Starting in 2018, WaterLegacy filed state Data Practices Act requests and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and lawsuits, worked with whistleblowers, and secured a special trial to expose MPCA’s improper actions that hid warnings from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). We and our allies revealed that the EPA concluded that PolyMet’s water permit failed to set enforceable limits to comply with the Clean Water Act and state and tribal water quality standards. But the MPCA had taken the unprecedented action of convincing EPA political appointees under the Trump Administration to withhold the EPA’s highly critical comments. MPCA then deleted its “smoking gun” emails with EPA appointees and kept the EPA’s conclusions hidden from the public, the press, and the courts.
In response to the MPCA’s actions, in August 2023—for the first time ever in Minnesota history—the Minnesota Supreme Court concluded that a state agency had engaged in procedural irregularities. In fact, the Court issued a stinging rebuke of the MPCA, ruling that the MPCA’s irregular procedures to hide federal criticisms of the PolyMet permit and to destroy official documents were “danger signals” that the MPCA “did not genuinely engage in reasoned decision-making.”
The Minnesota Supreme Court’s decision to throw out PolyMet’s water pollution permit was a complete vindication of WaterLegacy’s work after many years of investigation and litigation, much of which was supported by the Impact Fund. The Minnesota Supreme Court not only reversed a major PolyMet permit, but also held that “secrecy is unacceptable.” The Court’s decision has already been cited several times, and we believe it will have important precedential value in Minnesota to protect clean water and regulatory integrity.
Most importantly, since the courts stayed PolyMet’s permits while MPCA’s irregular procedures were investigated and litigated, PolyMet was not allowed to begin mine construction. Although PolyMet’s permits were issued in the fall of 2018, five years later no wetlands have been destroyed, no resources needed for the exercise of treaty-reserved rights have been impaired, and none of the streams, rivers, or lakes in the Lake Superior Basin have been polluted by the proposed PolyMet copper-nickel mine.
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