Lake Powell is seen from the top of Romana Mesa in Glen Canyon National Park Recreation Area as storm clouds hang over the waters of Padre Bay on Sunday, Feb 12, 2012.
The Pulse

New reports out on pipeline, but opponents asking about cost

By David DeMille

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.

The Spectrum
Signs at Lake Calhoun have been changed to include the lake's Dakota name, Bde Maka Ska. The new signs were approved by the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. The signs updated on Oct. 2, 2015. Peter Cox | MPR News
The Pulse

How to say Lake Calhoun’s Dakota name: ‘Bdé Makhá Ská’

By Britta Green

Across all of North America, a rich array of indigenous nations and communities inhabited the landscape before Europeans came. Many places retain traces of these older cultures in their place-names; others show the impacts of continuing inhabitation by indigenous people through efforts to re-name features of the landscape with the language the land once knew. Bdé Makhá Ská, a lake in Minneapolis that formerly held the name of a 19th century defender of slavery, is but one example of this emerging trend. Bdé Makhá Ská is located just 5 miles west of the Mississippi River, a feature that is itself named in a derivation from indigenous terms.

MPR News
At What Point Do We Protect Rivers? by Megan Boian of American Rivers
The Pulse

At What Point Do We Protect Rivers?

By Meghan Boian

One of the biggest policy debates currently involving rivers is over the proposed federal Clean Water Rule. As this blog from American Rivers explains, the Clean Water Rule clarifies which waters in the United States are protected by the Clean Water Act. The Clean Water Act, the federal government’s primary regulatory tool against water pollution, stipulates which waters should be monitored and improved with the goal of becoming fishable, swimmable, and drinkable. The proposed Clean Water Rule draws on extensive review of scientific literature to clarify the ultimate connectivity of major rivers to other sources of surface and ground water.

American Rivers
University of Minnesota on the Mississippi River looking towards St. Anthony Falls. Image from the Metropolitan Design Center Image Bank. Copyright Regents of the University of Minnesota. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
Introduction

Introduction to Issue One

By Patrick Nunnally, Editor Welcome to the Inaugural issue of Open Rivers: Rethinking the Mississippi! What is there to say about the Mississippi River…