Minnesota’s North Woods … soon with 30 percent less haze!

Photo: MPCA

The skies over Northern Minnesota’s signature natural areas will get 30 percent clearer — by 2018 — under new rules approved today by a 7-1 vote of the state Pollution Control Agency board.

At that rate it will take a century to totally clear the air in the Superior National Forest and Boundary Waters Canoe Area.

Not good enough, say the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service.

The PCA’s new Regional Haze Plan targets polluters that are grandfathered in under existing Clean Air Act regulations.

Among the new rules’ omissions, says Jim Sanders, supervisor of the Superior National Forest: curbing emissions from the region’s taconite plants.