Emails Show Minnesota County Staff Monitored Activists Seeking Incinerator Closure

Newly released emails indicate that local government officials in Minneapolis quietly monitored environmental justice activists who are campaigning to close a controversial waste incinerator, according to advocacy groups. The facility, they say, releases pollution into the low-income neighborhoods that surround it.

The Zero Burn Coalition, the Minnesota Environmental Justice Table (MNEJT) and other groups and leaders obtained the messages through a Freedom of Information Act request and published some of them in a report backing their claims. The emails show that Hennepin County sent an employee who is also an environmental justice activist to gather intelligence, among other tactics. The information was then used to help defeat state-level environmental legislation opposed by the incinerator's leadership and to anticipate activist campaigns and protests, the groups allege.

Much of the alleged operation ran through Joe Vital, whom many in environmental justice circles regarded as an ally, the report says. He previously chaired the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Native Peoples Caucus and has worked with MNEJT members to oppose the Line 3 pipeline. The county hired him in 2021 as its environmental engagement coordinator. In June 2023, advocates held a Zoom meeting to plan their next steps. Such meetings are open to the public, but organizers screen attendees to check for industry or political opponents. The emails show that Angie Timmons, a county environmental department manager, saw the invitation and asked Vital to attend. He then compiled a dossier on who participated, including a sitting state representative and a former city council member, and on the planned activities of each group and individual.

MNEJT executive director Nazir Khan told the Guardian that Vital went unnoticed in the screening process, and that organizers would have spotted his name had it been displayed. The dossier went to Rosemary Lavin, the county's energy and environment department director. Emails show supervisors planning to meet to discuss the findings and report them to "Lisa," whom advocates say is almost certainly Lisa Cerney, a top public works official who reports directly to political leadership. Cerney later made public statements supporting the incinerator. A recording also shows Vital trying, during a conversation with Khan, to confirm the identity of a whistleblower.

Vital did not respond to the Guardian's request for comment. Khan said that when activists confronted him, Vital claimed he was actually working for them and was gathering intelligence on county officials. According to Khan, Vital described the arrangement by saying, "You have to offer a pound of flesh to maintain inside the room." Khan said Vital gave advocates little of value and that they do not believe he is on their side.

The emails also show information reaching industry. County official David McNary, who sits on the board of the Minnesota Resource Recovery Association, a trade group, forwarded advocates' organizing emails in March 2024 as industry mobilized against a community-backed bill that would have let cities phase out polluting land uses. County employee Mallory Anderson had joined the advocates' email list without their knowledge and sent the messages to McNary on 12 March. McNary wrote that he feared the bill could affect incinerator facilities and "every other production, processing and industrial facility in the state." The next day he sent the emails to an industry attorney, to Tim Steinbeck, president of the operator of the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center (HERC), and to other representatives. Steinbeck replied that the bill would be "detrimental" and urged everyone to testify against it. The bill was defeated.

At a board meeting this week, Minneapolis organizer Audua Pugh, one of those monitored, asked county leaders why public resources and staff time were being used to watch residents who are organizing to shut down an aging trash burner that she said should have closed nearly a decade ago.

Hennepin County said in a statement that the allegations "mischaracterize the county's community engagement work and staff responsibilities." It said officials routinely attend public meetings and take part in social media to listen and understand different perspectives. A spokesperson called the actions "ordinary functions of government" and added that "working together does not mean agreement on every issue."

HERC burns 365,000 tons of trash a year. Nearly 100 municipal or hazardous waste incinerators operate across the United States, seven of them in Minnesota. They face growing scrutiny because they are known to release high levels of Pfas, the so-called forever chemicals, which cannot be fully destroyed by incineration. Similar fights over polluting facilities are under way in cities such as Baltimore and Miami. Khan said the county, which has 9,000 employees, relies on people seen as part of the community to build relationships and pass information up the chain.