| April 28, 2021 Tonight, it’ll be mostly cloudy, with a chance of rain showers north with isolated thunderstorms. Lows will be in the mid 30s to mid 40s. Tomorrow will be m ostly sunny. Patchy dense fog in the morning. Slight chance of rain east. Highs will be in the mid-50s to mid-60s.Get the latest on Updraft. Both sides claimed victory Wednesday after the Minnesota Supreme Court issued a complex ruling over state permits for the proposed Polymet copper-nickel mine in northeastern Minnesota. The court's decision upholds a ruling made by the Minnesota Court of Appeals last year that reversed Polymet's permit to mine. The court ruled that the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources failed to set a fixed end date for the permit, when it was issued. In another part of the ruling, the court sent a dispute over the mine's waste management plan back to the DNR — for what's known as a "contested case hearing" on whether the mine's tailings pond would effectively keep pollution contained. But the court's ruling rejected calls for a broader contested case hearing. State and federal regulators gave final approval to the PolyMet project more than two years ago. It is set to become the state's first copper-nickel mine — but three key permits for the project are either suspended or reversed. In COVID news, cases and the test positivity rate in Minnesota continue to decline, although vaccinations continue to be off the pace set earlier this month. The 7-day rolling average for new cases has fallen to about where it was in the beginning of April. That's down from a mid-month rise that's been in a gradual decline for two weeks. There were about 1,500 cases identified in the latest data. Deaths were up noticeably, at 22 in the latest numbers. That's their highest mark since the first week in February, although overall the trend remains mostly flat. Also, Johnson and Johnson vaccinations are starting to show up in the numbers again, in very small amounts.
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