While driving in southern Minnesota this week, I gazed upon acre-after-acre of  black fields—a sign that despite a wet fall, a lot of intense tillage took place before the snow flew a few months ago. Such tillage not only gives crop farmers a jump-start on the spring planting season, it also provides a nice cover for any pesky seasonal wetlands that may be lurking beneath the soil, according to the experts at Ag PhD TV. Check out this unbelievable episode from the program, which basically provides a step-by-step “how-to” for convincing the Natural Resources Conservation Service into believing a particular field isn’t good for anything but growing more corn and soybeans. (more…)

John Tuma’s Capitol Update – March 26, 2010

“Peculiar haze, or smokey fog … unlike anything known within the memory of man.”
- English naturalist Gilbert White, Summer 1783

Natural events in history can sometimes produce a set of coincidences which play out over the years leaving one perplexed at the twist of fate. One of those unusual twists of nature was the eruption of Iceland’s Laki Volcano in 1783. Through a series of coincidences, this faraway volcanic eruption may be in part responsible for the existence of the State of Minnesota.

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By Lynne Bly, transportation connections director, Fresh Energy

Over the past few months the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has held dozens of listening sessions and has been requesting comments about its upcoming $100 million Sustainable Communities Grant Program. (more…)

It’s refreshing when people in power pull the curtain aside, drop the feel-good rhetoric momentarily and offer a glimpse at what they are really thinking. It’s also a little frightening. After years of claiming he’s “size neutral” when it comes to agricultural policy, Rep. Al Juhnke (DFL-Willmar) announced during a March 11 House committee hearing that “smaller” livestock farms are “our biggest problems” when it comes to environmental pollution. (more…)

By Ken Paulman, internet media specialist, Fresh Energy

On March 15, the Media Center at Fresh Energy launched a new information service: Midwest Energy News. Each day, we search feeds from more than 300 news and commentary sites to find energy-related stories important to our region. Those stories are linked directly on the Midwest Energy News homepage, as well as through our Twitter and Facebook feeds. We hope this will be a valuable service not just for energy insiders, but for anyone interested in the dramatic changes going on in the Midwest. (more…)

John Tuma’s Capitol Update – March 19, 2010

“High water risin’ – risin’ night and day
All the gold and silver being stolen away”

-Robert Allen Zimmerman, September 2001*

It was with great irony that my car radio was blaring these raspy words of Hibbing, Minnesota, native Robert Zimmerman (a.k.a. Bob Dylan) while my car raced south over the I-35E bridge across the flooding Mississippi last night.  It reminded me that the legislative session has distinct seasons and natural flows to its process.  At the same time the Minnesota, Crow and Red rivers flood over their banks, the Minnesota Legislature is entering its flood season known as committee deadlines.  Legislative ideas have been frozen like ice crystals for months waiting for the melting sun and spring rains to break them loose into a torrent of activity we call committee deadline week.

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It’s as predictable as the spring thaw. The Minnesota Legislature is yet again trying to weaken environmental review of large developments such as factory farms. This time around, the excuse for making the ideas in  Senate File 2761 and House File 3079 into law is “greater efficiency.” Watch out. (more…)

By Linda Taylor, clean energy director, Fresh Energy

So far in 2010, some big things have happened in the area of energy efficiency. It bears repeating time and again: the cheapest and cleanest energy is the energy we don’t use. Improving energy efficiency in our daily lives–meaning doing lots more with less energy–is 70 percent cheaper than generating new energy. The efficiency highlights so far in 2010… (more…)

John Tuma’s Capitol Update – March 12, 2010

“Charge those lines!”
- General Winfield Scott Hancock, Gettysburg, July 2, 1863

That was the command given to Colonel Colvill of the Minnesota 1st in the midst of the second day of fighting outside of the previously unknown and sleepy hamlet of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  Colvill, along with only a portion of the famed Minnesota 1st Regiment of 262 men, had just arrived on the battlefield after an arduous 20-mile march toward the sound of the developing battle.  Upon their arrival on the scene, Union forces were in chaos along the soon to become hallowed grounds known as Cemetery Ridge south of Gettysburg.  Sixteen hundred Confederates from Alabama, under the command of Gen. Cadmus Wilcox, moving quickly to take the high ground along this important place on the battlefield. (more…)

Governor Pawlenty’s proposed reductions and fund shifts for the state’s 2010 and 2011 budgets run afoul of what voters approved at the polls in November 2008, Conservation Minnesota reported.

To read CM’s analysis of the Governor’s proposals, click here.

Conservation Minnesota said the Governor’s proposed use of conservation funds dedicated to specific natural resources clashes with the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment.