PITTSBURGH, Feb. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- United States Steel
Corporation (NYSE: X) today announced it has filed a Writ of
Mandamus (Mandamus claim) against the Minnesota Pollution Control
Agency (MPCA). The Mandamus claim is related to issues
surrounding the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System
(NPDES) water permit for the company's Minnesota Ore Operations
Minntac facility, an iron ore mining and pelletizing operation in
Mt. Iron, Minn.
A Mandamus claim is a legal action which asks a judge to require
the MPCA take action on a specific request. In this case,
U. S. Steel is asking MPCA to complete work on several
long-standing issues that directly impact Minntac's NPDES permit,
which the company has been actively working to renew with MPCA
since 1992. If these issues are not resolved, U. S. Steel
could be required to make significant and unnecessary capital
investments in Minntac that could put the facility at a competitive
disadvantage, threatening the future viability of the operations
and the jobs employed at the operation.
"U. S. Steel has worked cooperatively and successfully with
Minnesota's elected leadership on
many issues over the years, but we believe filing a Mandamus claim
was our only option in this situation," said U. S. Steel
Minnesota Ore Operations General Manager Larry Sutherland. "We felt compelled to
take this course of action to ensure specific issues we've raised
in the past – and MPCA has acknowledged the need to address – are
fully resolved so they can be incorporated into our NPDES permit
renewal. We recognize the time and resources MPCA needs to do
their jobs effectively, and we agree that matters related to our
shared environment should be determined by thorough, thoughtful due
diligence and scientific evidence. We believe completion of
the specific issues raised in our Mandamus claim will ensure the
preservation of the environment and the competitiveness of
Minnesota's iron ore mining
industry."
"U. S. Steel remains firmly committed to our core
value of environmental stewardship, and we've proven that by
investing more than $100 million in
environmental activities at Minntac in the last 10 years," said U.
S. Steel General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer and Senior Vice
President – Government Affairs Suzanne Rich Folsom. "Our
actions today reflect our desire to continue working with MPCA in
pursuit of a common goal: doing what's right for the environment
without causing unnecessary harm to the state's economy."
United States Steel Corporation, headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pa., is a leading integrated steel
producer and Fortune 250 company with major operations in
the United States and Central
Europe. For more information about U. S. Steel, please visit
www.ussteel.com.
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SOURCE United States Steel Corporation