Nov. 2--In an unusual move, federal land managers are criticizing their state counterparts for failing to clean the air from taconite and power plants wafting over Minnesota's wildest areas.

Mike Ward, superintendent of Voyageurs National Park, and Jim Sanders, supervisor of the Superior National Forest, asked the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency board in St. Paul last week to toughen requirements on taconite and coal-burning power plants as the state develops new regulations to reduce haze.

Though he praised the MPCA's call for a 30 percent reduction in emissions in Northeastern Minnesota by 2018, Sanders said the agency's haze plan fails to require taconite plants to measure how much pollution they emit. It also fails to set standards for how much they need to cut, he said.

"[That] calls into question the integrity of the plan," Sanders said.

Ward agreed, adding that the plan would give only lax control over the state's largest coal-fired power plant, Xcel Energy's Sherco facility in Elk River. Ward said Sherco impairs visibility at Voyageurs about 165 days per year.

The more than 200,000 people who fish and boat in Voyageurs each year, he said, "visit a park today that has its visibility impaired."

Despite their testimony, the MPCA board voted 4-3, with two members absent, in favor of the haze plan. State law requires five prevailing votes, so it officially remains in limbo. The board is likely to vote again on it, and pass it, this month, but it still faces approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Earlier this fall, the U.S. Department of Interior said the Sherco plant violated air-quality standards in Voyageurs, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and Isle Royale National Park. Environmental groups are calling for the MPCA to impose "best available retrofit technology," or BART, for the facility. The Voyageurs National Park Association said Xcel's own modeling shows Sherco is responsible for haze over the BWCAW, violating federal Clean Air Act requirements about 227 days each year.

But Rick Rosvold, Xcel's air-quality manager, said his utility already is moving to reduce emissions at Sherco without BART regulation. That, he said, would raise costs tenfold with no noticeable improvement in visibility in Minnesota parks.

"You aren't going to see the difference," Rosvold told the MPCA board.

David Cartella, general manager of environmental affairs for Cliffs Natural Resources, asked the board to remove a requirement that would force the company's Silver Bay power plant to add BART technology, saying the company needs more flexibility as other regulations are proposed to cut carbon emissions and mercury.

"We'll commit to the reductions," Cartella told the board. "But the commitment should be voluntary and flexible."

Mike Furtman, a Duluth writer and photographer who has made a couple of trips to the Boundary Waters and Quetico this year, said he hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary and certainly couldn't put his finger on pollution as a cause of the haze he's seen.

"I've seen haze before, but I don't know where it comes from," he said. At times, he notes that distant forest fires have produced haze often accompanied by the smell of smoke. "But when it's odorless, I really wouldn't know if it was haze from pollution versus ground fog."

Betsy Daub, policy director of the Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, said haze may escape the notice of most casual visitors.

"A lot of visitors aren't to going notice it unless you've got the side-by-side pictures," she said, referring to a Forest Service camera that compares a live picture to haze-free image. (http://www.fsvisimages.com/bowa1/24.html)

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