October 20th, 2011 | 
Anonymous
WaterLegacy's legal advocacy for health, environmental values and citizens' participation in government decisions includes sharing the results of our focused research on mining and water-protection topics:
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TAKE ACTION! The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has listed 187 new Impaired Waters in Minnesota’s Arrowhead Region due to mercury contamination or harm to the aquatic food chain that supports fish. It is time to stop mining pollution. Learn more and get involved.
- WaterLegacy has prepared detailed criticism of the PolyMet sulfide mine project in our Comments on the draft environmental impact statement (EIS).
- To ensure that the PolyMet project receives appropriate water quality review from both the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, WaterLegacy has obtained a commitment from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to re-issue official notice for the PolyMet Project.
- WaterLegacy has also prepared detailed Comments analyzing the U.S. Forest Service Land-exchange process proposed to allow the PolyMet sulfide mine to proceed.
- Environmental justice (EJ) is an important part of the assessment of impacts on human communities in any Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), whether at the state or the federal level.
- A Mercury Pollution Law Review by WaterLegacy attorney, Paula Maccabee, summarizes applicable water quality enforcement in the case of PolyMet. This article describes legal limitations applicable to mercury increases from mining and minerals processing, based on federal and state law implementations of the Clean Water Act, the Great Lakes Initiative, state mercury standards, and Minnesota’s Statewide Mercury Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL).
- WaterLegacy is taking leadership with tribal and non-Native stakeholders to save wild rice from sulfate pollution. Stands of natural wild rice have been decimated in the St Louis River watershed and elsewhere in the state, due to elevated sulfate levels from mining sites. Naturally-occurring wild rice (manoomin or mahnomen) is a rare and important ecological and cultural resource in Minnesota and other Great Lakes states.
- WaterLegacy also worked with community activists to forestall the Minnesota Health Department’s proposal to repeal groundwater quality standards for manganese, a pollutant from mining that affects the nervous system in children and adults.
- Wetlands/EPA Authority (ARNI). Aquatic resources of national importance (ARNI) designation lends authority to the U.S. EPA under the federal Clean Water Act. Learn more about how this designation may help protect wetlands threatened by the PolyMet proposal and other mining projects in the Great Lakes and across the United States.
- Addressing current and past non-enforcement of water quality regulations in Minnesota's mining sector, WaterLegacy is working to protect standards and strengthen mining permits.
