Minnows vs. Ducks

Posted at 11:00 PM on April 17, 2007 by Tom Scheck (1 Comments)

The Minnesota House is now in hour eight in the debate over the environment and natural resources budget bill. It's been a long and often dull debate (no offense lawmakers). One issue that caught my interest was the debate over an amendment that would reduce the number of fish farms. Apparently there's a belief that the environmental impact of fish farms is reducing the duck population. Duck hunters don't like that since the state's duck population is already dwindling.

But..

The state's bait shops like the fish farms because that's where they get their minnows. Minnows are used for fishing and fishing is big business in Minnesota. I never knew such a debate over minnows and water levels could draw such passions. At one point during the debate, Rep. Dean Urdahl, R-Gover City, said:

"This is the worst minnow disaster since Gilligan."

Apparently lawmakers aren't the only ones talking minnows and ducks and water levels. Check out the debate on this forum.

The debate over this issue lasted at least an hour and was settled with a promise to study the issue and restrict some fish farm licenses.

There's one other reason this issue was enlightening.

It's the first time House DFLers openly disagreed with each other on the House floor since they took the majority.

Comments (1)

Hi!
I just heard about this Blog called "Paleo-Future" (it was mentioned on Boing-Boing - source of all things interesting). Anyway, Paleo-Future is a Web site that looks back at what we used to think the "future" was going to look like.

Anyway, I stumbled across two posts which included excerpts from an article Hubert Humphrey wrote in 1967 for The Futurist magazine. "For the year 2000, however, we can foresee some really far-out developments:
The virtual elimination of bacterial and viral diseases."

Anyway, I know the DFL's Humphrey Day dinner is coming up, and I thought you/your readers might find these posts shockingly accurate and amusing at the same time.

Keep up the good work.
Allison Thrash

Posted by Allison | April 18, 2007 10:39 AM

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