At Iron Range hearing, miners warn of closures if wild rice rule enforced

VIRGINIA, Minn. — Staff removed the ballroom’s divider and brought in more chairs, but there were still not enough seats for the dozens of attendees who stood throughout the two-and-a-half-hour meeting.

Hundreds of miners, Iron Range residents and environmentalists gathered at the Iron Trail Motors Event Center on Wednesday evening, Sept. 3, to address the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency directly on a pair of draft water permits that, if finalized, would limit the amount of sulfate at U.S. Steel’s Keetac iron ore mine and tailings basin in Keewatin so wild rice waters downstream don’t exceed the state’s 10 parts per million (ppm) standard.

Miners say the rule — on the books since 1973 but not enforced — is too stringent and expensive to achieve and would threaten thousands of mining