Tilden mine receives two-year exemption from federal Taconite rule
Tilden mine receives two-year exemption from federal Taconite rule
Publish Date: 2026-04-28 17:10:00
Source Domain: www.uppermichiganssource.com
MARQUETTE COUNTY, Mich. (WLUC) – A U.P. mine has been given an additional two years to adhere to new federal emission standards.
In January of 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency amended the Taconite Iron Ore Processing Rule to tighten standards for hazardous air pollutants. It also placed emission standards on mercury from Taconite facilities for the first time, with a deadline for these sites to adhere to new standards by March 2027.
However, last March, the EPA announced it would reconsider that rule, at the same time that it invited major industrial sites to seek presidential exemptions under the Clean Air Act. Cleveland Cliffs Inc. was one of the corporations that requested exemptions and had them granted. Included in the exemptions are two U.P. mines: Empire and Tilden. While Empire Mine is idle for the foreseeable future, Tilden is still active.
TV6 found the 2025 proclamation from Trump granting the exemption, which cites unavailable technology needed to implement new standards.
It reads, “the Taconite Rule mandates compliance with standards that rely on emissions-control technologies that have not been demonstrated to work in the taconite industry, are untested at commercial scale, or are not reasonably achievable under current operational conditions.”
TV6’s national Investigates Team and ProPublica made FOIA requests for every document related to the clean air exemptions. They were able to provide us with the letter that CCI submitted to the Trump Administration requesting exemptions. In it, CCI requests the exemption for three main reasons: the first two are unavailable technology and the cost to implement it.
CCI’s letter reads, in part:
“The controls for acid gases and mercury both require injection of lime or activated carbon into the exhaust stream… The current compliance date, March 8, 2027, is less than two years away, an extremely short period to marshal capital expenditures of hundreds of dollars for unproven control technology…
