Hennepin County surveilled incinerator activists and shared e-mails with industry

Hennepin County officials surveilled environmental justice activists working to close a controversial waste incinerator emitting pollution into low-income neighborhoods in north Minneapolis, embedding a county employee inside their organizing efforts and sharing their intelligence with industry to help defeat state-level legislation, according to reporting by The Guardian.

The Zero Burn Coalition, the Minnesota Environmental Justice Table and other groups obtained the e-mails through Freedom of Information Act requests and published some of them in a report supporting their allegations, The Guardian reported.

E-mails reviewed by The Guardian show county officials dispatched an employee and environmental justice activist to gather intelligence, and officials used the information to anticipate and counter activist campaigns and protests. Top county environmental officials shared the collected information among themselves and, in some instances, sent it to industry. The county allegedly sent other employees to grow close to activist groups to collect information, and created reports and dossiers targeting local environmental justice leaders.

Joe Vital coordinated much of the alleged surveillance; the county hired him in 2021, and he now serves as its environmental engagement coordinator, according to The Guardian. Many in environmental justice leadership considered Vital an ally and associate. E-mails reviewed by the outlet show Vital compiled reports on activist activities and passed them to his supervisors, and Hennepin County has 9,000 employees.

In June 2023, activists held a Zoom meeting to plan their next steps in the campaign to shut down the incinerator, The Guardian reported. The meetings are open to the public, but organizers vet call attendees to screen out industry or political opponents. Vital joined the June 2023 call and put together a dossier for his superiors, and Khan said Vital passed through the advocates’ screening unnoticed. The dossier contained notes about the attendees, including a sitting state representative and a former city council member, along with their planned activities.

Hennepin County energy and environment department manager Angie Timmons saw the meeting invite and asked Vital to attend, according to The Guardian. Hennepin County energy and environment department director Rosemary Lavin received Vital’s dossier. Supervisors traded e-mails about holding a meeting to review Vital’s findings and pass them along to Lisa, whom advocates identify as almost certainly Lisa Cerney, a county public works official who answers to political leadership and has spoken publicly in favor of the incinerator.

County employee Mallory Anderson obtained the e-mails after getting on advocates’ email list without their realization, and she sent the e-mails to McNary on March 12, 2024, according to The Guardian. McNary, who serves on the board of the Minnesota Resource Recovery Association and works for the county, received information from Vital. The association calls itself a private-public membership group supporting local renewable sustainable energy from waste, and it advocates for companies that operate incinerators.

McNary sent activists’ e-mails to an attorney for an industry trade group on March 13, 2024, forwarding them to Tim Steinbeck, president of the incinerator operator HERC, and other industry representatives, The Guardian reported. McNary expressed concern that the bill could affect incinerator facilities and other industrial operations across the state, and asked the attorney if he had information on who is opposing the bill. Steinbeck called the bill harmful to the industry and asked people to testify against it. The efforts to block the bill were successful.

The Minnesota Resource Recovery Association describes itself as supporting waste as a local renewable sustainable energy source, and industry mobilized against an environmental justice community-backed bill that would let cities phase out polluting land uses, according to The Guardian. The e-mails show additional instances of the county sharing activists’ e-mails with industry representatives.

In a conversation with Khan, Vital tried to learn a whistleblower’s identity, according to a recording given to The Guardian. Khan said activists confronted Vital about the operation laid out in the e-mails obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. Vital said in recordings that advocates had it wrong and that he was working for them, and he described his activity as a ploy to gather intelligence on county officials, Khan said.

According to Khan, Vital told activists they would need to offer significant concessions to stay involved in discussions, supplied almost nothing useful to advocates, and advocates reject Vital’s assertion that he is on their side, The Guardian reported. Vital did not respond to a comment request from The Guardian.

A Hennepin County spokesperson dismissed the allegations as a misrepresentation of the county’s community engagement and staff responsibilities, according to The Guardian. The spokesperson stated that officials regularly attend public meetings, stakeholder discussions and monitor social media to gather diverse perspectives, and told The Guardian the actions were ordinary functions of government. The county aims to cooperate when possible, but cooperation does not require agreement on all matters.

Each year, the north Minneapolis incinerator burns 365,000 tons of trash, according to The Guardian. Across the country, nearly 100 municipal or hazardous waste incinerators operate, and seven of them are in Minnesota. These facilities release high levels of Pfas forever chemicals, which concentrate in municipal waste and cannot be fully destroyed by burning. They also release high levels of other pollutants, and the waste management industry markets incinerators as recycling or green operations.

Similar efforts to close polluting facilities are underway in cities like Baltimore and Miami, according to The Guardian. Before joining the county, Vital had served as chair of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party Native Peoples Caucus, collaborated with Minnesota Environmental Justice Table members in opposing Line 3, the controversial Enbridge fossil fuel pipeline proposal, and led opposition campaigns against other local polluters.

Audua Pugh, a Minneapolis organizer whom the county surveilled, raised the issue at a county board meeting, according to The Guardian. Khan alleges that county staff members take positions inside activist groups to gather information. Activists dropped their guard because the county relies on trusted community members to penetrate their operations, Khan stated, and Khan said activists assume county employees are allies, yet those employees build relationships to pass information up the chain.