City, 3M close to deal on air testing

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Deal. No deal. Deal?

After negotiations that have moved in fits and starts, the city of Cottage Grove and 3M Co. appear close to striking an agreement on ambient air monitoring near the company’s Cottage Grove campus that mayor Myron Bailey said will see the city drop its formal opposition to 3M’s plan to burn outside waste at its incinerator here.

Bailey said recently neither side will “walk away happy” from the bargaining table with an agreement that will reportedly see 3M purchase air monitoring equipment and pay an independent company for three years of testing the levels of heavy metals in the air. Under the deal, the city would foot the bill for monitoring volatile organic compounds, estimated to be around $60,000 over three years.

But after more than a year of contentious debate over 3M’s desire to burn hazardous waste from outside the company at its Cottage Grove incinerator, the Maplewood-based manufacturing giant looks set to move forward with the plan without any further formal opposition from city officials.

As part of the air monitoring accord, Bailey said the city would not contest 3M’s incinerator permit modifications before a Minnesota Pollution Control Agency board as city officials have insisted they would for months.

Bailey said the city remains opposed to the plan that 3M says will save it upwards of $1 million per year in fuel oil costs at its incinerator but would see, for the first time, hazardous waste not produced by 3M burned at the facility. There is little officials can do, however, to stop the plan, he said.

“No one is going to walk away happy,” Bailey said. “The council would rather not have outside waste coming into the community, but the council is limited — extremely limited — in what we can do. Now, through the testing, we have a chip in the game.”

Both sides said all details of the agreement have not been finalized. The Cottage Grove City Council is scheduled to vote on the issue at an Aug. 11 budget meeting.

The deal appeared dead last month when the city and company were at loggerheads over what chemicals would be monitored, and for how long.

Cottage Grove’s willingness to bear some of the cost of the three-year monitoring program helped bring the two sides back to the bargaining table, Bailey said, though 3M Cottage Grove site director Vickie Batroot said last week that money had not been an issue.

“We’ve worked through some concerns on both sides and (I) believe we’re going to come to agreement on those concerns,” Batroot said.

The two sides have sought a resolution to the 15-month-long clash over 3M’s desire to supplement its own hazardous chemical waste from facilities across North America with material from a third-party provider in what the company says is a cost-saving move.

The purpose of the independent monitoring is to have “safety measures in place so if there is (an increase in hazardous emissions) we have a way to mitigate it,” Bailey said. “And with this air monitoring, we will be able to know.”

Earlier this year, the MPCA told Cottage Grove it could not afford to place a new air monitoring station near the 3M Cottage Grove campus to measure the facility’s emissions. Currently, the nearest air monitoring station is located in Newport.

Batroot said 3M doesn’t “feel (additional air monitoring) is necessary, but we still do hear the concerns in the community about air.”

Cottage Grove officials and state legislators Sen. Katie Sieben, DFL-Cottage Grove, and Rep. Karla Bigham, DFL-Cottage Grove, have argued the change would bring unwanted additional pollution to a city already dealing with water quality issues stemming from 3M-manufactured chemicals. Local leaders also argued the proposed amendment violated an understanding between the city and company that the incinerator was intended for 3M waste only.

MPCA officials have indicated the agency would likely approve the proposed amendments to the permits governing 3M’s incinerator.

3M officials expressed surprise last April at the intensity of opposition to the plan when it was publicly unveiled, and suspended the permit modification process to allow the city to form a task force to examine the issue.

Bailey said the air monitoring will help give peace of mind to a community he says has grown weary of environmental issues stemming from 3M’s more than six decades in the city.

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