The Flint Water Crisis: A Special Edition Environment and Health Roundtable
Scholars from the humanities, science, and professional disciplines provide contexts for the water crisis in Flint.
Flint water crisis reminds us not to take water quality for granted
Minneapolis resident and University of Minnesota student sees Flint water crisis as reminder to protect the water resources we value, take for granted.
Katrina Helped Usher In An Acceptance And Use of Green Infrastructure
New Orleans is moving from plans to action in a large-scale rethinking of the city’s relationship with water. The city has begun to embrace “green infrastructure” as a water management strategy, rather than just relying on pumping out rainwater.
Aestheticizing the Reality of a Polluted River
The Yamuna River in India is both highly venerated and also highly polluted. Where it flows through New Delhi, the river is both a site of purification rituals and also the city’s open sewer. This review of the exhibition ABSUR- CITY –PITY DITY explores this paradox. Artwork is included from multiple media; more detail is at the artist’s web site.
2015 Aerial Surveys Show Wisconsin’s Eagle Population Soars to New Record
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources announced recently that eagle surveys show a very strong resurgence of nesting pairs. Eagles have recolonized almost every county in the state and, in some areas, have appeared to be near a population maximum. In the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, where the Mississippi River corridor is designated as the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, rebounding eagle populations have been documented through several years’ of intensive survey and scientific measurement. The soaring eagle population is widely understood as a strong indicator of better water quality in the river.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Place
“Place” is central to much of the important work that happens on or around rivers, yet the term is one of the most commonly used and least thought-about words we know. Shanai Matteson has recently written from her perspective as part of the public/community arts collaborative Works Progress about place, about the vexed and rewarding relationships to and with places, about language, and about the complexities of being fully “here.”
St. Paul Mayor, Others Set Clean Mississippi River goals
Mayors from the United States, including several associated with the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative, were in Paris for the deliberations at COP21. As Mayor of St. Paul Chris Coleman wrote before the trip, “the stakes [connecting climate change to river health] could not be higher”. In Paris, the mayors from the Mississippi River valley found common cause with mayors from other river cities across the world, arguing that river basins merited increased attention as food-producing regions supporting billions of people worldwide.
In Minnesota’s Farm Country, Clean Water is Costly
Debate has been growing in Minnesota about the role agricultural practices play in the overall quality of the state’s surface waters (i.e. rivers, streams, and lakes) and, if farming is found to have a harmful impact, what can be done about that. Much of these debates are beginning to resemble debates about climate change: argued more from bases in deeply held beliefs rather than appeal to arguments grounded in “facts.” Sometimes even what is a “fact” can be debated. The Minneapolis Star Tribune wrote recently about the costs incurred by state agencies to try to clean water of pollutants most likely associated with agriculture, about the system of agricultural subsidies that contributes to existing farming practices, and how the logjam connecting rewards, incentives, practices, and unanticipated harmful side effects might be broken.
Watershed Health Report Cards
Most people know how to find their way around their cities and neighborhoods, even if they rely largely on the computerized map on their phone. Likewise, indicators of a city’s health are often readily apparent through cues such as unkempt public spaces, roads in need of repair, and the like. How would we find our way around our watershed, though, and how would we determine or recognize if our watershed is healthy? As more and more people understand the importance, and fragility, of clean and abundant supplies of water, questions about our watersheds increasingly come to the fore. The Minnesota DNR has combined a series of ecological and physical measures into a series of “watershed report cards” that cover the state.
Where in your watershed do you live? How healthy is your “water place”?
New reports out on pipeline, but opponents asking about cost
Policymakers and advocates who work on water issues sometimes talk about “the costs of water.” The phrase can mean many, many things; this article focuses on a proposal to pipe water from the Colorado River to parts of Utah. This part of the United States, gripped by a historic drought, is having to consider difficult questions about water use, availability, benefits and costs of moving water from region to region. The rest of the country may well face some or all of these questions in the future also.