Army Department August 6, 2008 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

U.S. SteelMinnesota Ore Operations (U.S. Steel) has applied to the St. Paul District, Corps of Engineers (Corps) for a Clean Water Act Section 404 permit to discharge fill material into jurisdictional wetlands to facilitate the expansion of an operating open pit taconite mine and expansion of an operating taconite ore processing facility near Keewatin in Itasca County and St. Louis County, MN. Tailings would be discharged into an existing, operating tailings basin. The proposed project is known as the Keetac Expansion Project. Iron ore mining and taconite pellet production have been on-going at the Keetac site since 1967, when the original Phase I taconite processing plant began operation. In 1977, the Phase II expansion added a second grate-kiln pellet line. The Phase I facility was idled in December 1980, leaving the Phase II facility as the only operating pellet production line. U.S. Steel now proposes to increase the capacity at the Keetac facility by restarting the Phase I line and upgrading the mining, concentrating, and agglomerating processes. The restart would involve the installation of energy-efficient technologies in addition to new emission controls. The expansion would increase the project impact area by approximately 1,272 acres to a total of approximately 12,864 acres. The project would continue to operate 24 hours per day; 365 days per year. Taconite pellet production output would increase by 3.6 million tons to a total output of 9.6 million tons per year. The mining process would require the construction of overburden, waste rock, and lean ore stockpiles adjacent to the open pit mine. There is currently adequate ore crushing capacity for the proposed expansion. The existing tailings basin would be expanded slightly in order to reinforce the dikes so that the height of the tailings can be increased. The currently permitted mine could also be used to provide ore for the proposed expanded operation, but this would reduce the life of the mine and therefore an expansion of the mine is proposed to maintain twenty-five years of permitted capacity. The project would require the discharge of fill material into approximately 620 acres of wetlands. While some of the wetlands may be isolated, the majority of the wetlands are abutting or adjacent to an unnamed tributary to Welcome Creek, which is a tributary to O'Brien Creek, which is a tributary to the Swan River, which is a tributary to the Mississippi River, which is a navigable water of the United States. U.S. Steel proposes to utilize approximately 395 acres of wetlands that have been restored and are being monitored adjacent to the existing tailings basin to compensate for the first five years of lost wetland functions and values that would be caused by the proposed project. Those restored wetlands have been identified as being suitable for wetland banking. In addition, U.S. Steel will submit a compensatory wetland mitigation plan to identify compensation for the remainder of the proposed wetland impacts. The discharge of dredged or fill material into waters of the United States requires a permit issued by the Corps under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. The Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) will be used as a basis for the permit decision and to ensure compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

The purpose of the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is to address alternatives and environmental impacts associated with the conveyance of approximately 900 acres of Federal land at Lake Texoma, Oklahoma and Texas, to the city of Denison, TX.