Clearwater BioLogic

08/11/2025

Pollution doesn’t respect boundaries. Hundreds of lakes across the North Woods are contaminated with mercury, including those in protected areas like the Boundary Waters. That contamination is worsening now despite years of efforts to close coal-fired power plants and scrub industrial emissions.

Northern Minnesota's waters and wetlands offer ideal conditions for toxic mercury to thrive. It's a decadeslong problem that's slowly worsening. Experiments at the U using bioengineered minnows show promise, but there’s no easy fix.

07/28/2025

This is an excellent article by Chloe Johnson of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune about the sulfate level wild rice issue.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is trying to enforce a sulfate limit at U.S. Steel’s Keetac basin, one of six that leak the substance.

01/20/2025

April 17, 2024: On the TEDxSilver Lake stage in Virginia, Minnesota in February, Jeff Hanson spoke to the event’s theme, Bridging the Divide. “Sulfate is a big deal because it’s become a divisive issue in Minnesota,” said Hanson, an issue that appears to set environmental concerns against mining development. But, he pointed out, “that’s a false choice.” Finding an affordable way to clean up waterways polluted by mining waste is something we can all agree on. Hanson outlined the new three-step process that reliably reduces sulfate well below the state standard of 10 milligrams per liter, the threshold that protects wild rice. And the cleanup can be done with local resources: native bacteria to reduce the sulfate to sulfide, Minnesota iron (in a direct-reduced form) to convert it to iron sulfide for removal, and Minnesota labor to monitor the process, bringing needed jobs to the Iron Range. See the talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQwJ6BUyBZ0.