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Experts caution about ‘finite’ amount of water in Minnesota
Most of us tend to think the Land of 10,000 Lakes has an unlimited supply of water, but environmental experts say they’re cautious about the use of groundwater.
MINNEAPOLIS — As you may know, water is more than a moniker in Minnesota; it’s a way of life.
We are, officially, the land of 11,842 lakes (> 10 acres). In Minnesota, we have 201 Mud Lakes, 154 Long Lakes and 123 Rice Lakes alone, while other states — like Ohio — have 110 total lakes.
There’s about an acre of water for every 20 acres of land here with more coastline than California, Florida and Hawaii combined, according to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.
“We have a lot of water, but that doesn’t mean we have excess water,” said Barb Naramore, deputy commissioner of the DNR. “I think among some folks in Minnesota there’s a mindset that we have plenty of water.”
This is where the record scratch occurs in the video. Most of us tend to think that the Land of 10,000 Lakes has a rather unlimited supply of water. To explore what Naramore means by this, we set out to answer two seemingly simple questions: How much water do we actually have in Minnesota? And how much do we actually use?
We know there’s a lot of surface water in Minnesota, as about 6% of the entire state is covered with rivers, lakes and wetlands — but that’s not what most of us drink.
In fact, 75% of the drinking water and 90% of irrigation water comes from aquifers under the ground.
According to the University of Minnesota Water Resources Center, we drink, wash, water and flush about 315 billion gallons of groundwater a year. That’s like a half-million Olympic swimming pools or two-and-a-half Lake Minnetonkas.
But to know if our water use is sustainable, we have to know how much water we’ve drawn from underground.
Ellen Considine is a hydrologist supervisor with the DNR. She says we have a good idea of how much is down there, but certainly no perfect picture.
“I like to think of glaciers as drunk bulldozers,” said Considine. “Going back and forth over the landscape and they deposited our aquifers in very unpredictable ways and in unpredictable patterns and then they put a bunch of dirt on top of them. So we can’t see them.”
Our best tools for monitoring groundwater are wells. Considine says this can accurately show the effects of how much we’re pumping from the aquifers in different parts of the state.
At one site on the northwest side of White Bear Lake, the DNR has four wells, each drilled to a different depth to monitor the four, layered aquifers beneath most of the metro.
When asked about population growth and future use of these aquifers, Considine said, “Yeah, I’d say that concern is always there.”
A water-planning report from the Metropolitan Council shows that we are drawing more water from certain areas in the metro faster than they can fill back up.
The yellow dots show wells over time, where the water table is falling year over year.
In Dakota County, which draws the most groundwater per capita of any county in the metro, the Met Council projects that by 2040, periods of drought are “highly likely to result in local shortages” with some cities in the county seeing a 50% depletion of aquifer water.
“If we use water the same way now in the future, we are going to put additional stress on the aquifers,” said Lanya Ross, an environmental analyst with the Met Council. “We were trying to highlight areas where we want to pay attention going into the future.”
This does not spell doom across the state. Far from it. Experts say we could safely pump even more water in many parts of the metro.
But it does spell caution.
“In the metro, we are so lucky. We have generally pretty plentiful aquifers. We should be responsible with them, but they are pretty plentiful. Western Minnesota, the arrowhead in the northeast — very, very limited aquifers. There’s just a lot less groundwater available,” said Considine.
An example of what can go wrong — that did not make the news — happened two summers ago in Warren, Minnesota.
“We were worried that the city of Warren was going to run out of water,” said Considine.
During the drought year of 2021, agricultural irrigation quadrupled in the Warren area, according to a Groundwater Technical Review by the DNR. The extra usage plummeted the aquifer’s water level, dropping some 70 feet in one summer season down to a record low. This triggered the DNR to immediately suspend irrigation permits in the area.
“Irrigators were pumping a lot of water, understandably. They had permits, and they needed to keep their crops alive. But as we looked at the data, we realized that if we at the DNR didn’t intervene pretty quickly there was a risk there that the city of Warren would run out of water,” said Considine.
Understanding the complexity of the state’s hydrological system can be quite the task. So, we asked the DNR’s state climatologist, Luigi Romolo, to summarize.
“I think that perhaps the biggest change will be the perception that Minnesota’s water supply is a bottomless pit, and I think people are starting to realize that there is a finite amount of water here in Minnesota. Even in the Land of 10,000 Lakes,” said Romolo.
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The U.S. Army says 19-year-old William E. Colby was reported missing in action on Dec. 2, 1950. His remains were identified just this year using DNA technology.
MINNEAPOLIS — Nearly 74 years to the day since he was officially deemed Missing in Action during the Korean war, a Minneapolis soldier finally reached his final resting place.
The burial at Fort Snelling National Cemetery, which came with full military honors, brought closure to the family of Army Corporal William Colby, but it couldn’t bring back the family – and memories – that have long since passed.
“I was little,” said Jinny Bouvette, Corporal Colby’s cousin, who is also among the few surviving family members who ever met him. “We were about nine years difference when he joined the service, I was ten.”
For years, Bouvette says her memories of her cousin Billy, were always clouded by sadness by what happened just months after he deployed to fight in the Korean War.
Colby was just 19 years old and serving in the Korean War when he was declared missing in action on Dec. 2, 1950, after his unit was attacked by the Chinese People’s Army as they attempted to withdraw from the Chosin Reservoir.
“They figure that’s where Billy was,” Bouvette said, pointing to a green circle on a printed map of the Chosin Reservoir. “That’s where he was the last time that he was reported (alive).”
The young soldier could not be recovered following the battle, and the U.S. Army issued a presumptive finding of death on Dec. 31, 1953.
“We never thought of him as being killed in action, we always thought of him as just missing,” Bouvette said. “My aunt, she always thought he was alive somewhere.”
His fate was finally confirmed for family members by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency on May 2, 2024, after Colby’s remains were identified from 55 boxes of remains returned to the U.S. by the North Korean government in 2018.
The process required a DNA analysis of his remains and a sample from a living relative before it could be matched and verified.
Bouvette says representatives initially tried to reach her, but it wasn’t until learning that her aunt and cousin had submitted those DNA samples that she realized what was happening.
“At first I thought they were just people trying to scam old people, and I wouldn’t answer them,” she said, with a laugh. “But eventually, that’s how I found out that he was really, really gone.”
Just a few months later, the Army’s Past Conflict Repatriations Branch helped return his remains, along with a jacket adorned with a full accounting of his honors.
“He didn’t get them when he was alive,” Bouvette said. “So I told them to put them in the casket with him, so he’s got them now.”
She did decide to hold on to one of his awards for herself, Colby’s Purple Heart.
“I just can’t tell you what it feels like,” she said, looking at the military medal in her hand. “It fills your heart right up. It just fills your heart right up.”
Yet it can’t quite compare to seeing his procession finally reach its end.
“My heart is so full… it is overflowing,” she said. “I just can’t… I have no words. I’m just glad that he’s here, and to know he’s home now. He’s home.”
JayCee Cooper filed a lawsuit against USA Powerlifting after the organization banned her from participating in women’s competitions.
SAINT PAUL, Minn. — The conversation inside the Minnesota State Capitol on Tuesday was focused on sports, but a different type of competition was taking place inside the court chambers. Two opposing sides are vying for the Minnesota Supreme Court to rule in their favor in the case of Cooper v. USA Powerlifting.
Transgender woman and athlete JayCee Cooper filed discrimination charges with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights in 2019 after USA Powerlifting banned her from participating in women’s competitions. In 2021, Cooper filed a lawsuit against USA Powerlifting.
The lawsuit claims USA Powerlifting’s ban on transgender women is “an outlier among international, national and local sports organizations,” pointing to the International Olympic Committee’s framework regarding inclusion of athletes and their gender identities.
The case made its way through the state’s courts over several years before landing in the hands of the Minnesota Supreme Court. Oral arguments took place Tuesday morning, in which Cooper was represented by Gender Justice attorney Christy Hall and USA Powerlifting was represented by attorney Ansis Viksnins.
Gender Justice is a legal nonprofit organization based in St. Paul. In a press conference Tuesday morning, the organization’s legal director Jess Braverman said USA Powerlifting is violating Cooper’s rights under the Minnesota Human Rights Act.
“Every Minnesotan deserves the freedom to pursue their dreams without fear of exclusion or discrimination,” Braverman said. “Ms. Cooper was denied that right, solely because she is transgender.”
Viksnins, the attorney representing USA Powerlifting, said Cooper was excluded from women’s competitions due to her biological sex, not gender identity. “It’s not discrimination based on gender identity. That’s the problem for Ms. Cooper’s case: that the differentiation here was because of her biological sex, not for gender identity.”
In 2021, USA Powerlifting launched its MX category, providing a separate division for athletes of all gender identities. “It doesn’t solve the problem of transgender women being barred from women’s competitions, which is the issue here,” Braverman said.
There is no clear timeline as to when the Supreme Court will makes its decision on the case.
The portion of the Kellogg-Third Street Bridge over I-94 is coming down.
ST PAUL, Minn. — The portion of the Kellogg-Third Street Bridge over I-94 is coming down this weekend.
Demolition started in August but they’ve been doing one section at a time. MnDOT says to expect jackhammering around the clock.
City engineers first noticed cracks in its supports in 2014 and limited its capacity. But it’s taken 10 years for the city to come up with the $91 million it will take to build a new one, and it won’t be finished until 2027.
I-94 will be closed this weekend between 35E and Highway 61 in St. Paul.
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