Minnesota officials surveilled activists urging closure of waste incinerator, emails show

Newly released emails show local government officials in Minneapolis have quietly surveilled environmental justice activists who are working to close a controversial waste incinerator that is emitting pollution into low-income neighborhoods around it, activist groups allege.County officials sent an employee who is also an environmental justice activist to collect intelligence, among other tactics, emails show. The information was then used to help successfully kill state-level environmental legislation opposed by the incinerator’s leadership, and try to stay one step ahead of activist campaigns and protests. In another instance, a county employee presenting himself as an ally allegedly tried to obtain the identity of a whistleblower, a recording shows.The county allegedly sent other employees to try to grow close to activist groups for the purpose of collecting information, and developed reports and dossiers on local environmental justice leaders.The operation is laid out in emails that the Zero Burn Coalition, Minnesota Environmental Justice Table (MNEJT), and other advocacy groups and leaders obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request. The groups published some of those emails in a report to support their allegations.The emails reveal how information collected was shared among top county environmental officials, who then in some instances sent information to industry, including the company that owns the controversial trash incinerator.“Why are public resources and county staff time being directed toward monitoring community members who are simply organizing to shut down an aging, outdated trash burner that should have been closed nearly a decade ago?” Minneapolis organizer Audua Pugh, who was among those surveilled, asked county political leadership during a board meeting this week.Hennepin county via a spokesperson told the Guardian in a statement that the allegations “mischaracterize the county’s community engagement work and staff responsibilities”. It added that officials “routinely attend public community meetings, stakeholder discussions and participate in social media to listen, learn, share information, and understand different perspectives on issues affecting the county and our residents”.The north Minneapolis trash incinerator, called Hennepin Energy Recovery Center (HERC), incinerates 365,000 tons of trash annually. Nearly 100 municipal or hazardous waste incinerators operate nationally, including seven in Minnesota.A crane sifts through trash. Photograph: Jerry Holt/Star Tribune/Getty ImagesThey have drawn increased scrutiny in part because they are known to release high levels of Pfas “forever chemicals” that are widely used across the economy and concentrate in municipal waste, but cannot be fully destroyed by the incineration process. They are also to emit high levels of other pollutants, but the powerful waste management industry markets them as recycling or “green” operations.Similar battles to close polluting facilities are playing out in cities like Baltimore and Miami.Emails show much of the county’s alleged surveillance operation ran through Joe Vital, who was considered by many in environmental justice leadership to be an ally and associate, according to the report. He was previously chair of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party Native Peoples Caucus; has worked with members of MNEJT to oppose Line 3, a controversial Enbridge fossil fuel pipeline proposal; and has helped lead fights against other area polluters.Vital was hired by the county in 2021 and serves as its environmental engagement coordinator.In June 2023, advocates held a Zoom meeting to discuss their next steps in their campaign to shut down the incinerator. Though the meetings are open to the public, organizers vet who is on the call to determine whether industry or political opponents are present.The information obtained via Foia revealed that Vital had been on the call and developed a dossier that he sent to his superiors. He had gone unnoticed in the advocates’ screening process, Nazir Khan, executive director of the MNEJT, told the Guardian.He said the environmental groups screen for potential county or industry employees, and greet people who they do not know, so they would have noticed Vital’s name had it been displayed. The emails show that Angie Timmons, a county environmental department manager, saw the invite for the advocates’ meeting, and asked Vital to attend.The dossier included notes on who attended, including a sitting state representative and a former city council member, and each of the groups’ and individual’s planned activities.Among those who received Vital’s dossier was Hennepin county’s energy and environment department director, Rosemary Lavin. A series of county emails show the supervisors planning to meet to discuss Vital’s findings, and report them to “Lisa”, who advocates say is almost certainly Lisa Cerney, a top county public works official who reports directly to political leadership. Cerney then made public media statements in support of the incinerator.The emails revealed other similar instances of Vital developing reports about advocates’ activities and sending them to supervisors, and Vital during a conversation with Khan also tried to confirm the identity of a whistleblower, a recording shows.Vital did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian, but Khan said activists confronted him over the county’s information-gathering operation detailed in the Foia emails. In recordings of a conversation provided to the Guardian, Vital suggested that advocates had it wrong – Vital was actually working for the activists.Vital said his activity was part of a ploy to gain intelligence on the county officials, Khan said, and described the tradeoff this way: “You have to offer a pound of flesh to maintain inside the room,” Khan claims Vital said to him. Khan told the Guardian that Vital provided very little information of value to advocates, and they do not believe his claim that he is on their side.A county spokesperson told the Guardian the actions were “ordinary functions of government”.A crane operator at the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center. The trash is burn an used to generate electricity. Photograph: Jerry Holt/Star Tribune/Getty Images“The county seeks to find alignment, when possible, but working together does not mean agreement on every issue,” the spokesperson said.Among county officials to whom Vital provided information was David McNary, who also sits on the board for the Minnesota Resource Recovery Association industry trade group which describes itself as a “private-public membership organization that supports the utilization of today’s waste as a local, renewable, and sustainable source for tomorrow’s energy”. It represents the interests of companies like the incinerator’s owners.In one instance in 2024, McNary passed on advocates’ emails about organizing plans to industry as the latter mobilized to kill an environmental justice community-backed bill that proposed to let cities phase out polluting land uses. The emails were initially obtained by a county employee, Mallory Anderson, who had gotten on advocates’ email list without the advocates’ realization.On 12 March 2024, Anderson sent the emails to McNary. McNary wrote that he feared the bill “could impact [incinerator] facilities as well as every other production, processing and industrial facility in the state”.McNary sent emails on 13 March from advocates to an industry trade group attorney, HERC operator president Tim Steinbeck, and other industry representatives.“The following email is from the EJ groups trying to get people to testify in favor of the bill,” he wrote. He asked the attorney: “Have you been able to get any information on who is opposing this bill?”Steinbeck responded that the bill would be “detrimental” to the incinerator industry and urged everyone on the email thread to testify against it. Their efforts to help kill the bill were successful.The emails reveal other instances of the county passing on emails to industry, and the situations illustrate how Hennepin county, which has 9,000 employees, dispatches staff to work in roles to gather information, Khan claimed.Advocates “let down their defenses because the county is using people who are seen as part of the community to get in the door and build a relationship, then gather intelligence”, Khan added. “[Advocates] assume [the county employees] are an ally, but they’re trying to cultivate these relationships so that they can then share information up the chain.”