As you may recall, last fall both sides to the lawsuit asked that the case be dismissed without prejudice. This means that Wotzka can re-file the lawsuit at any time, which he says he will. Wotzka says one of the reasons he agreed to dismiss the case temporarily in federal court is that the State of Minnesota claims that it was the Department of Employee Relations (DOER) that fired him, and not the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA). If that’s true, then he would need to sue DOER and not MPCA. Wotzka and his attorneys want to investigate the respective roles of the various government agencies in the firing decision before re-filing the lawsuit.

The government has also indicated that there was a secret investigation against Wotzka before the firing. By combing through those thousands of pages of documents, they hope to learn as much about that investigation as possible. Jeff, in the past you have called for the results of the investigation to be posted on the Internet. Getting such information out to the public is one of the goals of Wotzka’s lawsuit.

Finally, as has been reported previously, the government has invoked a legal technicality which would require Wotzka to re-file his lawsuit in state court instead of in federal court. All of this takes an immense amount of time and resources, and Wotzka has vowed to continue the fight, no matter how long it takes.

I agree with Jeff that it is long overdue for Minnesota to beter regulate these toxins and get them out of our lakes and rivers.

I agree that MN Dept of AG is, in many respects, a whipping boy for Ag industry. There is also a lot of data and information on the damaging effects of atrazine (and its degridates) in aquatic systems and its ridiculously high concentrations in MN ground and surface waters. These are not hidden or unknown issues just ones policy makers have repeatedly ducked responsibility for. What’s new when it comes to the environment?

Just listen to this October 2005 MN NPR story with Paul Wotzka, (and I assume with MDAs approval) as the focus describing the problems of atrazine in the Whitewater River.
(http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/10/10_olsond_impaire...). In this story he is explaining the high concentrations of atrazine quantified in the SW and other experts explaining the detrimental effects of those high concentrations. No one else is speaking for the MDA so I guess if there was some sort of misrepresentation of facts he would have been knowledgeable of and involved with it. He was employed by MDA for 16-yrs which makes you wonder why after being fired he now has a concern for some sort of cover-up?

It sounds like the Dept of Employee Relations was investigating this guy 4 or 5 months before he was asked to talk to this subcommittee. Apparently his termination letter from the state cited the “destruction of data” and the “improper diversion of state mail”. I dont know what all that means but I would guess that the state has bullet proof evidence to make such strong statements which resulted in his firing.

I guess time will tell with his story. Unfortunately I fear that the more important issue of unregulated and harmful pesticides in our state waters will be pushed off to the side for some trial lawyer carnival theatrics.