Minnesota’s taconite industry not on pace to meet state's mercury reduction targets by 2025 Plans submitted by mining companies show an industrywide reduction of 15% by 2025, far less than the 72% required by the state. 8:21 pm, May 27, 2021 × Steam rises out of the stacks at United Taconite in Forbes. (File / News Tribune) The Iron Range’s taconite plants say they can’t meet the state's mercury reduction requirement because it’s too expensive and/or not technically possible, putting the state at risk of missing its 2025 mercury reduction goal set more than a decade ago. Minnesota has made strides in curbing mercury emissions, mainly through the retirement and retrofitting of coal-burning power plants, but to come close to reaching its goal of 789 pounds of mercury emissions each year across all sources by 2025 — a 93% reduction from 1990 levels of nearly 11,300 pounds of mercury per year — the iron ore mining and pellet industry is required by the state to reduce its mercury emissions by 72% by 2025: from 806 pounds per year (the maximums from 2008 and 2010) to 226 pounds per year.