Last year I wrote about several initiatives and goings-on that were not resolved. To kick off 2025, I thought I’d revisit some of those issues and find out what’s happened.

School trust lands continue to stir controversy

This story from September 2024 described the years-long effort to solve the problem of state-owned land (about 80,000 acres) inside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Minnesota’s school trust lands are required to be managed to benefit schools, but they cannot be logged or mined for the revenue to support schools as long as they are locked inside the wilderness.

Some northern Minnesota politicians have advocated a trade for these lands—the state would give up those acres in exchange for comparable pieces outside the wilderness, which could then be logged and mined. But the Minnesota DNR and the federal U.S. Forest Service have agreed on a purchase plan instead.

I spoke with Aaron Vande Linde, who directs Minnesota’s Office of School Trust Lands. He said last fall he met with some politicians and the Permanent School Fund Commission to present calculations showing that Return on Investment under an exchange would hover around .16%, while returns under a sale would approximate 4.58%.

“I explained to the legislators that school trust lands are not about community development or jobs, but about generating long-term support for schools.” Vande Linde added that he expects some bills during the coming session “that would tell me what I can and can’t do,” but his job is to implement the laws already written.

Vande Linde’s department is now in the process of getting the school trust land inside the Boundary Waters appraised. The next move will be to condemn the land so it can be sold to the Forest Service. That process will take place in three northern Minnesota county courts later this winter. In the last several years Congress has appropriated $51 million for the purchase. “It’s sitting in an account waiting for the Forest Service to make the acquisitions,” Vande Linde said.  The money is in the Land and Water Conservation fund, which is funded by proceeds from federal offshore oil and gas leasing royalties. Vande Linde hopes the entire process will be completed by the end of this year.

Meanwhile, his office is beginning to change some aspects of how it manages school trust land. “We’re looking at it from an ecosystem point of view, how these lands can help us combat climate change.” In a pilot project, the office worked with the DNR to exchange land to facilitate wetland banking. “There may be new uses of land to create different types of revenue,” Vande Linde says.

Underground… and out of mind?

This story, from April, described a proposed new sulfide mine in a novel location: in Aitkin County, just north of the tiny town of Tamarack, about 30 miles west of Cloquet. he new venture plans an underground mine and proposes to send the mined rock to North Dakota by train, avoiding the need to stockpile waste rock in Minnesota.

The environmental group Water Legacy submitted a paper to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and other responsible agencies, arguing that a deeper and broader study of potential impacts of mining in the water-rich area is needed. The agencies declined to take the advice, saying “It is doubtful that such a study would provide better information than is already provided in the robust EIS process.” 

Talon is a British Virgin Islands corporation partnered with Rio Tinto, a British-Australian company and the second largest metals and mining corporation in the world.   

Talon submitted its first Environmental Impact Statement in June of 2023. After questions and comments from the DNR and the public, the company submitted a second EIS in October, 2023. Following more back-and-forth, Talon announced it would make major changes to its plans.

In early publicity, Talon trumpeted its plan to use a tunnel-boring machine. We’ve seen these gigantic rock-eaters on the news, rumbling under city streets to create tunnels for new subways. They’ve never been used in a mine. Talon’s latest plan abandons that idea and its attendant looped tunnel, returning to standard blasting techniques and saying the change will lessen the volume of what it calls “development rock,” and what most mines call “waste rock.”

The new plan also calls for the use of unit trails (that carry one type of freight to one destination) instead of manifest trains (mixed cars), addressing a head-scratching vagueness in the earlier plan, which had not specified how many shipments would be made on a regular basis.

The U.S. Defense Department is funding nearly half of Talon’s exploration budget in Minnesota and Michigan.

Water Legacy’s attorney, Paula Maccabee, says there are too many open questions. “The technology they’re proposing, where one concentrator turns everything into a product instead of waste, is just a theory.” She says Talon has done little to investigate the feasibility and cost of shipping so much rock. “They’re trying to greenwash the project: get a permit, then they believe the public will be cut out of the process and they’ll change their plan and do what they want to do,” says Maccabee. “It’s too early to know if the DNR is really being more careful and what they’ll require of Talon, but it’s a hopeful sign that they didn’t immediately rubber-stamp the plan.”

The DNR’s website indicates the Talon project is at the very beginning of what could be a years-long process.

CO2 pipeline proposed across the Upper Midwest

There have been a lot of twists and turns in this story, and that will likely continue for some time. Iowa-based Summit Carbon Solutions wants to build a 2,500-mile pipeline to capture carbon dioxide from ethanol plants, carry it across five states, and bury it in rock formations in North Dakota. Resistance to the project seems to be growing among some landowners, and states have been responding in different ways.

Iowa regulators approved the plan in June; the approval includes allowing public domain condemnation of land if owners are unwilling to agree. In a concession to the opposition, Summit must get permits in South and North Dakota before it can begin construction in Iowa. The company will also have to secure and maintain a $100 million insurance policy, and it will be required to compensate landowners for any damages that result from the pipeline’s construction.

North Dakota had first denied approval, but Summit changed its proposed route, and that prompted approval in November. North Dakota’s Public Service Commission chairman, Randy Christmann, reassured citizens that the approval did not allow Summit to use eminent domain. Two counties in the state had rules restricting pipelines, but the PSC’s decision signified that state rules supersede county ordinances.

North Dakota’s Industrial Commission approved the storage location west of Bismarck, where three injection wells will pump the carbon into pore space—gaps and voids between the rocks. The Commission used a new rule called amalgamation. If at least 60% of the landowners in the storage area approve, the other 40% are forced to comply. A lawsuit is underway in state court challenging the rule’s constitutionality.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission in December approved a 28-mile stretch from a Fergus Falls ethanol plant to the North Dakota border, setting conditions to protect landowners and the state. Construction must start in another state besides Minnesota, and the company must achieve voluntary landowner agreements along the entire route before the start of construction. It must provide nearby landowners with CO2 detectors and pay for training and equipment for first responders along the route.  The Department of Commerce is directed to review insurance requirements, decommissioning costs, and the security instrument that will enable payment in advance for closing costs.

In Nebraska, no state-level agency is tasked with approving such projects, so Summit is requesting permits in individual counties.  

The planned pipeline is turning into a major political issue in South Dakota. A year ago, the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission denied the company a permit, saying the plan violated county zoning ordinances. The legislature passed a law in 2024 to override county restrictions, providing some protections for landowners but allowing the use of eminent domain.

Critics objected to a portion of the law they said would require counties to prove their zoning laws are reasonable, rather than requiring the company to prove them unreasonable.

Voters forced the law onto the November ballot and repealed it, handily overcoming a reported $1 million dollar ad campaign by ethanol megaproducer POET (don’t ask me what that stands for).

They also ousted fourteen incumbent state legislators, many of whom had supported the law.  

The state’s Public Utilities Commission is currently considering Summit’s re-application after the company changed its route.

With a price tag currently set at $9 billion, the 2,500-mile Midwest Carbon Express pipeline would link 57 ethanol plants across the upper Midwest, taking advantage of federal tax credits of $85 per ton of CO2 sequestered.

The federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) on January 15 announced plans for new safety rules for CO2 pipelines. The proposed rules would require pipeline operators to provide training for emergency responders and ensure needed equipment is available. It would also create more robust requirements for public communication during an emergency.

Farmers and environmental groups want Minnesota to put a lid on pesticide-treated seeds

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) says almost all corn seeds and nearly half of soybean seeds used in Minnesota are coated with pesticides prior to planting. Typically the seeds are dosed with neonicotinoids, which are absorbed by plants, making the whole plant toxic to insect pests. Many researchers believe the precipitous decline in insect populations worldwide, including pollinators, is due in part to the increasing use of pesticides. But so far, MDA says it doesn’t have the authority to regulate the use of seeds coated with them. A farmer and three advocacy groups petitioned the MDA to study the matter and develop some rules.

Here are their requests and a summary of MDA’s response:

• Collect and make public accurate data regarding the nature and extent of treated seed use in Minnesota.

MDA response: “The Legislature has not granted authority to collect sales data on pesticide-treated seed” in spite of a 2020 report from the Office of the Legislative Auditor “recommending the Legislature grant the MDA the authority to regulate neonicotinoid-treated seeds.”

• Prohibit use of seeds coated with treatments that have not been registered by MDA for that purpose.

MDA response: “While this petition request could lead to more pesticide products being registered in Minnesota, it is unlikely to alter the use patterns of pesticide-treated seeds or provide information to better understand pesticide-treated seed use in the state.”

• Ensure farmers’ ability to access popular seed hybrids that are not treated with insecticides.

MDA response: “Writing rules to take this action would fall outside of the MDA’s jurisdiction.”

• Require written “verification of need” to rein in widespread use of treated seed in circumstances that do not benefit farmers.

MDA response: this “would require massive investments into research… before assessing when and where pesticide-treated seeds could be verified as “needed.”

Overall, the MDA said it “lacks the financial resources or jurisdiction to implement the requested actions,” but it invited the petitioners to a meeting.

In an email, Lucas Rhoads, senior advisor to the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, said the groups plan to meet with the agency later in January. “The Minnesota Environmental Rights Act, on which the petition is largely based, allows the public to bring a lawsuit to enforce Minnesotans’ rights under the statute. Petitioners are considering that, but have not made any decision,” Rhoads said.

That’s where things stand on some of the issues I reported on last year. If you have ideas about other issues we should be looking at, write to us at info.agatemagazine@gmail.com.