Opinion editor’s note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.
A St. Louis River vision nears reality
In 2013, a cheerful state employee told us that cleaning up a century of pollution on this Great Lakes estuary was doable. He was right.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
August 14, 2024 at 10:30PM
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Eleven years ago this month, a cheerful and determined Minnesota Pollution Control Agency employee stopped by the Star Tribune Editorial Board’s office seeking support for a formidable undertaking: cleaning up a century’s worth of industrial pollution in northern Minnesota’s St. Louis River estuary and bay, enough to remove it from a national list of polluted areas around the Great Lakes by 2025.
The employee’s name: Nelson French. He’d worked for nonprofit conservation organizations before joining the state agency and taking aim at the St. Louis River cleanup.
The river’s meet-up with Lake Superior had been designated in the 1980s as an “Area of Concern,” one of 43 “highly degraded shoreline areas” along the Great Lakes in Canada and the United States. French knew that far too little progress had been made in the decades since.
Nevertheless, he was undaunted. Several key ingredients could make the difference, he told a skeptical editorial writer. Among them: a business plan to make it happen. Another: “creative financing” to tap federal, state and private dollars to fund the work.
The editorial inspired by French’s visit ran on Aug. 17, 2013. It praised the ambitious plan and expressed hope for success. At the same time, it underscored the massive challenges ahead.
French was envisioning one of the state’s largest-ever environmental remediations. And among experts, the St. Louis River Area of Concern (AOC) was often considered to be one of the most complex to tackle because of its size and because it spanned two states: Minnesota and Wisconsin.
So now fast-forward to 2024, which is one year away from French’s aggressive 2025 delisting goal. The St. Louis River remains on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s list of Great Lakes AOCs. It’s likely to remain there in 2025, too. But serious headway has been made, as recent news reports indicate, and delisting is very much attainable.
”A swath of the St. Louis River once teeming with toxic waste is now healthy enough for swimming,“ the Star Tribune has reported. A July ceremony celebrated the opening of a new waterfront recreation area in Duluth, a location that was once the site of U.S. Steel’s coking and milling operation.
“The Superfund site that was closed to the public for decades has been transformed into acres of rolling green space with a new, walkable peninsula, a 2-mile extension of the Waabizheshikana Trail and safe habitat for both aquatic life and woodland creatures,” reporter Jana Hollingsworth wrote.
The completion of this $165 million cleanup, while a worthy achievement on its own, is a milestone in the work to delist the St. Louis River AOC. Thanks to this and other projects completed since French spoke to the Editorial Board in 2013, delisting is clearly in sight. It could happen “shortly after the end of this decade. If not 2030, then a few years after,” said Debra Shore, an EPA regional leader, in an interview.
Context puts what has been accomplished in perspective. Just nine of 43 AOCs around the Great Lakes have been delisted since the 1980s. Six of them are in the United States, three in Canada. That the St. Louis River AOC is poised to join this list in a few years is a significant achievement.
Contacted by an editorial writer, French — now retired — didn’t say “I told you so,” though he certainly would be entitled to. Instead, he praised the teamwork that made this happen, with crucial assists from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the EPA, local and tribal St. Louis River advocates, as well as hard work and dedication by officials from Minnesota and Wisconsin state agencies.
French has also garnered recognition for his efforts. A book called “Great Lakes Champions” has a chapter on him. He also received a prestigious award from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
At a high level, what worked was this: The “roadmap” spearheaded by French and his collaborators broke down what needed to be done, set deadlines, then looked far and wide for pots of federal, state or private dollars available to pay for it. The effort also involved developing firmer estimates on the cost of the project, which earlier efforts had pegged at anywhere from $1.8 billion to $18 billion — daunting overestimates that may have deterred work from starting sooner.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency now puts the total project investment at $467 million. “Non-federal funding includes $24.6 million in state bonds, $19.8 million from the Clean Water Land and Legacy funds, $192.2 million from private parties, and $35.2 million from other sources,” the agency reports. Federal funding from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) “is expected to total about $195.2 million.”
A word about the GLRI, which is a leading federal program to address “legacy pollution,” meaning the contamination left from industry practices before modern environmental regulations. The GLRI is slated to expire in 2026, but a bill championed by bipartisan members of Congress seeks to reauthorize the GLRI through 2031.
Minnesota’s two senators, Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, are cosponsoring the Senate bill. U.S. Reps. Pete Stauber, a Republican, and Angie Craig, a Democrat, are cosponsors of the House version.
So far the bill has yet to gain much traction. But it merits swift passage. Progress on the St. Louis River shows that these cleanups are doable. But there’s still much work ahead to delist all the AOCs that blight the Great Lakes region.
Now that Gov. Tim Walz’s vice presidential bid has ended, there’s important work to do at home. Reinvigorating that “One Minnesota” campaign is a must.
