MagIron LLC proposes to restart a mining and processing facility near Grand Rapids, northwest of the Canisteo Pit, that hasn’t been mined since the 1980s. MagIron’s plans will require new air and industrial wastewater permits so the company can reprocess coarse tailings from the site’s three former tailings basins and several stockpiles to produce iron concentrate in a process called scram mining.
Our role
The MPCA is responsible for issuing and enforcing permits that limit emissions from MagIron’s operations to protect the environment and health of Minnesotans. Those permits reflect current state law and regulations.
The MPCA issued an industrial wastewater permit for the site on July 1, 2024, and an air permit for the site on Oct. 30, 2024.
Project information
MagIron is the new owner of three former mining sites west of Coleraine: the Prairie River Minerals Demonstration Plant, the Mag Mining Plant 4 (also known as Magnetation Plant 4 and ERP Iron Ore Plant 4), and Jessie Loadout. The three combined sites are now known as MagIron Plant 4. The Prairie River Minerals site is a scram mining operation designed to crush and process low-grade legacy waste rock stockpiles into high-grade iron ore in the form of lump ore and sinter feed. The site can produce a maximum of 1.75 million metric tons of lump ore and sinter feed per year. Plant 4 is also a scram mining operation but is designed to produce iron concentrate from legacy tailings basins and other stockpiled iron-bearing materials. Plant 4 can produce 3 million metric tons of concentrate per year. Jessie Loadout is a rail loadout facility that will receive concentrate from Plant 4 where it will be loaded to railcars for shipping. Jessie Loadout can also handle up to 3 million metric tons of concentrate per year. MagIron proposes to mine in phases over five years.
The main air pollutant of concern across all three sites is particulate matter. MagIron will use control strategies to reduce emissions from its paved and unpaved roads, long-term material storage areas, stockpiles, and exposed mining areas. It will also operate water sprays on the material processing equipment at two locations at the Prairie River Minerals site to control particulate emissions. The MagIron facility is also considered an area source for hazardous air pollutants.
The air permit replaces an existing permit for Prairie River Minerals and includes Plant 4 and Jessie Loadout as a single stationary source of emissions. It also incorporates the existing equipment from those sites along with material handling equipment, a screen, and a fabric filter-controlled cone crusher that comprise a new fixed crushing circuit that MagIron proposes to construct at Plant 4. MagIron is not proposing any changes or modifications to the Prairie River Minerals or Jessie Loadout sites.
The air permit includes updates to the fugitive dust emissions control plan.
The wastewater permit requires the installation of four additional groundwater monitoring wells to detect potential contamination from the project. It also requires monitoring for aluminum in all its groundwater wells and in the site’s pond.
MagIron will contain all snowmelt and rainfall within dikes and will store all wastewater from mining processes in a tailings pond. It will recirculate and reuse about 10.2 million gallons of water per day from that pond and obtain an additional 2.5 million gallons of water per day from the Canisteo Pit. The facility will not discharge industrial stormwater or wastewater to wetlands, streams, or lakes.
