AIRNET

Payne-Phalen Community Council (PPCC)

AIRNET resources for the Payne-Phalen neighborhood

PPCC is a community partner with concerns around the Northern Iron Foundry (in-community air permit violations), local vehicle and truck traffic, the St. Paul airport, and local businesses with air permits (dry cleaners and autobody shops). Learn more about the community below.

Presentations

Workgroup session 1, May 21, 2025, St. Paul East Side YMCA (view presentation): First community meeting that discussed the project goals and objectives as well as timelines. The participants received a brief air quality introduction and discussed the main concerns related to air pollution in their neighborhood. The top three air pollution sources of concern were identified to further narrow down and identify specific pollutants to monitor for the project.  

Workgroup session 2, June 25, 2025, St. Paul East Side YMCA (view presentation): Second community group meeting that built upon the sources discussed in the first session. Top pollutants to monitor were identified, and two to three options, along with suitable sensors and associated costs, were presented based on previous source discussions. A tabletop mapping exercise was conducted to identify potential sites for placing monitors.

Quarterly reports (forthcoming 2026)

Deployment plans (forthcoming 2026)

Introduction to the community

The Payne-Phalen Community Council (PPCC) is the District 5 planning council in St. Paul, Minnesota. PPCC works to improve the Payne-Phalen neighborhoods by engaging, educating, and empowering all residents in the diverse community.

The neighborhood currently has some publicly available air quality monitoring data. The nearest regulatory air monitor run by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) is a temporary regulatory station located at the Northern Iron facility to the east, measuring total suspended particulates, metals, and lead.

There is also an MPCA monitoring station about 0.6 miles southwest of the neighborhood at Ramsey Health Center in downtown St. Paul, which measures volatile organic compounds (VOCs), carbonyls, coarse particulates (PM10), and fine particulates (PM2.5).

Another nearby regulatory air monitor run by the MPCA is about 0.95 miles feet  southeast of the neighborhood at Harding High School, measuring VOCs, carbonyls, total suspended particulate, metals, and PM2.5.

The Northern Iron facility has also set up eight PurpleAir PM2.5 fenceline monitors around the property.

The annual prevailing wind direction at the St. Paul Downtown Airport is west-southwest. In North Saint Paul, just north of Payne-Phalen, the wind most often comes from the north from February to early May, south from early May to late November, and the west from late November to early February.

Payne-Phalen currently has eight active air permits within the neighborhood. Northern Iron violated its permit in 2023, receiving a $41,500 fine. Northern Iron has long been a community air quality concern, and the facility has faced numerous issues and permit concerns. MPCA keeps a timeline of its interactions with Northern Iron since 2020 on the MPCA website.

The main concerns identified on the MPCA website include the following:

  • unauthorized changes at the facility resulting in higher particulate matter emissions in 2020
  • the violation mentioned above in 2023
  • new air emission modeling in 2024, which indicated that the facility’s particulate matter and lead emissions were violating national air quality standards, resulting in a legal battle
  • an amended air permit application from Northern Iron that has been repeatedly submitted with missing information.

This final process has resulted in the MPCA taking steps to revoke Northern Iron’s air permit altogether in June of 2025, which company has contested. The facility continues to operate throughout this process.

Northern Iron has also been inspected and cited for Occupational Safety and Health Administration violations regarding silica dust in its facility. Additionally, it has an ongoing inspection case about an unknown violation that is still open as of July 2025.

Air monitoring objectives

The Northern Iron facility in the Payne-Phalen neighborhood is a known source of a variety of air pollutants. We will extensively monitor larger particulate matter pollution in the neighborhood to understand where pollution hotspots are located in the community and where pollution may be coming from, with a specific focus on Northern Iron. This project will monitor coarse and fine particulate matter alongside wind speed and direction to improve understanding of how pollution flows through the neighborhood and more effectively identify pollution sources.