury limits, finalized a year ago under the Biden administration but in the works for several decades, were included in a list of regulations targeted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as part of what it called in a news release as "the greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in the history of the United States."
The limits seek to reduce the industry’s mercury emissions by 33% and would also reduce the industry's hydrofluoric acid and hydrochloric acid emissions.
Cleveland-Cliffs and U.S. Steel, which operate all six of Minnesota's iron ore mines and pellet plants (Cliffs also runs the country's only such facility outside Minnesota: Tilden Mine in Michigan), have previously challenged the rule, arguing the regulations would be too costly, burdensome and require unproven technology.
But environmental groups have vowed to fight back.
Jim Pew, the director of federal clean air practice for Earthjustice, said the decades-long effort to set mercury emission limits on taconite plants clearly demonstrated the law requires such limits.
In 1990, the U.S. Congress amended the Clean Air Act to direct the EPA to set mercury emission standards by 2000, but the agency did not meet that deadline. The EPA also didn't set a mercury limit in its 2003 required hazardous air pollutant rule for taconite processing facilities. Then, in 2005, the Circuit Court of Appeals required the EPA to establish mercury emissions limits.
However, by 2019 and 2020, when the EPA released its proposed and final "National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants: Taconite Iron Ore Processing Residual Risk and Technology Review," mercury standards were again missing.
In 2020, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency called on the EPA to set standards on mercury, and the EPA released a draft of the rule in 2023, which was finalized in March 2024.
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"And now the Trump administration thinks it's going to take that away? Well, it's not," Pew told the News Tribune. "We're going to see to that."
Because the final mercury rule was published a year ago, any rollback would require the EPA to start the rulemaking process again for any rule modification or elimination. That includes publishing drafts of the rule and accepting public comment.
"It will receive some very simple comments pointing out that that's going to break the law," Pew said, "and that it will be sued in court if it tries to finalize the proposal."
Mercury, a potent neurotoxin that can harm human health even in small amounts, is found naturally in taconite and is released into the atmosphere through stack emissions as the taconite pellets are fired, or hardened, in the pelletization process.
The marble-sized pellets are made after the relatively low-grade iron ore is mined, crushed and concentrated. The process allows companies to ship the pellets to blast furnaces further down the Great Lakes where they are made into steel.
Once in the atmosphere, the mercury can then return to Earth, converting to toxic methylmercury as it enters the food chain. Humans consume it primarily through fish.
The MPCA maintains that activated carbon injection and high-efficiency wet scrubbers can reduce mercury emissions by up to 85%.
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But an EPA economic impact analysis for the rule, released under former President Joe Biden, estimated compliance would cost the industry more than $500 million over a decade. Trump's EPA cited that figure in its fact sheet on all of its proposed deregulation.
In 2009, the industry and MPCA agreed that each facility would reduce mercury emissions by 72% by 2025, a goal that was not met, putting the state’s overall mercury reduction goal out of reach as well. As most other industries, most notably coal-fired power plants, have reduced their mercury emissions, the taconite industry has remained relatively unchanged.
"We remain committed to clean air, land, water and climate and the health of Minnesotans and the environment," the agency said in a statement to the News Tribune.
U.S. Steel praised the potential rollback.
“We welcome the historic EPA actions by Administrator Zeldin and President Trump," U.S. Steel spokesperson Andrew Fulton said in an email Thursday. "From our Minnesota iron mines to our Pennsylvania and Indiana steel mills, this commonsense approach protects the environment and will help keep steel like ours mined, melted and made in the USA."
Cliffs did not respond to the News Tribune's request for comment.
The Fond du Lac band of Lake Superior Chippewa, which did not respond to the News Tribune's request for comment Thursday, has argued continued mercury emission from taconite plants would threaten its treaty rights by making the fish they have the right to catch, sell and consume unsafe to eat.
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In a news release Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Minn., celebrated the EPA's announcement and said he was "pleased to see this administration take historic action to roll back these burdensome regulations that raised the cost of living for every American family."
Stauber said the air regulations "would have jeopardized the future of taconite mining in northern Minnesota."
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