Minnesota Environmental Partnership (MEP)
www.MEPartnership.org

About the organization
MEP enhances the capacity and coordinates the conservation efforts of our 80 member organizations around water protection issues.

Respondent: Don Arnosti, campaign coordinator

How important to you is the river or stream nearest your home, and why?
The Mississippi River in the St. Paul metropolitan area where I live is a neighborhood anchor for parks and trails. It provides open space and wildlife habitat, an opportunity to see birds and other wildlife in an urban setting. The unfortunate level of contamination means that for water sports—canoeing and swimming—we must drive miles to the St. Croix or Square Lake or Snail Lake etc. rather than risk our health in the Mississippi itself.

How can citizens find out about the condition of the river nearest their homes or communities?
Get involved with environmental organizations with a river protection focus.

What can homeowners do to make their land and property more river friendly? What can farmers do? Business owners?
Homeowners—low or no chemical garden and yard care. Keep trimmings off sidewalks and streets—compost. Reduce and eliminate phosphorus in dishwashing detergent, chemicals in household uses.

Businesses—ditto. Eliminate anything from office or factory processes that you don't want your children or grandchildren to eat over their breakfast cereal.

Farmers—maintain grassy and other permanently vegetated strips between tilled land and water bodies, wetlands, and swales. Reduce fertilizer inputs to the minimum necessary, and eliminate toxic chemicals. Practice minimum tillage.

What are the most important actions citizens can take to help clean up Minnesota's rivers?
1) Get informed.
2) Take personal action, as above.
3) Join others who care in non-profit groups, or getting active in government.
4) Speak out for community actions to clean up our public resources, our water.

What are policymakers doing to enhance the current and future health of Minnesota's rivers? What should they be doing?
1) Not enough currently being done. Data gathered, but unused. Watershed protection planned, but not implemented. Expensive remediation, but not enough prevention.

2) Supporting and funding citizen monitoring of water quality, use of resulting data to create action for clean up and most importantly prevention of future problems.

River policymakers must address diverse and often competing elements such as the environment, commerce, flood control, recreation, and land use—but from your point of view, what overarching values should guide how we use, treat, and manage rivers?
1) Leave them cleaner than when we found them.
2) Manage to maintain native biodiversity.
3) Rivers are for drinking—not waste disposal... clean up to drinking water standards, eliminate toxic discharges, organic wastewater discharges should be buffered through wetland filters, after tertiary treatment.

How can we manage the conflict of private land use and the best management practices for our rivers?
By respecting the fact that the water is a public resource, even though the land it is coming from is private. When you infringe on the rights of the public, (such as pollute its water, or alter its flow), you have crossed the line of private usage and are no longer under that jurisdiction. Given that premise to make judgments on water usage it becomes easy to deal with on a case-by-case basis.

How important is the development of a land-use plan in the watersheds that feed our rivers? Do you have a land-use plan?
Highly important—see above. I own an urban lot, and do manage to reduce environmental impact, runoff, organic debris, etc.

What programs are available—and are more needed—to educate and inform citizens, river users, river property owners, and policymakers about river issues?
Much more education. Workshops on land stewardship to protect waters. Opportunities to get involved personally through river clean-ups, water monitoring teams, and local actions to reduce impacts.

How does Mississippi River quality change as it flows from the headwaters to the Twin Cities and beyond? What is Minnesota's accountability to the states that have to treat, filter, and use the water after it leaves Minnesota?
Drinkable at the source, fishable in the middle reaches, by the Twin Cities the fish are unhealthy to eat, the water retains agricultural chemicals even after treatment. Open river below the Cities has traces of bug dope, birth control chemicals, overloaded with phosphorus, etc. It runs 'way down hill! We owe it to all to maintain quality of the river.

How does air pollution affect our rivers?
The mercury that so contaminates fish that "at risk" people: children and childbearing-age women shouldn't eat most fish in Minnesota—most of the mercury is deposited from the air. It gets into the air from coal burning, mostly in powerplants, and from garbage incineration.

What joint efforts (other than testing) have begun statewide to improve the quality of our rivers for drinking and fishing?
County based water planning. To what effect? Individual wastewater permits for cities and factories. Upgraded sewer plants at both. Some modest efforts at reducing the worst livestock practices through education.

What measures, if any, are being taken to alert the wide range of cultures living along our rivers not to swim in, drink, or eat fish from the waters of the Mississippi River?
Fish advisories printed in Hmong, Spanish, and other languages. Modest effort.

Further questions to consider?
Are we prepared to commit to drinkable, fishable, and swimmable waters throughout Minnesota?

Are we prepared to change our personal use of toxics that threaten waters?

Are we prepared to manage any land we may own to reduce erosion, toxic, and nutrient runoff to waters?