Last Milepost in the Taconite Case?

The prolonged Reserve Mining case may become a classic example of the problem of reconciling health and environmental protection with jobs and profits. After nearly six years of litigation in state and federal courts and the expenditure of millions of dollars on legal fees, the battle appears to be nearing legal resolution. The company will have to stop dumping asbestos-like taconite tailings into Lake Superior as soon as it completes a suitable disposal site on land—which will take until 1980. The year's chronology of legal decisions follows in brief:

Early in 1977, the Minnesota district court ruled in favor of Reserve Mining's Milepost 7 disposal site rather than the more distant Milepost 20 site recommended by the state. It ordered the state Department of Natural Resources and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to issue the necessary disposal permits. The state agencies appealed the decision to the state supreme court and lost.

In late spring, the original federal court decision (which would have required the company to shut down by July 7, 1977) was modified to allow Reserve to continue discharging its tailings into Lake Superior until April 15, 1980, pending completion of the on-land disposal basin.

By July, the state agencies issued the disposal permits. Perhaps for all practical purposes, the case could have been considered closed, except that the company contested in court some of the conditions relating to air and water quality standards stipulated in one of the state permits. The court ruled in favor of Reserve's position and once again the state appealed the decision to the state's supreme court.

Based on previous experience, it would be hazardous to guess when this issue will be settled. But meanwhile, some major results of the long litigation can be summed up as follows:

• Reserve Mining has begun preliminary construction of an on-land waste disposal site for tailings, which along with the accompanying transport network is expected to cost $370 million.
• Tailings will continue to be discharged into the lake until 1980, and the residents of the north shore communities will still drink filtered water.
• Reserve has agreed to modify its production process to lower the ambient levels of asbestiform fibers in the air which an earlier court decision had held to present a risk to health.
• A major source of iron ore is still in production, and the residents still have their jobs in what otherwise would have been an economically depressed area.
• Along the way, the court assessed the company $1 million in fines and court costs for violations of the state water-discharge permits and of earlier court orders. On two issues the results are not yet in: What price, if any, has been paid in human health and what lessons for regulatory policy, if any, can be learned from the legal marathon.