By Mike Hillman
\n A friend of mine told me a few weeks ago that State Representative Tom Rukavina wanted to increase by five times the legal limit we allow for sulfates in our discharge water. \u201cWhy would he want to do that,\u201d I asked. \u201cThe current standards are too high for the mining companies to meet and they know it\u201d, was my friend\u2019s answer, \u201cThey talked to Tommy about their problem meeting the ten milligram standard, that\u2019s why Tom is asking to lower the current requirements.\u201d \u201cSo much for meeting the highest environmental standards in the world,\u201d I said in response. It leads to the logical question about the fairness of our environmental standards.<\/p>\n
This week the topic of sulfate limits and wild rice was in the local papers, and there was Representative Rukavina asking to have the limits on sulfates raised, because he feels the standards to protect wild rice from mining waste water is too high. Now I know when you serve in the state legislature you have to be familiar with a lot of things, but I was surprised when Representative Rukavina seemed to know something about sulfates and wild rice that the rest of us didn\u2019t know. <\/p>\n
Now I\u2019ve heard about people talking about wild rice before, but it\u2019s usually a few weeks before the late summer wild rice harvest, and the talk is about how this year\u2019s crop of wild rice is going to be, not about how much sulfate the plant can tolerate before it stops producing rice. According to some scientists the current level of ten mg per liter is out of line and according to them a level of as high as two hundred and fifty wouldn\u2019t kill wild rice, but Representatives Tom Rukavina from Pike, and David Dill of Orr, said they will settle for fifty as a reasonable compromise. Reasonable by whose standards I wondered. <\/p>\n
According to Tom Rukavina it\u2019s not just about proposed sulfide mining in Northeastern Minnesota that\u2019s being hampered by the unreasonable sulfate limits, because many of the man made mine lakes, all across the Mesabi Range, have sulfate levels much higher than the ten mg per liter limit the state now sets as the acceptable standard for sulfates. Rukavina said that many municipal water systems across Minnesota can\u2019t match the standards and people seem to be turning a blind eye to those violations. Rukavina thinks the mining people are being singled out and he feels that\u2019s unfair. So instead of keeping the best water quality standards in the world, Rukavina and Dill want us to lower those standards all across the state. Thank heaven for people who are saying that before we lower the current standards that may be wrong, we should make sure they\u2019re not really right. <\/p>\n
I like Tom Rukavina, but I don\u2019t agree with him about changing the rules about sulfates in our water until the state finishes a two year study that will better tell us the truth about sulfates and wild rice in Northeastern Minnesota. Tom Rukavina is from the south side of the continental divide. Where he stands the water runs east and south, and where I stand the water runs north. The water in the St. Louis River is so polluted from mercury from mining waste that the EPCA doesn\u2019t have a plan to deal with cleaning up the mess, and that is a sad thing. Right now the water in the Rainy River Water Shed; the water flowing north to Hudson Bay is in better shape. I want to keep it that way. It would be nice to have high paying jobs, but not if it is going to put poison into our water.<\/p>\n
The truth is the mining companies can\u2019t meet the current standards that we have set in order to protect Northeastern Minnesota from pollution and degradation, and they know it. I hope we take the two years to study the issue, and find out for sure just what a fair and safe measure for sulfates going into either of our major water sheds. The rock here has been waiting two thousand eight hundred million years, so two more years maintaining current standards doesn\u2019t seem a lot to ask.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Mike Hillman A friend of mine told me a few weeks ago that State Representative Tom Rukavina wanted to increase by five times the legal limit we allow for sulfates in our discharge water. \u201cWhy would he want to do that,\u201d I asked. \u201cThe current standards are too high for the mining companies to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51,49,37,54,3,58],"tags":[64,36,66,65,35,60],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elyminnesota.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elyminnesota.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elyminnesota.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elyminnesota.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elyminnesota.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/elyminnesota.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":210,"href":"https:\/\/elyminnesota.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions\/210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elyminnesota.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elyminnesota.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elyminnesota.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}