Cleaning up the haze over the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and Voyageurs National Park received a boost in recent weeks in actions by a state and a federal agency.

Late last month, in response to a petition from MCEA and other organizations, the U.S. Interior Department’s assistant secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks sent a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency saying that his department agreed with the petition and more should be done to cut air pollution from Xcel Energy’s Sherco power plants in Becker.

Also, in late October, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s Citizens Board declined to approve the state implementation plan for cutting the haze. Mary Marrow, MCEA’s attorney on the issue, argued that the plan was too weak

“Division among PCA board members shows the concerns board members have with what is in this state implementation plan,” Marrow said. “Barbara Battiste, one of the board members who voted against the state implementation plan, said the PCA is not being aggressive enough with its proposal. Her concerns mirror the concerns of the land managers in both the National Park Service and the Forest Service and issues raised by the coalition of environmental groups.”

Voyageurs, the Boundary Waters and Isle Royale in Lake Superior suffer from days when visibility in these pristine areas is less than perfect. That impairment is the result of human activities. Research, including by Xcel itself, has found that the utility’s power plants in Becker are responsible for haze over the Boundary Waters on more than 200 days a year. Taconite mining also was found to be part of the problem in causing haze.

On Sept. 3, MCEA, National Parks Conservation Association, Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness and Voyageurs National Park Association petitioned the federal government asking for help in setting more stringent air pollution standards on the Xcel power plants.

Six weeks after the petition was filed,  the assistant secretary wrote to the EPA’s regional administrator in Chicago and certified that the haze over Voyageurs and Isle Royale was due in part to Sherco 1 and Sherco 2 power plants, and that they should be required to use the best available technology to cut nitrogen oxides by 10,000 tons per year.

At the Pollution Control Agency’s October board meeting, Mike Ward, superintendent of Voyageurs National Park, and Jim Sanders, supervisor of the Superior National Forest, which contains the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, testified on behalf of tougher standards.

According to a story by John Myers in the Duluth News Tribune, the two men asked for tougher requirements on taconite and coal-burning power plants. Sanders said the agency’s haze plan fails to require taconite plants to measure how much pollution they emit. It also fails to set standards for how much they need to cut, he said, according to Myers story.

The board is expected to take up the issue again at its November board meeting later this month.