Star Tribune
East Phillips environmental activists get last minute funding deadline extension to buy Roof Depot
Just one week before the final deadline for East Phillips environmental activists to come up with $11.4 million to buy a city-owned warehouse for their vision of an indoor urban farm, the Minneapolis City Council on Thursday granted the activists a one-year extension to get the funding.
It’s the latest twist in the long fight of East Phillips Neighborhood Institute (EPNI) to gain control of the former Roof Depot warehouse at E. 28th Street and Longfellow Avenue.
For a decade, neighborhood activists have opposed the city’s plans to build a Public Works yard for water maintenance staff, equipment and diesel vehicles — something that city staff said would benefit Minneapolis as a whole despite concentrating more air pollution in the heavily industrialized, working class East Phillips neighborhood.
Council Member Jason Chavez, who represents East Phillips, and his council predecessor Alondra Cano have long opposed building a municipal water yard in the Ninth Ward, while other council members have waffled on the thorny issue.
On Thursday, Chavez won the unanimous support of his colleagues at the City Council meeting for a resolution to extend the funding deadline to September 2025 for EPNI, which was unlikely to come up with the money by the previous deadline of next week.
“This item today that I am bringing forward is a collaborative effort with the mayor’s administration, City Council, staff and the community I represent to find a viable pathway forward, and it shows what we can do when we all work together,” Chavez said.
“I’m proud of the tenacity of East Phillips neighbors, their persistence on human rights and advocacy for clean air. It’s one of the reasons why Ward Nine continues to be hopeful for the future.”
After years of protests and lawsuits, Minneapolis officials gave up on plans to build a water yard at Roof Depot and agreed to sell EPNI the property, provided the group produced a $3.7 million personal guaranty and the Legislature provided $2 million in 2023 followed by $5.7 million in 2024. The Legislature also has committed $4.5 million to Minneapolis to find a new site for its water yard.
DULUTH — An Edina man died following a single-car crash along the North Shore of Lake Superior on Tuesday night, according to a news release from Cook County.
Douglas Paul Junker was dead at the scene of the accident on Hwy. 61 and Joanne Marie Bergstadt, also of Edina, was transported to a hospital in Duluth. Her condition is not known. According to WTIP, the car went off the road and crashed through a fence alongside a bike path and into a wooded area.
The Cook County Sheriff’s Department and Minnesota State Patrol are investigating the accident.
The death of a 39-year-old inmate at the prison in Moose Lake, found by his cellmate, is under investigation, according to a news release from the Minnesota Department of Corrections.
The man, who has not yet been named, was found unresponsive midmorning Tuesday in his room. Staff attempted life-saving measures, but were unable to save him. His name has been withheld while family is notified.
The Minnesota Department of Corrections Office of Special Investigations, along with the Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office, is looking into the death.
Moose Lake’s correctional facility is a medium-security prison in northern Minnesota that can house up to 1,000 inmates.
Star Tribune
Women’s prison in Waseca on lockdown after nine inmates and two officers hospitalized for drug exposure
The federal women’s prison in Waseca, Minn., has been under lockdown for two weeks after nine inmates were hospitalized for drug use, a spokesman said Wednesday.
Two employees at Federal Correctional Institution Waseca were also sent to a hospital for potential exposure to drugs, Donald Murphy of the Federal Bureau of Prisons said in an email.
The low-security federal women’s prison has been on “modified operations” status since Sept. 4, Murphy said. This means that inmates are confined to their rooms and certain areas such as television viewing spaces.
Visits to see inmates are also suspended until further notice, the facility’s website said Wednesday afternoon.
The hospitalized employees have been released from medical care and are back at work, and the inmates have returned to the prison, Murphy said.
The women’s prison in Waseca, about 80 miles south of Minneapolis, has faced significant challenges limiting contraband, specifically drugs, a government watchdog report last year said.
Staff told inspectors that there was an inmate drug problem involving synthetic cannabinoids, also known as K2 or synthetic marijuana, said the 2023 report by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General.
The drugs were entering the prison through letters and books sent to inmates and during in-person visits, the staff told inspectors according to the 2023 report.
