Mary Lahammer, with public televisions Almanac at the Capitol, was at the hearing Thursday on the Iron Range.  The focus was the Department of Health’s withholding public information for a year on the increasing death rate of miners.  In a note on her blog, She takes to task both the commissioner and the media:

Channel 9 was the only other metro media to show up — that’s a disappointment to me; this is an issue that should matter to every Minnesotan. People are dying. Public information you pay for was kept private.

Today’s topics: Agencies, Energy, Funding, Great Lakes, Health, Off-Highway Vehicles, Transportation, Waste, Water, and Wildlife.
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Years ago I happened upon a 1953 pamphlet called Conquest of the Land Through 7,000 Years. Written by renowned soil expert Walter Lowdermilk, it describes how care of the soil has determined the fate of some of the most powerful civilizations in history. Most of the stories don’t end well. The collapse of societies in Greece, Rome, Maya and the Middle East can be traced in large part to rampant soil erosion and degradation. Lowdermilk’s writings were a “modernized” version of what George Perkins Marsh had written about almost a century before in his seminal, and all too often ignored, Man and Nature. Now, our generation has a report from the soil erosion vs. civilization battle. In Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, David Montgomery builds on Lowdermilk and Perkins’ evidence and lays out in clear language what is at stake: “The history of dirt suggests that how people treat their soil can impose a life span on civilizations.” (more…)

Word on the street is that Nancy Gibson, a board member of the International Wolf Center, and Mark Martell, executive director of Audubon Minnesota, will be on MPR’s Midday program today at 11 a.m. to talk about wolves, eagles, and more. 

Today’s topics: 3M chemicals, Agriculture, Energy, Great Lakes, Sustainability, Transportation, Water, Wetlands, and Wildlife.
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Today’s topics: Member News, Agriculture, Development, Energy, Great Lakes, Health, Pesticides and Water.
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The news has been unsettling me lately.  Mining-related cancers hidden by the Department of Health for a year, the seemingly growing presence of 3M chemicals in drinking water and area fish, and another whistleblower lawsuit against the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) – the first occurring a couple of years ago regarding the aforementioned 3M chemicals and the second regarding high levels of the pesticide Atrazine in the waters of Southeastern MN (though it is all throughout corn country) – create a troubling appearance of reoccurring patterns that our state must address.  Not only to remedy the mistakes that have happened, but for our state to evaluate mines currently being proposed, to begin rebuilding lost public confidence, and to ensure that we have systems in place that protect the health of Minnesotans. 
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Today’s topics: Member News, 3M chemicals, Air, Development, Energy, Health, Trails, Waste, Water, and Wildlife.
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Today’s topics: Member News, Energy, Food, Funding, Great Lakes, Health, Non-Native Invasive Species, Waste, Water, and Wildlife.
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At the LCCMR’s June 20 meeting at Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge in Bloomington the day unrolled at an even, calm pace. Perhaps it was the beatific setting, or the lack of acrimony that colored the previous day’s meeting but all in all, the meeting moved along at its usual clip. And if there were a theme to the day, it was one of cooperation and partnership. (more…)