Concerned about elevated levels of E. coli bacteria following last month's floods, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is continuing to conduct water sampling in Carlton County after raw sewage swept into the Moosehead Lake and the river access on the Moose Horn River near Sturgeon Lake.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency for more than a decade has allowed a sewage treatment plant to pollute recreational lakes in Alexandria, an environmental law firm alleges in a new lawsuit. It's the latest in a string of complaints by advocacy groups who say the state's top environmental regulator is not tough enough in protecting Minnesota's lakes and rivers.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is placing 500 additional lakes and sections of rivers on its list of impaired waters. Minnesota now has more than 3,600 bodies of water on the list. MPR reports about 40 percent of the state's waters are considered to have an excess of nitrogen, phosphorus, mercury, bacteria or other pollutants. Hundreds of clean-up plans have been developed over the past two decades, but less than 20 bodies of water have come of the list.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency signed off on a plan to dump more than 13 tons of taconite concentrate into Rush Lake. The lake association wants to reduce the level of phosphorus, which leads to growth of algae and invasive pondweed. It hopes the taconite experiment will do the trick. Audubon Minnesota had argued for an environmental review.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has been waiting since 1988 for the river to drop to a late summer weekly average flow of under 1,500 cubic feet per second. On Friday, the river flow at Jordan was about 1,000 cubic feet per second. The levels offer the agency the rare ability to test water quality conditions more than two decades apart.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency threw out a petition from residents concerned about the health impact of toxic chemicals. 3M wants to import and burn hazardous waste from other companies at its incinerator in Cottage Grove. The board will discuss the new permit to allow non-3M waste next month.