Minnesota Pollution Control Agency

Contact: Ralph Heussner, 651-296-9677 Pager, 612-579-6802 Gaylen Reetz, 651-296-8856 St. Paul, Minn. -- The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) will appeal an Aug. 9 decision by the Minnesota Court of Appeals that denied a wastewater permit for Annandale and Maple Lake, two fast-growing communities in Wright County, to the Minnesota Supreme Court. The case has far-reaching impact for communities and businesses looking to grow in Minnesota. In a split 2-1 decision, the Court of Appeals ruled that provisions in the federal Clean Water Act prevent any new discharges of wastewater to a lake or river listed as "impaired" under the Act. This restriction stands until a Total Maximum Daily Load, or TMDL, is approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. An impaired water is one that does not meet federal standards for one or more pollutants. "The appeals court decision has a broad impact on the way Minnesota regulates wastewater discharges and on how the state will plan for and accommodate growth," said MPCA Commissioner, Sheryl Corrigan. "Without approved wastewater discharge plans, cities that are at their wastewater capacity now can't issue new residential building permits, and industries can't go forward with construction." A TMDL is an allocation of pollutant reductions on a source-by-source basis in a watershed. These reductions are needed to bring water quality back within standards. Depending on the complexity of a watershed and its pollutants, TMDLs can take up to two to four years and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to complete. To balance the need to accommodate growth and to protect Minnesota's waters before a TMDL is developed and approved, the MPCA argued a new discharge could be permitted if the proposed increase was more than offset by decreases elsewhere in the watershed. That was the case for the new discharge proposed by Annandale and Maple Lake, which had planned to decommission their existing separate facilities and build a larger joint facility. The appeals court rejected this argument and ruled this type of offset is not allowed under the Clean Water Act. The effects of this decision are already being felt by some cities and industries with pending discharge permit applications. On Wednesday, the agency notified six such proposers that their plans to add a new discharge to an impaired water must halt until further evaluation. A coalition of environmental, agricultural, business and local government groups has warned for some time of the possibility that the impaired waters provisions of the Clean Water Act could affect economic growth in Minnesota. The coalition has sought to advance a bill in the last two legislative sessions to provide $80 million annually to fund TMDLs and the projects needed to implement them. The bill received support in the 2005 session, but legislators could not agree on a funding mechanism. "The recent court decision indicates it's more critical than ever for Minnesota to have a statewide plan for addressing impaired waters," said Corrigan. "More and more cities and industries will be feeling the effects of this decision. It has the potential to restrict ecomomic growth significantly and make us less competitive."