Monday – MPCA comes to Red Wing!
April 6th, 2024
Monday — Red Wing’s a happening place! The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is coming to Red Wing. Yes, Monday, 5:30 – 6:30 p.m. downstairs in the Foot Room.
Here’s an announcement in the bEagle:
MPCA to host air permit community meeting
Why? For an informal meeting to explain how air permitting works, what it does and doesn’t do, and the status of the renewal process for both Xcel Energy’s Red Wing garbage burner (above) and the USG plant just south on 61 (check that loading dock right off the road — below — not one I’d particularly like to back into!).
MPCA is working on renewal of both of these LONG expired permits, though they just recently started on the Xcel permit renewal (in agency terms, December, fyi), and USG‘s permit renewal has been in the works longer. I’m so glad the MPCA is taking renewal of permits seriously, and I’m particularly grateful that they’re taking the role of the public seriously!
This is an INFORMAL thing. They’ll be going over what it is involved in a permit renewal, what they look at, how they decide when to work on it, what input the permittee has, and what input we the breathers have, rough idea of timelines, etc., and of course, answer questions we may have. When these permits are in “DRAFT” form, they’re released and then there’s a FORMAL MPCA meeting, that is, if we ask for it after the DRAFT is released.
A fundamental question I have is:
- WE HAVE MAJOR POLLUTERS IN RED WING, BUT THERE ARE NO AIR MONITORS IN RED WING – WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO GET AIR MONITORS IN RED WING?
Make that two:
- HOW MANY POUNDS OF MAJOR POLLUTANTS ARE RELEASED ANNUALLY BY EACH OF THESE FACILITIES, i.e., HOW MANY POUNDS OF LEAD; HOW MANY TONS OF CO2; NOW MANY POUNDS OF OXIDES OF NITROGEN…
The list goes on. Here are some estimates of pollutants from an Alan Muller presentation on the permit for the HERC burner in Minneapolis when it was wanting to increase garbage throughput:
How much of each of these and other pollutants are coming out of the Xcel garbage burner and USG stacks into our air?
Alan Muller and I have been pushing the Red Wing City Council to get on the MPCA and Xcel to deal with this permit that expired in 2009. Not long after he learned it had been expired for so long, he filed a Data Practices Act Request for a list of air permits and dates of renewal and/or expiration, and found that most air permits in Minnesota at that time were expired! I’m sure that was at least 8-10 years ago, but the MPCA has been struggling with prior decades of budget cuts and insufficient resources to do the job. Each time this comes up, we advocate for full funding so they CAN do the job. Oh well, it’s better but not sufficient.
Anyway, I got on the MPCA to come down to Red Wing and let us know what to expect. The unfortunate thing is that it’s the same night as the City Council meeting, and there wasn’t wiggle room in the Library’s schedule to change the date. Well drat.
April 9th, 2024 at 4:28 pm
What were results of the meeting? We live on E. 7th St. And I have been calling Xcel garbage burning plant for years. The stink is horrendous especially on days when the hot air is inverted. Smells like n e rotten diapers. I have talked to management many times there. He even blamed it on the new barge docking area…really? We have lived here 30 yrs. It is only getting worse. Our cars get covered with silty black stuff somedays. what are we breathing in? We would like to sell our home, but who wants to live near this polluting xcel burner. I see more and more semitrailers from the twin cities bringing their trash here for them to pollute the air and environment.they also Jake brake constantly. No follow up on complaints about that either.