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Elizabeth Dunbar
St. Paul, Minn.

As PolyMet mine comment window closes, all eyes turn to EPA

Duncan Storlie
Duncan Storlie, of Excelsior, Minn., waited with a homemade sign at a PolyMet mine hearing in St. Paul in January.
Matthew Hintz/For MPR News

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The comment period for PolyMet's copper-nickel mine closes Thursday, and although the Department of Natural Resources has already received over 40,000 comments, there's one particular letter everyone following the project is waiting for: the EPA's.

Four years ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave the PolyMet environmental study a failing grade, forcing the company to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to better minimize the project's environmental impacts. The state and federal regulators overseeing PolyMet's environmental review have worked to improve their analysis of the potential impacts, especially to water resources. Although the DNR, National Forest Service and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are in charge of the study, the EPA had a bigger role in this current draft than in the past.

Scroll within the documents below to read more about the significance of certain EPA comments.

• EPA's 2010 comment letter giving PolyMet's environmental review a failing grade

• EPA's August 2013 comment letter on a preliminary draft of the current study that's up for public review

Still, despite praising the agencies in August for making "significant progress," the EPA could express lingering concerns when it submits formal comments today.

"People across the country contacted the EPA. Northern Minnesota and the Lake Superior watershed is a place they know and care about."

That possibility was not lost on some of the proposal's biggest critics — environmental groups and their members. Some 30,000 people have contacted the EPA to urge the agency to use its influence to require further analysis of the environmental impacts. Most of those contacting the EPA did so through an online action alert posted by the National Audubon Society.

"There was a very high response rate," said Don Arnosti, Audobon Minnesota's policy director. "People across the country contacted the EPA. Northern Minnesota and the Lake Superior watershed is a place they know and care about."

PolyMet officials said the EPA's rating is an important step in the process.

"This process is all designed to ensure we have an environmental review that is as good as it can be."

"We're eager to get their mark," spokesman Bruce Richardson said, adding that the company sees the end of the comment period as another milestone. "There's been a tremendous amount of work that's gone into this, and there's still a lot of work ahead of us," he said. "This process is all designed to ensure we have an environmental review that is as good as it can be. So these comments and the feedback we get all figures into that."

It will take months for the DNR and its contractor to wade through the thousands of comments, even though it's likely a large portion of them are form letters. By law, each comment that raises a new issue within the environmental impact statement will get a response. In some cases, the comments could lead to revisions or even new analyses.

Four years ago, during the comment period for the first draft of the PolyMet environmental impact statement, the DNR heard from about 3,800 people. Of those, at least two-thirds were form letters, according to an MPR News analysis.