Star Tribune
State says it will provide clean drinking water in southeast Minnesota, but offers no new curbs on farm pollution
The state of Minnesota said it will spend the coming months providing clean drinking water to residents in southeastern Minnesota whose wells are contaminated with farm pollution.
In a work plan released this month, state regulators gave the EPA a timeline for providing the water treatment systems, but said existing programs will eventually reduce the nitrate pollution that’s fouling the wells.
Margaret Wagner, a division manager with the Department of Agriculture, said it will take time to see results of programs designed to change farming practices to reduce fertilizer runoff.
“A lot of the work we are able to do really started when the Clean Water Legacy Amendment passed in 2010,” Wagner said. “While plans were developed many years ago, we had very little funding and staff. We’re fully implementing the plans now.”
The EPA ordered the state on Nov. 3 to take several steps to address nitrate contamination in southeast Minnesota, including to provide safe water immediately to those with contaminated private wells and to come up with a plan to reduce the pollution. The action was short of what community groups had requested, which was to declare a public health emergency, but they still welcomed the federal pressure.
The state’s plan to reduce nitrate pollution relies on programs that have been around for 10, 20 and even 30 years without working, said state Rep. Rick Hansen, DFL-South St. Paul, the leader of the House environmental committee.
“It’s embarrassing,” Hansen said. “I’d encourage the EPA to reject it. If we have a public health crisis the answer is not ‘Hey, lets grab some donuts and coffee and lobbyists and spend two years talking about it again.”
Nitrate is a chemical that is dangerous in high quantities, and the porous geography of southeastern Minnesota makes wells particularly susceptible to it. About 90% of the nitrate in southeastern Minnesota’s water comes from farming fertilizers spread on croplands, a state study found in 2013.
Despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars over decades on studies, stakeholder meetings, incentives and educational and voluntary programs, the state has made no measurable progress in reducing nitrate pollution.
In the plan, the Department of Agriculture and Minnesota Pollution Control Agency told the EPA that they will create a new task force to come up with recommendations by June 2025 to reduce nitrate pollution in the area.
In the meantime, the agencies said they will continue to support and study best management practices, educational programs and to encourage farmers to voluntarily adopt practices that waste less fertilizer such as planting cover crops.
The agencies are already in the process of revising the state’s overarching nutrient reduction strategy, they wrote.
Nitrate can remain in aquifers for decades, so the actions taken now may not show immediate results, Wagner said. The best measure of success is in how many acres are being put into conservation programs, getting clean water certified and planting cover crops, she said.
She pointed to the Groundwater Protection Rule, created in 2019, as relatively new regulatory action. The rule bans farmers from using nitrogen fertilizer in sensitive areas in the fall, though the department has no information on whether it’s working.
The agency is reviewing the state’s work plan, an EPA spokeswoman said.
The EPA letter is clear that the state needs to use all available tools to hold the sources of nitrate pollution accountable, said Carly Griffith, the water program director for the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, the group that first asked the EPA to step in.
“This plan doesn’t achieve that,” she said.
In the plan, the agencies told the EPA that it will take more than a year to find and reach all of the estimated 9,218 private well owners that could be drinking unsafe water. The Health Department said it could get a limited number of reverse osmosis systems, which cost several thousand dollars, to households that are most at risk, those with babies and pregnant women.
The Minnesota Department of Transportation closed part of a state highway Wednesday evening near Austin because of a “major hazardous materials release” in the area.
Hwy. 56 from Hayfield to Waltham, a stretch covering about five miles, was closed in both directions and drivers were directed to follow a detour to Blooming Prairie on U.S. Hwy. 218.
No information on the hazardous materials released was immediately available.
A federal judge dismissed a civil lawsuit against Minnesota state trooper Ryan Londregan in the shooting death of Ricky Cobb II during a 2023 traffic stop.
The decision is the latest development in a case that has drawn heated debate over excessive use of force by law enforcement. Criminal charges against Londregan were dismissed by Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty in June, saying the prosecution didn’t have the evidence to proceed with a case.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Nancy E. Brasel granted Londregan’s motion to dismiss the civil suit, arguing he acted reasonably when he opened fire as Cobb’s vehicle lurched forward with another state trooper partly inside.
Londregan’s attorney Chris Madelsaid Wednesday that it’s been a “long, grueling journey to justice. Ryan Londregan has finally arrived.”
On July 31, 2023, the two troopers pulled over Cobb, 33, on Interstate 94 in north Minneapolis for driving without taillights and later learned he was wanted for violating a felony domestic no-contact order. Cobb refused commands to exit the car.
With Seide partly inside the car while trying to unbuckle Cobb’s seatbelt, the car moved forward. Londregan then opened fire, hitting Cobb twice.
In her decision, Brasel said the troopers were mandated by state law to make an arrest given Cobb’s domestic no-contact order violation. She said it was objectively reasonable for Londregan to believe Seide was in immediate danger as the car moved forward on a busy highway, which would make his use of force reasonable.
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Donald Trump walked down the steps of the Boeing 757 that bears his name, walked across a rain-soaked tarmac and, after twice missing the handle, climbed into the passenger seat of a white garbage truck that also carried his name.
The former president, once a reality TV star known for his showmanship, wanted to draw attention to a remark made a day earlier by his successor, Democratic President Joe Biden, that suggested Trump’s supporters were garbage. Trump has used the remark as a cudgel against his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.
”How do you like my garbage truck?” Trump said, wearing an orange and yellow safety vest over his white dress shirt and red tie. ”This is in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden.”
Trump and other Republicans were facing pushback of their own for comments by a comedian at a weekend Trump rally who disparaged Puerto Rico as a ”floating island of garbage.” Trump then seized on a comment Biden made on a late Wednesday call that “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”
The president tried to clarify the comment afterward, saying he had intended to say Trump’s demonization of Latinos was unconscionable. But it was too late.
On Thursday, after arriving in Green Bay, Wisconsin, for an evening rally, Trump climbed into the garbage truck, carrying on a brief discussion with reporters while looking out the window — similar to what he did earlier this month during a photo opportunity he staged at a Pennsylvania McDonalds.
He again tried to distance himself from comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, whose joke had set off the firestorm, but Trump did not denounce it. He also said he did not need to apologize to Puerto Ricans.
”I don’t know anything about the comedian,” Trump said. ”I don’t know who he is. I’ve never seen him. I heard he made a statement, but it was a statement that he made. He’s a comedian, what can I tell you. I know nothing about him.”
