Minnesotans should be rallying around Gov. Mark Dayton’s “Year of Water Action” plan the same way so many pushed back at town-hall meetings against efforts to shred the Affordable Care Act.
There is a de-regulation mania going on in the nation’s Capitol as well as at the Minnesota State Legislature – both entities in the control of Republicans. Here in the Land of 10,000 Lakes (actually, it’s more like 14,000), some legislators are determined to delay or kill by attrition the “Buffer Law,” which will require buffer strips between cropland and lakes, rivers and streams. There are efforts underway to quickly approve permits for mining operations, such as in the pristine forests of northeast Minnesota. There are plans to raid Legacy Amendment funds for road improvements and other purposes never intended for those funds. The Legacy Fund was approved nine years ago by voters for the purpose of enhancing and protecting the state’s air, water, other natural resources, and recreation and cultural opportunities.
Those are just some of the attacks and raids proposed. As in Washington, D.C., there is a trend that can only be defined as gleeful plundering. It involves wholesale deregulation of just about anything to do with environmental safeguards – from making public lands private to cutting the rules regarding virtually any environmental protections. These are the folks who think any regulations are bad ones and that free-for-all private enterprise is best for one and all. And among such folks is President Donald Trump, who has belittled climate change as a hoax. This deregulation mania is all part of a disturbing, worrisome anti-science attitude – that scientists are mainly a bunch of starry-eyed nerds who dictate public policies at the expense of sacred, unrestrained free-market forces.
This anti-science stance, this slighting of the environment, is causing too many legislators to push for laws that would weaken the Department of Natural Resources, the Minnesota Public Facilities Authority, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and many other regulatory agencies – local, state and federal.
There tends to be a kneejerk public reaction against regulations, a foregone conclusion that every regulation must be bad just because we’ve heard of some really dumb ones. The good ones, like those protecting our environment and our food supply and drug safety, we take for granted.
Gov. Dayton’s plan calls for an increase of water quality by 25 percent by the year 2025. The plan, proposed as part of the upcoming bonding bill, would cost $220 million to start. Much of it would be used to upgrade water and sewer systems in outstate Minnesota, where smaller towns cannot afford the long-overdue updates. In the plan, there would also be money to implement buffer zones and clean-up funds for 10 areas of the state where contaminated sediment and industrial wastes are serious problems.
More than 40 percent of Minnesota’s waters are now impaired and/or polluted. And that, in turn, adversely affects flora, fauna and – lest we forget – human beings. Up to 60 percent of the wells right here in central Minnesota might not be providing reliably safe drinking water.
Like our ever-weakening infrastructure, the signs of environmental deterioration are everywhere apparent. We should be strengthening those qualities of life, not weakening them like yahoo plunderers.
Gov. Dayton will host 10 public meetings about his water plan, starting this July. The one in St. Cloud will take place Sept. 6. More details and the venue will be announced as the meeting approaches. Mark your calendar. Plan to attend and show passionate support.
