WEIGH IN ON WATER: What made you take action?

Posted at 8:32 AM on October 10, 2011 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)

Why do people get involved in cleaning up the rivers and lakes near them? We asked seven people and heard about muddy rivers in southern Minnesota, green lakes in northern Minnesota and warnings about eating fish and more.

Read their answers here and then add to the comments by answering for yourself.

This is the third of three "Weigh In" discussions we're having about water. The first delved into farming practices and water pollution. The second concerned why it makes sense to focus on local issues.

You can find much more about water pollution in Minnesota by going to our Ground Level package, "Cleaning Minnesota's Water.

QUESTION

Can you relate an incident or event that made you realize you needed to do something as an individual either to change something in the environment or to change the way people are addressing water quality issues?

Share your own answer to this question below...

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Chris Pence, Brainerd. Land services supervisor for Crow Wing County.

I grew up living in northern Cass County in my youth and college years. I always enjoyed the outdoors and spent time hunting and fishing. After I left college, I moved away for employment to the Minneapolis/St. Paul area and realized how different it was from what I was used to. I remember fishing in a lake with a friend near St. Paul and catching lot of fish. His next comment was that we couldn't keep the fish because the lake was too dirty. When I bought my first home in Arden Hills, I had a well sealed because the water was not clean enough to drink out of the well. Now that I have been blessed by moving back "home", I want to make sure that my kids and grandkids can eat the fish they catch and drink the water out of the ground.

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Rich Axler, Duluth. Senior research associate in the Natural Resources Research Institute at the University of Minnesota-Duluth

A variety of inaccurate or misleading media stories and water resource controversies have changed the focus of my professional activities over the past 25 years to an emphasis on research targeting water quality issues at the local level. I have increasingly tried to partner with educators, agencies, non-profit environmental and conservation organizations, consulting firms, and like-minded university colleagues to develop science-based tools for integrating different types of data, and for making this information available on-line with interactive visualization and graphing tools to help make the data more accessible and understandable for all of these audiences.

The overall goal is "simply" improved environmental decision-making by the general public and their elected officials. Many studies have now shown that people in general lack the environmental and science literacy needed to make wise decisions about complex water resource issues. I think it is more sensible to invest in providing good information, and comprehensive land use, water resource, and energy planning than to spend money trying to fix problems afterwards.

I've been a part of several stakeholder processes, in particular one involving on-site wastewater treatment issues ('septic systems") and another about storm water pollution. Both brought together people with differing technical skills and backgrounds but common ground in terms of wanting to reduce environmental impacts over the long-term as cost-effectively as possible. Over time, with meetings on a regular basis, it's amazing to see how people with very different perspectives can develop as a team and make progress towards common goals - even when some start with pessimistic or antagonistic attitudes about the objectives or other committee members.

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Bruce Tiffany, farmer near Redwood Falls MN.

Probably a pivotal event for me was the upstream, downstream exchange that we had last summer (2010). The first leg of the exchange was hosted in Red Wing by the Lake Pepin Legacy Alliance in August. The second part was here in Redwood Falls and near Walnut Grove in late September, and subsequent meetings in St. Peter and Red Wing.

The concept of the events were to meet, share meals and fellowship as individual human beings, and honestly listen to each others' concerns. Not an easy task when faced with an emotionally charged problem such as water quality. But, what became apparent to me early in the process is that our ideas are all shaped by our life experiences and it can be difficult seeing new ideas based on faith alone.

As luck would have it, I had been fishing on Lake Itasca just the day before we met in Red Wing and much to my surprise, that day, the water of Lake Itasca was as green and slimy as any lake I have ever seen. This flies in the face of everything we hear about water quality and the effects of human activities. With Lake Itasca being closely manage as a pristine body of water and nature rewarding us for all the effort with a green slimy mess that day was an eye opener. So now the next day I'm viewing Lake Pepin and hearing about the concerns there and some of the asked for solutions, I realized it is a matter of perspective and what we perceive to be the cure.

I felt with all the posturing and "company lines" being towed by all sides, there had to be a better way. Honest, open communication is key to addressing any issue and this one needs a lot of it. If we want to effect water quality in a positive way good leadership is needed and I felt it is an area where I could help.

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Kris Sigford, Minneapolis, water quality director, Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy.

When I was in junior high school, I toured Southern Minnesota with a youth orchestra. The bus driver announced that we were crossing over the Blue Earth River. I peered out the nearest window, eager to see what I imagined from the name would be clear, blue water. Instead, the reality was a mud-brown stream. Several years later, during an avid kayaking phase, I learned that, for clean water, I needed to head north, never south. In retrospect, these experiences may have been the start of a life-long interest in clean, healthy water that is safe to swim in, safe to drink, and safe for native fish--the goals of the federal Clean Water Act.

The realization that I personally needed to act to change the situation is still unfolding and deepening, but at heart, there is really no one else to protect and restore clean water--only those of us who value it. We all need to disabuse ourselves of any notion that "government is there taking care of it so we don't need to." If this were true, the rivers and streams of much of Southern Minnesota would not still be mud brown.

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Lauren Klement, Le Sueur County Environmental Resources Specialist

My life is full of incidents or events that led me toward the path of making environmental decisions and changes that impact water quality.

I grew up in the Glen Lake area of Minnetonka. Our property bordered a beautiful wetland. This had a huge impact on me while growing up. In the 1960's and 70's, we called it a swamp! All I needed was a big stick and a pair of boots for a day of exploring. My childhood get-away still exists to this day. We also had recreational property on Lake Superior. It was breathtaking and demanded respect. In reality, all of our water resources should demand respect.

As an adult I married into the agricultural community. We have made positive changes on our farm that improve water quality. Being a county local water planner or an environmental resources specialist (in my current position), watershed management leads to a lot of finger pointing that I work with daily. All people impact water quality no matter where they live. Each person needs to look at how they impact water quality and address it before pointing fingers at others.

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Patrick Moore, Montevideo. Executive director of Clean Up the River Environment

When I was 18 years old and had moved from the Twin Cities to western Minnesota to attend college at the U of M Morris, I went cross-country skiing. I was shocked to see the "snirt" (snow + dirt) I saw in the ditches next to barren, plowed farm fields with no residue to hold the soil in place from the relentless western Minnesota winds. I knew that the soil mixed with snow in the ditches would end up in the Pomme de Terre River where I hoped to canoe and fish in the spring.

A visit to the North Central Soil Conservation Research Lab in Morris taught me that it takes nature 100 years to build up a layer of soil that is the thickness of a dime and that in less 100 years of American agriculture practices, we had lost half of the soil we started with when the pioneers first plowed up the prairie.

I went on as U of M student to study history and I leaned that civilizations rise and fall on how well they take care of the soil. I came to understand that the Middle East had once been a land "flowing with milk and honey" but now was a desert; incapable of supporting a healthy food growing region and that in turn had led to a constant state of war and conflict.

I resolved to dedicate myself to working toward the creation of a society where the soil would remain intact, where the food producing capacity of Minnesota would be maintained indefinitely and where the rivers and streams of the region would not be choked with sediment.

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Warren Formo, Eagan. Executive director of the Minnesota Agricultural Water Resource Center.

My participation in dozens of water quality meetings, most of them related to Total Maximum Daily Loads development, has made it very clear to me that if we are going to make significant progress we need a new format for identifying solutions, which will only come about if participants are willing to focus more on working together and less on arguing, spend more time seriously studying the issue and less time promoting a political agenda.

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