In 1971, both Minneapolis and St. Paul began enforcing the rule in earnest.
A cruise along 36 miles of alleys in St. Paul in 1971 turned up only one smoking trash burner on the first day of enforcement of the burning ban. (Powell Krueger)
The practice faded away in city and suburban neighborhoods. In the 1980s, state lawmakers passed a statute that gave some farmers an exemption to burn or bury their trash as long as their county didn’t have an ordinance banning it.
A later statute, however, banned the burning of “plastics, chemically treated materials, or other materials which produce excessive or noxious smoke.”
Since that definition applies to most household garbage today, burning it is “illegal in nearly all cases, even if a county has not passed a resolution to ban it,” according to MPCA spokesperson Michael Rafferty. People can get permits to burn plant material or untreated wood, though.
Waste is trucked in before being going into a boiler and being converted into energy at the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center, or HERC, in 2023. (David Joles/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
According to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency research, burn barrels are the nation’s top source of a carcinogen called dioxin, and can also produce carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and a host of poisonous chemicals.
In Hennepin County today, a sizable percentage of residents’ trash is still being burned. Not in driveway barrels, but in a municipal trash incinerator called the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center (HERC) on the edge of downtown Minneapolis. For years, environmental activists have been pushing for the center to be closed.