The demand for steel is increasing worldwide, driven by population growth and the growing economies in developing countries. The material will also be important for the green energy transition, forming the backbone of infrastructure such as wind turbines, solar panels and hydroelectric dams. Every part of the steel supply chain is heavily polluting, and the places in the US where the steel industry is concentrated are disproportionately low-income and non-white, highlighting yet another case where the promises of development and climate solutions are on the wane. cost to some communities. What’s more, the country’s steel production is dominated by just two companies: US Steel and Cleveland Cliffs.
For both companies, much of their production begins with taconite, a low-grade iron ore mined in northeastern Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range, which is processed into pellets that are shipped to steel mills in Gary, Indiana. Extracting the ore from taconite rock releases a host of toxic pollutants into the air, including mercury, lead and dioxins. In this region, mercury is the most worrisome of these emissions.
Studies have linked mercury to a range of negative health effects. It is a neurotoxin which can interfere with brain development in unborn children and an endocrine disruptor that can weaken the immune system. Scientists have yet to determine an amount of mercury that is safe for human consumption. One recent study found that there is “no evidence” for a threshold “below which neurodevelopmental effects do not occur.” And while the taconite industry releases less than a ton of mercury into the atmosphere each year, the metal is toxic in extremely small amounts: a fraction of a teaspoon can pollute a twenty-hectare lake.
The nation’s six taconite plants, all in this region of Minnesota, are owned by US Steel and Cleveland Cliffs. In May 2023, the EPA proposed a regulation it will require the companies to reduce their mercury emissions by about 30 percent. To meet that standard, the companies would have to install equipment that would inject carbon atoms into their industrial chimneys so that the carbon would attach itself to the mercury atoms, making the pollution particles larger and allowing them to be trapped in a filter before they could enter be released to the atmosphere. The agency estimates that its regulation will cost the industry $106 million in capital costs and $68 million a year thereafter.
Last month, when the standards were finalized, both companies sued. They argue that the regulation would cause “irreparable damage” to the industry due to the high cost of implementation. They also argue that the EPA’s proposed method for reducing mercury pollution would actually be worse for public health, causing a 13 percent Increase in the amount of toxic metal deposited in the local environment.
“EPA is not only requiring industry to restructure its operations and build new pollution control facilities at unprecedented cost, it is requiring facilities to commit to associated disruption of their current operations, spending hundreds of millions of dollars and risking their productive capacity and indeed ability to fully to operate, to design, permit and install a technology with no demonstrated ability to actually work,” the companies wrote.
Jim Pew, an attorney at Earthjustice who has filed several lawsuits against the EPA for its failure to curb pollution from the taconite industry, pointed out that the cost of implementing the required equipment is a small fraction of the companies’ annual sales would be. which totaled $40 billion in 2023. Pew noted that US Steel recently initiated a $500 million share buyback program, the sign of a healthy revenue stream. As for the companies’ claim that the technology will increase mercury pollution, Pew called it “without merit.” The companies are “relying on a premise they know is false” — that taconite plants will add the carbon technology without also improving their filtration system.
“I find it reprehensible and shameful,” Pew said. “While claiming that it cannot spend money to clean up historical pollution, US Steel is only handing out money to its shareholders.”
In an email, a spokesperson for US Steel told Grist that the company’s lawsuit was intended to ensure that the EPA’s new regulations are “aligned with sound science and regulatory procedures.” The spokesperson went on to say that the company tested the available emission reduction technology at one of their plants in Minnesota and determined that it did not meet the mercury limits set by the agency. “We remain committed to environmental excellence, as do the nearly 2,000 hardworking men and women of our Minnesota Ore Operations.” Cleveland Cliffs did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Pew sees the lawsuit as part of a multi-pronged attack by the steel industry against federal regulations. Over the past several years, the EPA has also proposed standards for the other types of facilities involved in steel production. These two companies have threatened litigation at every turn and recently urged a bipartisan group of lawmakers to send a letter to EPA Administrator Michael Regan, asking him to loosen the new standards for steel mills.
Minnesota Historical Society via Getty Images
Under the provisions of the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency was supposed to propose standards to control toxic emissions from taconite plants in 2003. When they failed to do so, environmental advocates from the Save Lake Superior Association and other groups did sued the following year. In a federal circuit court filing, the EPA admitted it had failed in its duties, and promised to move with “all due process and speed” to fill the gaps in its regulations.
Years passed without a federal rule, and in 2007 Minnesota began an effort of its own, set standard for mercury pollution in water and two years later to become the first state to develop a plan to achieve it. The standard required industries across the state to reduce their emissions by a cumulative 93 percent, and over the next decade, power plants, crematoria and other mercury emissions achieved major reductions. However, emissions from the taconite industry remained unusually high. Its share of the state’s total mercury emissions jumped from 21 to 46 percent between 2005 and 2017.
Mercury contamination is of particular concern to tribal lands like the Fond du Lac Band, which fish and grow wild rice throughout the state’s vast network of rivers, lakes and streams. “We find that over a lot of ceded territory, there’s been very good regulation, but there’s been a lot of flexibility in enforcement,” says John Coleman, an environmental scientist with the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission.
Tribes have repeatedly urged the EPA to honor its 2003 promise. They have good reason to worry: one study found 10 percent of babies born on the north shore of Lake Superior have elevated mercury levels in their blood.
It took the agency until last May to finally propose its regulation, which is, of course, being challenged. Still, for the tribes of northeast Minnesota, the EPA’s rule has been a resounding disappointment. Even if US Steel and Cleveland Cliffs cut their mercury emissions by 30 percent, the companies’ operations would still allow hundreds of pounds of mercury to enter the state’s waterways each year.
“We believe that these proposed standards do not go far enough to restore and protect the health and well-being of the environment and our community,” wrote Paige Huhta, Fond du Lac’s air program coordinator. a letter to the EPA last july She pointed out that the EPA itself has found that exposures among specific subpopulations, including some tribes, can be more than twice that experienced by the average American. But when the agency finalized the rule this past May, it did not deviate from its original reduction requirements.
“Water is an important part of the landscape up here,” said Nancy Shuldt, the Fond du Lac Band’s water projects coordinator. “We have a water-rich landscape and water sources form the foundation of tribal livelihoods.”
And because it’s a metal, mercury doesn’t break down into less toxic substances like other industrial pollutants. It remains in the environment for hundreds of years. In northeastern Minnesota, and to a specific group of people, much of the damage has already been done.
