The (Almost) Daily Brief

Mesabi Metallics Plans $15 Billion Iowa Steel Mill on Minnesota Ore

By Megan Dayton · 9/29/2026

POLICY  A new report ties data center backup generators to a run of federal air-rule changes. The Environmental Protection Network, a nonprofit whose members are former environmental officials, published its Hidden Health Costs of AI Data Centers report and counted 30 federal regulatory actions it says will increase pollution from data centers and the plants serving them. Three reach on-site generation directly. The EPA created a category of small and medium temporary turbines that may stay on a site for two years with reduced monitoring, recordkeeping, and reporting. An EPA interpretive letter lets operators of emergency backup generators bid them into utility demand-response programs, though only inside a local balancing authority rather than an RTO. And the Energy Department issued an emergency order in May authorizing PJM to lean on backup generation at data centers. The report estimates that generators in Virginia running at 10 percent of permitted levels would carry $220 million to $300 million in annual public-health costs. New Jersey regulators assessed a $1.07 million penalty on Sept. 22 against the owner of a Vineland data center after finding it had installed and run 62 natural-gas engines totaling 122.9 megawatts without preconstruction air permits or operating certificates. The company has 45 days from receipt to file the applications or stop running the units.

Sources: Utility Dive, Sept. 28; Engineering News-Record, Sept. 22

ENG  A draft state permit would put the first wastewater treatment plant at a northeastern Minnesota taconite operation. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency holds a public informational meeting on the draft industrial wastewater permit for U.S. Steel’s Minntac tailings basin today at the Iron Trail Motors Event Center in Virginia. Doors open at 5:30pm, the agency presents at 6pm, and questions run from 6:30pm. The permit covers the tailings basin, the wastewater disposal systems, and 8,700 acres of surrounding landscape. It determines that seepage from the basin is functionally equivalent to a direct discharge to surface water, sets interim and final sulfate limits of 41.4 mg/L in the Dark River, 10 mg/L in Little Sandy Lake, and 250 mg/L in groundwater at the property boundary, adds a total phosphorus limit, and adds 10 new groundwater monitoring stations and three new surface stations. The compliance schedule assumes a treatment facility on the west side of the basin and a cutoff wall with groundwater treatment on the east side, with the process water treatment system complete within six years of issuance. Chrissy Bartovich, U.S. Steel senior manager for environmental, put the plant at $150 million and 4 million gallons per day, expandable to 6 million, and said the building needed to house the equipment is larger than a football field. She also said the company has redesigned the facility repeatedly as compliance points shifted, and that construction cannot start until environmental review and permitting finish. A draft permit for U.S. Steel’s Keetac plant goes out for comment next.

Source: Mesabi Tribune, Sept. 25

WORKFORCE  The Labor Department told employers to keep overdose reversal medication on site. OSHA published the fact sheet Sept. 24, directing employers to treat overdose response as a first aid function. Keep naloxone or nalmefene on hand, store the kits in visible and accessible locations alongside first aid supplies and defibrillators, train workers to recognize slow or stopped breathing, blue lips, pinpoint pupils, and unresponsiveness, and train them to administer the medication. The agency says responders should call 911 even when the medication works, because its effects wear off, and that the fact sheet creates no new compliance requirement. Construction and extraction occupations carried the highest age-adjusted drug overdose death rate of any occupation group in 2020 at 162.6 deaths per 100,000 workers, against 117.9 for food preparation and serving, the next highest. Federal researchers tie the pattern to work characteristics including the prevalence of workplace injuries, precarious employment, health insurance status, and lack of access to paid sick leave. A Quest Diagnostics report in July found 1 in 5 workers tested positive for drug use in hair analysis in 2025. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission settled a disability-discrimination suit for $80,000 against an employer that fired a worker for taking leave to enter inpatient treatment.

Sources: OSHA, Sept. 24; Construction Dive, Sept. 28; CDC, MMWR 2022;71:948

ENG  A Saint Cloud pilot destroyed 99 percent of the PFAS in the biosolids it tested. Barr Engineering, the Minnesota firm that ran the pilot for the city’s wastewater treatment plant, used supercritical water oxidation. The process raises the temperature and pressure of biosolids until water reaches its supercritical phase, where oxidation degrades the compounds. Andy McCabe, the Barr environmental engineer who conducted the pilot, called it “a pressure cooker.” The technology works on biosolids, the treated byproduct cities land-apply to fields, and McCabe said there is no natural pathway that breaks PFAS down once it is in the environment. Biosolids carry high organic carbon, so the reaction is exothermic. The heat it releases preheats the material entering the process, and McCabe said a full-scale system would leave excess heat to use elsewhere in the plant. Public services director Luke Langner said Saint Cloud already measures low PFAS in its wastewater and joined the pilot because regulation is coming, and because the city’s treatment facilities are known nationally for taking on new processes. McCabe said scale is the issue. The pilot could go to ten times its size, large municipalities are a few years away, and destruction costs should fall once early adopters and vendors move. Langner said fitting a new process inside an existing treatment footprint can be challenging.

Source: MPR News, Sept. 28

POLICY  The Small Business Administration struck the affirmative action provisions from its civil rights rules. A final rule published today and effective on publication rescinds 13 CFR 112.3(b)(3), which authorized and in some cases required affirmative action based on race, color, or national origin in SBA-assisted programs. It also rescinds 13 CFR 112.7(a) and 112.7(d), drops the sentence of 13 CFR 112.4 reaching the employment practices of federal funding recipients, and makes a technical correction. The agency says the practical effect is that its Title VI regulations reach only intentional discrimination, and that it will not pursue disparate-impact liability against recipients. SBA follows a Justice Department rule issued Dec. 10, 2025, and cites Executive Order 14281 and Alexander v. Sandoval. The rule carries RIN 3245-AI72 and runs at 91 FR 61295.

Source: Federal Register, Sept. 29

ENG  The Garrison roundabout opened on Highway 169 after a 17-day closure. MnDOT opened the new single-lane roundabout at Highway 169, Highway 18, and Monroe Street in Garrison to all traffic on Friday, Sept. 25, along with the pedestrian facilities around it. The rest of the project runs through mid-October. Highway 169 stays detoured for through traffic while crews finish the stretch from south of the Saint Alban’s Bay historic culvert to Crow Wing County Road 26, and all 5 miles open in mid-October. MnDOT says the roundabout and the pedestrian facilities will make the spot on Mille Lacs Lake easier and safer to get around.

Source: Brainerd Dispatch, Sept. 28

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