Doug Smith: Governor Dayton signs bill to mandate buffers→

Star Tribune:

“The governor said the ­buffer bill will be one of his most important legacies.

“I think we’ll see in the next couple of years a very significant expansion in the number and quality of buffers to make our water cleaner and increase wildlife habitat,” he said. “Given the predictions that were made at the beginning of the session, that nothing would happen, I think this is a very significant accomplishment.”
...
Said Dayton: “We put the deterioration of Minnesota’s water quality and wildlife habitat on the front burner. It directs attention to the fact that we need to be doing a lot more. “It’s a very important first step, but it’s not the last step.””

Well done Governor Dayton! You tackled a difficult issue, informed people along the way, found reasonable compromises to move it forward, and acknowledged that more work still needs to be done. Good governance and great progress on an important environmental issue. 

Ben Mylius: Ecological Indifference in the Face of Ecological Crisis→

Minding Nature:

“A growing literature from many disciplines now views our ecological crisis not just as an “environmental issue,” but as a symptom of deep failures in our ways of thinking and being.[2] The philosopher Timothy Morton calls it “a crisis for our philosophical habits of thought, [which confronts] us with a problem that seems to defy not only our control but also our understanding.”[3]

This failure of thought, and the crisis it has caused, poses grave risks to our capacity to continue in negotiated co-existence with each other and with other species. How grave? Kevin Anderson, of the United Kingdom’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, asserts that the levels of global warming predicted are “incompatible with any reasonable characterization of an organized, equitable and civilized global community.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—an organization not known for its sensationalist language—is now warning us about climate change’s “severe and irreversible effects.” Graham Alexander and Cathy Turner, tracking the Club of Rome’s predictions in 1972’s Limits to Growth, advise us to “expect the early stages of global collapse to start appearing soon.”[4]

These claims are undeniably significant. Many people and communities are already responding to their implications. Given the stakes of the game, we should expect nothing less. Continued indifference, from any quarter, is deeply problematic.

In this article, I propose that the majority of jurisprudence—the academic discipline that gives us our theory of what law is, of where it’s from, and how it works—is currently crippled by exactly such “ecological indifference.” Our dominant doctrine, legal positivism, claims that ecological crisis makes no difference to how we understand the content and validity of laws. It assumes that there is a sharp division between matters that are internal to our law (as a system of rules) and matters that are external to it. As a consequence, when the time comes to ask what makes our laws valid and what determines their content, ecological crisis can simply be dismissed.”

I've not thought about environmental problems in this light. But the author makes a convincing case that the social construct of our laws is fundamentally flawed. Since there is not a Lorax in our court system, our system of laws generally fails to protect that what we all depend on - Nature.

Anna Maria Barry-Jester: Baltimore’s Toxic Legacy Of Lead Paint→

FiveThirtyEight:

“State tests found more than 65,000 children in the city with dangerously high blood-lead levels from 1993 to 2013. Across the United States, more than half a million kids are poisoned by lead each year, and the majority come from cities like Baltimore: rust belt towns built up during the first half of the 20th century when leaded paint was dominant. As populations and employment opportunities shrank in recent decades, poverty and neglect combined with older housing allowed lead paint poisoning to plague the city.

Despite sharp declines, the city of Baltimore still has nearly three times the national rate of lead poisoning among children, and a look at the data reveals that, like other health disparities, just a handful of neighborhoods are responsible for almost all of the city’s cases over the last five years. Sandtown is one of them.

But even these relatively stark statistics hide much of the problem. The data here represents children with blood-lead levels of 10 micrograms per deciliter (ug/dL), while the acceptable limit was halved to 5ug/dL by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2012 after decades of research showed there is no safe threshold for lead exposure. More than a thousand children tested for blood-lead levels between 5 and 9 ug/dL in 2013 in Baltimore, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment.

Lead paint can be absorbed through the skin, and even a small amount of dust from frequently used doors and windows is a risk without professional abatement. Exposure to larger, lethal doses of lead is mostly non-existent in the U.S. today, but ingesting even tiny amounts can have lifelong effects, and is particularly dangerous for children under age six. Speech delays, lack of impulse control, aggressive tendencies, ADHD and other learning disabilities have been associated with exposure to lead. While it’s impossible to draw relationships between lead paint and an individual’s behavior, what happens when a population is exposed to lead is pretty clear, and it’s not pretty.”

A polluted environment has social consequences, as noted in the following:

1. The urban rise and fall of air lead (Pb) and the latent surge and retreat of societal violence.
Howard W. Mielke, Sammy Zahran

2. Intellectual Impairment in Children with Blood Lead Concentrations below 10 µg per Deciliter.
Richard L. Canfield, Ph.D., Charles R. Henderson, Jr., M.A., Deborah A. Cory-Slechta, Ph.D., Christopher Cox, Ph.D., Todd A. Jusko, B.S., and Bruce P. Lanphear, M.D., M.P.H.

3. Lead Exposure and Behavior: Effects on Antisocial and Risky Behavior among Children and Adolescents. Jessica Wolpaw Reyes

Dennis Anderson: Some Farmers for Buffer Bill→

Star Tribune:

““What happens to water as it goes through my farm is my responsibility,” Kanne said, noting that in his part of the state, the amount of drain tile laid by farmers has doubled every two years for the past 10 years, significantly altering the region’s hydrology.

“We need to get [buffer requirements] in place because, as a farmer, I’m not the problem,’’ Kanne said. “But I’m part of the problem. And I will be part of the solution.’’

Not so fast, say lobbyists who have plied the Capitol’s hallways in St. Paul this session representing Minnesota farm and commodity groups. Their objective since Gov. Mark Dayton announced his buffer initiative in January has been to weaken, stall and/or kill the proposal. Keep the dirty water flowing, they seem to say.”

Darrel Mosel: Farmers will Find Production Benefits with Buffers→

SC Times:

“As a farmer who has a drainage ditch, a small creek and larger creek flowing through my land, I know that when there isn’t a buffer between the crop field and the streambank, runoff takes soil and any chemicals along for the ride right over the edge. I have buffers that range from 50 to 120 feet wide. That leaves me plenty of room to raise crops on the rest of my land. And it makes a difference — the stream banks are stable, and I know my soil and inputs are staying where they belong.

But upstream and downstream, people are still trying to farm to the edge, and when heavy rains come, it’s a disaster. Creeks turn chocolate, and the banks cave in. This type of farm run-off is a major contributor to our state’s water pollution problems. It’s also an incredible waste of seed, fertilizer and chemicals.”

The intended benefits of shoreline buffers that is well described by a practicing farmer.

Charles Marohn: Environmentalism and Density on Minnesota's Lakes→

Strong Towns:

“A small town in Minnesota just gave an extended middle finger to one of the state’s most impotent bureaucracies. What is setting up is a school yard brawl between two underweight, skinny greasers with switchblades. Could be a lot of slapping and name calling, but if things go horribly wrong there is the potential that someone gets their throat slit.

Detroit Lakes is a town very similar to my hometown of Brainerd, with the primary distinction being that their auto-based, Ponzi-scheme development blowout happened within the city limits where here in Brainerd that mess was absorbed in the neighboring (competing) city of Baxter. In a grass is greener kind of way, I’ve always perceived them to be doing a little better than we are here. I’m probably wrong.

The current dispute between Detroit Lakes and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is over an $11.8 million hotel and restaurant very near Detroit Lake.”

Charles Marohn is right to be infuriated with Minnesota's shoreland density requirements for cities -- all Minnesota citizens should be disappointed. The State's shoreland development standards are old. These standards are outdated with regard to lake protection, and they're inconsistent with good land use development principles and practices. When the Minnesota DNR attempted to revise the 1970-80s era standards several years ago, Governor Pawlenty dismissed them because, perhaps rightly, the public and local governments might not have accepted the shoreline buffer provisions that were proposed to protect water quality. Those proposed standards would have also allowed cities to use their own density standards provided that the area was served by sewer and proper stormwater controls. In Lakeshore Living, we speak to the changes that are necessary and how we could use sound place-making principles and good bottom-up community design. Charles Marohn helped me, a lake ecologist, better understand Strong Town principles. Thanks Charles! 

James Fallows: Nice Downtowns→

The Atlantic:

“It’s tempting, if you haven’t seen the varied stages of this process, to imagine that some cities just “naturally” have attractive and successful downtowns, and others just don’t happen to. It’s like happening to be located on a river, or not.

But in every city we’ve visited with a good downtown, we’ve heard accounts of the long, deliberate process that led to today’s result. The standard discussion will go: “See this restaurant [bar / theater / condo / Apple store with surrounding retail outlets]? Ten years ago, you wouldn’t have [dreamed of coming here at night / seen anyone but crack addicts / been able to rent a condo, or wanted to].” We’ve heard variations of this account so often we now feel a little let down if we don’t get the “this used to be a crack house” speech when visiting a nice hotel or downtown tech-company headquarters...

In every place we’ve been, every one we’ve talked with about downtown recovery stresses the crucial importance of getting people to live there.”

How do you get people to live there? It often requires investing or restoring amenities.

Kyle Potter: Dayton Proposes More Money to Reimburse Farmers for Buffers →

Associated Press:

“In an effort to ease concerns about his plan to create 50-foot buffer zones along Minnesota waterways, Gov. Mark Dayton started lining up more money this week to reimburse farmers.

The governor set aside $20 million in his proposed bonding bill unveiled Tuesday to buy up swaths of cropland from farmers. The state had also previously applied for hundreds of millions of dollars through a federal program that pays farmers in 10- to 15-year contracts for environmentally friendly practices that could include buffers, his office said.”

The current paradigm is that we have to pay farmers to do the right thing. Why as a farmer can I pollute my neighbor's place or a public resource? Why does my neighbor have to pay me to stop me from sending my pollution downstream to him? Is it my right to pollute? What would Aldo say?

Josephine Marcotty: Buffer are a Rallying Cry for Cleaner Water→

Star Tribune:

“Buffers are a remarkably simple solution for a lot of pollution. “Mother Nature has an awesome filter,” said Richard Schultz, a professor at Iowa State University who has studied the effects of buffer strips on one stream near Ames, Iowa, for two decades. “Let her do her thing, and she will do it.”

Buffer strips have been a common feature in farming for centuries. Barriers of grass, bushes and trees can block the rush of water from increasingly large rainstorms, slowing erosion on the land and in river beds. More important, they also stop most of the soil, phosphorus and nitrogen that the water carries off. Tall, stiff, prairie grasses on the edge of a field act as a wall to hold soil. And phosphorus, a nutrient that produces massive and sometimes toxic algae blooms in water, sticks to the soil and stops at the barrier. Plants also capture nitrogen through their roots, absorbing it and releasing it into the air before it reaches the stream.”

Yeah but, a uniform regulation consisting of 50 feet of perennial vegetation is a great start -- compared to many places without a buffer.

Scott K. Johnson: WI Cutting and Censoring Science→

Ars Technica:

“Since taking office in 2010, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has reshaped the state’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR). He appointed a former state senator and critic of the agency to be its secretary and hired an outside “deer czar” in response to hunters’ complaints about the state’s management of the deer herd. Gov. Walker also re-wrote state mining regulations to clear the way for an ill-fated iron mine proposal that was finally abandoned last month. Several days ago, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the mining company’s lobbyist and spokesman had been considered for appointment as the DNR’s deputy secretary—until officials realized there was a federal law specifically preventing that kind of thing. (He was, instead, hired for a job in another agency.)

Now, the DNR has come under the budget knife. Among other changes and position cuts, the agency’s science bureau faces a 30 percent reduction in staff. Now, Wisconsin Watch reports that the DNR is considering eliminating the science bureau altogether, shuffling remaining staff into other divisions.”

I don't like to post on politics, but it is sad to see natural resource management agencies, like the WI DNR, discounted and their valuable work reduced.

Julie Buntjer: Minnesota Governor Dayton Talks about Buffer Initiative→

Governor Dayton at Worthington

“An estimated 200 people, including farmers from more than a 12-county area of southern and western Minnesota, packed inside the Worthington Fire Hall Thursday morning to ask questions and voice concerns about Gov. Mark Dayton’s proposal seeking to require 50-foot buffer strips along all lakes, rivers and streams across the state.

Arriving a few minutes behind schedule to a standing-room-only audience, Dayton acknowledged immediately that there will be disagreements and everyone is entitled to an opinion. He listened to question after question and occasionally offered responses on his bipartisan bill (HF1534/SF1537) for nearly two hours.

Dayton’s proposal seeks to create an additional 125,000 acres of water quality buffer strips statewide, and he wants to see the initiative under way before his term expires in another three and a half years.

The idea for added buffers came from the governor’s first-ever Minnesota Pheasant Summit late last year. Since then, it has evolved to focus not only on additional habitat and space for pollinators, but also on improving water quality.”

More Information

Nadia Prupis: EPA Restricts Some Pesticide Use→

CommonDreams:

“The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday announced restrictions on new or expanded uses of harmful neonicotinoid pesticides that may pose risks to honey bees and other pollinators, but environmental groups say the moratorium—while welcome—does not go far enough...

The EPA told companies using neonicotinoids that the agency will halt granting permits for those pesticides until it can assess the threats they pose to pollinators. The widespread use of certain herbicides and pesticides has come under increased scrutiny in recent years after a noted decline in bee populations, which play a crucial part in food production.

But a number of national and state-based environmental groups have called on the EPA to expand its protection of pollinators to include a ban on products already on the market.

”It’s welcome news that EPA is finally beginning to address the threat that neonics pose to the nation’s bees and other pollinators, but given the threats to the nation’s food and farming system, more is needed,” Kristin Schafer, policy director at Pesticide Action Network North America, said in a press release. “Numerous bee-harming neonics and their cousin products are already on the market, and seed coatings in particular have led to a dramatic surge in use over the last few years. EPA should go further to place a moratorium on existing products.””

EPA Announcement and EPA Letter

Monica Millsap Rasmussen: Why not Transit?→

Streets.mn:

“At first glance, the question “What’s stopping others from using transit more regularly” seems to be an easy answer. Convenience. After all, a popular saying in the US used to be, “this is the best thing since sliced bread.” But is the answer more complicated than that?

Listening more deeply, and if one had the ability to converse with people who have made these statements, would we find that another theme is actually freedom to choose? After all, many people who cannot afford a car or are in a situation where they cannot obtain a driver’s license also face many of these obstacles, but due to their circumstances must face them on transit. Making mass transit more convenient would certainly improve the quality of life for users who need to take transit, but would the others take transit or still choose to drive? And would those who are currently without a car still choose to buy a car once they could afford one or obtain a license?”

Monica gets at another issue of regarding mass transit -- the need for high quality options that push out current users. In many cities mass transit is designed for those who can't afford a car. For mass transit to be more popular to the middle class and thus most politicians, it will require rail and bus use to be dominated by the non-poor. We now subsidize roads for the middle class, likely at a higher cost ($/mile) than rail, bus, or streetcar. Why? Because the preference for suburban (i.e., low-density village of our distant past) life-styles?

Matthew Fitzmaurice: Only Capitalism Can Save the Planet→

From Ensia:

“To say the world has changed a lot in the last century is a huge understatement. Industrial, medical and social progress has resulted in unprecedented growth in the world’s population and economy, and that growth has placed tremendous burdens on the planet’s resources. These burdens create problems — perhaps the most substantive problems we have faced as a species: from water scarcity and pollution to climate change, reliable access to nourishing food, and affordable energy.

Here’s the thing, though: where there are problems to be solved, there’s money to be made. And where there’s money to be made, we awaken one of the world’s most powerful forces for change: capitalism. ”

In Lakeshore Living, we write about the benefits of reconfiguring capitalism and expanding markets. We have failed to effectively price public goods, such as clean air and water. Capitalism currently does not value these goods that we all value. Reconfiguring and expanding our capitalistic economic system with price signals for ecosystem services is consistent with our values and traditions. Everybody should pay the full cost of his or her activities, and we should have markets for natural services on private property that include water filtration and purification, soil formation, nutrient capture and recycling, and flood reduction. 

James J. Krupa: Teaching Evolution→

James J. Krupa, writing for Slate:

melfoody, Flickr

“We live in a nation where public acceptance of evolution is the second lowest of 34 developed countries, just ahead of Turkey. Roughly half of Americans reject some aspect of evolution, believe the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, and that humans coexisted with dinosaurs. Where I live, many believe evolution to be synonymous with atheism, and there are those who strongly feel I am teaching heresy to thousands of students. A local pastor, whom I’ve never met, wrote an article in the University Christian complaining that, not only was I teaching evolution and ignoring creationism, I was teaching it as a non-Christian, alternative religion.

There are students who enroll in my courses and already accept evolution. Although not yet particularly knowledgeable on the subject, they are eager to learn more. Then there are the students whose minds are already sealed shut to the possibility that evolution exists, but need to take my class to fulfill a college requirement. And then there are the students who have no opinion one way or the other but are open-minded. These are the students I most hope to reach by presenting them with convincing and overwhelming evidence without offending or alienating them.”

"It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so." ― Charles F. Kettering

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” ― Daniel J. Boorstin

"The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, it’s that they know so many things that just aren't so." ― Mark Twain (?)

"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." ― Daniel J. Boorstin 

Dunning–Kruger effect and We are All Confident Idiots

Angelina Davydova: Lake Baikal Water Levels at 30 Year Low→

Angelina Davydova, reporting for Reuters:

Délirante bestiole, Flickr

“In Russia’s Siberian south, near the border of Mongolia, the world’s largest freshwater lake is shrinking. The surrounding communities depend on Lake Baikal, which contains about one-fifth of the earth’s unfrozen freshwater reserves, for their power, water and livelihoods.

But in the past four months the lake’s water level has dropped so low that experts are calling it a crisis – one they warn could lead to conflicts in Russia over water. The lake is now at its lowest level in over 30 years and experts predict it will keep dropping until melting mountain snow and spring rains begin to recharge the lake around late April or mid-May...

For now, the government is allowing the Irkutsk hydroelectric power station to continue drawing river water that might otherwise have supplied the lake in order to keep the region supplied with heat, power and clean water.”

NASA; Irkutsk Dam on the lake's southeast outlet, the Angara River

Wendell Berry: As Farmers Fade, Who Will Care for the American Landscape?→

Wendy Berry, writing for the Atlantic:

CJ Buckwalker, Flickr

“The landscapes of our country are now virtually deserted. In the vast, relatively flat acreage of the Midwest now given over exclusively to the production of corn and soybeans, the number of farmers is lower than it has ever been. I don’t know what the average number of acres per farmer now is, but I do know that you often can drive for hours through those corn-and-bean deserts without seeing a human being beyond the road ditches, or any green plant other than corn and soybeans. Any people you may see at work, if you see any at work anywhere, almost certainly will be inside the temperature-controlled cabs of large tractors, the connection between the human organism and the soil organism perfectly interrupted by the machine. Thus we have transposed our culture, our cultural goal, of sedentary, indoor work to the fields. Some of the “field work,” unsurprisingly, is now done by airplanes.

This contact, such as it is, between land and people is now brief and infrequent, occurring mainly at the times of planting and harvest. The speed and scale of this work have increased until it is impossible to give close attention to anything beyond the performance of the equipment. The condition of the crop of course is of concern and is observed, but not the condition of the land. And so the technological focus of industrial agriculture by which species diversity has been reduced to one or two crops is reducing human participation ever nearer to zero. Under the preponderant rule of “labor-saving,” the worker’s attention to the work place has been effectively nullified even when the worker is present. The “farming” of corn-and-bean farmers—and of others as fully industrialized—has been brought down from the complex arts of tending or husbanding the land to the application of purchased inputs according to the instructions conveyed by labels and operators’ manuals.”

Read more. If you read anything today read this, then read more from Wendell Berry... 

Joe Fellegy: A Look at Lakeshore and Fish Issues with Biologist-Author Paul Radomski

Joe Fellegy

Joe Fellegy, reporting for Outdoor News:

“After three decades with the Minnesota DNR, Paul Radomski can boast a longtime deep immersion into Minnesota’s diverse lake scenes, from fish and fisheries management to related aquatic and shoreland habitats.”

Read more

MN DNR: Governor's Buffer Initative

Minnesota DNR:

ScootterFllix, Filckr

“Governor Mark Dayton has proposed an initiative aimed at protecting Minnesota’s waters from erosion and runoff pollution.

Known as the Buffer Initiative, the legislation requires at least 50 feet of perennial vegetation around Minnesota’s waters. Buffers help filter out phosphorus, nitrogen, and sediment by slowing runoff, trapping sediment with these pollutants and allowing vegetation to absorb them.”

Good summary of riparian conditions across Minnesota, a collection of shoreline buffer reports, a review of the Governor's proposal, and links to the buffer bills currently being debated.

Aggressive Plan Aims to Separate Crops from Waterways→

Elizabeth Dunbar, reporting for MPR:

“That the governor and members of both parties are pushing a law requiring buffers is significant, say those who have advocated buffers for years. It’s galvanized members of conservation groups like the Izaak Walton League of America. Don Arnosti, who represents the group, called it “one of the strongest initiatives that could be in the broadest public interest in pursuit of clean water.”

The bill would require buffers in place by September 2016. Current law mandates buffers along about 36 percent of the waterways in the state, according to a state agency analysis, so the change would be significant.

Republican Rep. Denny McNamara, who chairs the House Environment and Natural Resources Policy and Finance Committee, said it faces an uphill battle at the Legislature.”