Check out this video created by MEP member group Clean up the River Environment (CURE): http://www.youtube.com/RIVERVOICE

The video highlights CURE’s work in opposition to the construction of the coal burning Big Stone II Power Generation Plant at Big Stone City, South Dakota and its proposed transmission system.

By Art Allen, Transit for Livable Communities’ Media Relations and Communications Intern

Last summer I returned to the Twin Cities from going to school in Boston. One of the things I knew I would miss most was the walkability of Boston: on a bright summer day there was little I enjoyed doing more than picking a part of town and wandering. This is not to mention opting to walk to class from my apartment (about a third of a mile) one or two times each day. I would also greatly miss the T, Boston’s light rail subway system. I was auto-free and still got everywhere I might have wanted to go in a timely manner.

I did not realize how important this walking was to my health. When I would come back to Minnesota for winter break (to the far west side of Plymouth, no less) I would notice the distinct difference in development patterns: Boston’s smart growth versus suburban Minneapolis’ urban sprawl. When I returned for good last summer though, the suburbs were no longer the only thing sprawling–now my waist is taking its cue from suburban planning.

Since I returned from school at the beginning of May 2007, I have put on no fewer than 20 pounds. I will note that I always been remarkably thin, did not put on any weight my freshman year, and have always had (relatively) healthy eating habits. I maintained a healthy 140 pounds over my entire time in Boston, and I realize now that this was not due to the metabolism of my youth; it was due to all that walking I was doing.

And, as much as I want to walk or bike (or, heaven forbid, take a train or bus) wherever I’m going, I don’t have the many hours it would take to walk or bike anywhere from Plymouth. Even a bus from the closest park and ride to the TLC office in St. Paul would take an hour and a half (and I’m still sitting the whole time). It’s really easy to get caught up in the abstract, academic rightness of smart growth and walk/bike-oriented growth. But now that I have a belly for the first time in my life due entirely to sprawl, I see how bad this way of life is for our health as a nation.

As we reported last September, Lowell Franzen, the feedlot officer in southern Minnesota’s Mower County, obtained a feedlot permit in his name for a 4,800-sow hog confinement facility. He then sold the permit and 14 acres of land to representatives of Holden Farms, Inc., for $292,000. That alone raised suspicions that Holden Farms used Lowell Franzen as a taxpayer-funded decoy so it could sneak thousands of pigs and millions of gallons of liquid manure into the community. Now the plot thickens. Land Stewardship Project members in Mower County have recently uncovered a purchase agreement between Nick Holden and Lowell Franzen signed on July 9, 2006 — two months before any permits were applied for. In the purchase agreement, Holden agreed to reimburse Franzen for the costs of getting the permit and pay him $264,000 for the land with the permit. (LSP has all the relevant documents and an updated timeline on this evolving issue at our website.) As of July 9, 2006, this was a Holden controlled-operation, but that fact was kept from neighbors and government permitting agencies.

Minnesota Pollution Control Agency feedlot rules are clear in the definition of a feedlot owner, stating: “Owner means all persons having possession, control [emphasis added], or title to an animal feedlot or manure storage area.” (7020.0300 Definitons. Subp. 17.) Through this purchase agreement, as of July 9, 2006, Holden had control of the feedlot and was therefore an owner. By law, Holden should have been listed on the feedlot permit application along with Franzen, but was not. Despite this evidence, the only official action taken to date is that Franzen has been placed on paid administrative leave. What with purchase agreements, permit applications and various other documents laying out a consistently crooked paper trail, it’s getting increasingly difficult for MPCA and Mower County officials to deny that this situation reeks of corruption.