To protect clean water, we need clean government

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In her Dec. 18 column "Future well being should top the agenda for 2023," Lori Sturdevant extolled the vision of the Global Wellness Connections project endorsed by University of Minnesota Prof. Thomas Fisher. Clearly the project has great merit in that it advocates a regional approach to the development and marketing of our state's strengths, including health care and medical technology, and compels us to look toward the future.

However, it also assumes that we have a sturdy foundation upon which to build. And that may well be a faulty assumption.

Consider this: According to the findings of a study published in May 2021 by the university's Center for the Study of Politics and Governance, the party caucuses of the Legislature raise massive donations from monied interests, then grant these contributors the opportunity to "shape" legislation. This is popularly known as "pay to play," or influence peddling.

In August of that year we issued our own report ("The Future is Now") noting that for the 2020 legislative elections the party caucuses raised more than $26.5 million, which comes to more than $130,000 per legislator. This is in addition to a large "partisan" staff that works at the direction of the party caucus leaders and is fully paid for by the public.

The fact that both reports were ignored by state officials as well as the media is having consequences that could be cataclysmic. Increasingly, the state is turning over the control of its dwindling water supply to foreign conglomerates like Antofagasta and Glencore that are seeking to develop mining operations that could destroy the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and Lake Superior, the largest body of fresh surface water in the world.

Both companies have questionable international records that should have been closely scrutinized before the permitting process commenced. Glencore was fined more than $300 million in the United Kingdom for bribery of public officials and fraud and another $1.1 billion in a U.S. federal court for bribery and price manipulation. This raises the most obvious question: Why is Minnesota doing business with such questionable international enterprises? So far, not a single public official has answered that question.

Further, for more than four years, neither the Minnesota House nor Senate would hold a public hearing on any legislation designed to protect our waters or reform our antiquated mining laws, which do not take matters of public health, economic damage or permanent environmental harm to humans or wildlife into consideration. That is not just our conclusion but is the warning issued by Tom Landwehr, a former Minnesota Department of Natural Resources commissioner appointed by Gov. Mark Dayton.

Nor were we able to get the Legislature or the governor to take any positive action in this last legislative session to develop a water study that, at a minimum, would compel our government to understand that we cannot commercially sell or continue to pollute our drinkable water without disastrous results. If we are to have a future, we must know that there will be an adequate supply of water available. As a University of Minnesota study concluded back in 2012, "water use is also growing 1.6 times faster than population growth. This means that the state would need to reduce water consumption by 35% over the next 25 years just to stay at today's levels of use."

Tragically, since that time the DNR reported in 2019 that 56% of our rivers and streams were "impaired" (harmful to human and animal health) and added another 304 bodies of water to that list in 2021.

Simply, we are going in the wrong direction by increasing need while reducing supply.

In 2020, another University of Minnesota report called for "the development of a state drinking water plan." This was followed in May 2022 with the Star Tribune writing a strong editorial supporting legislation for a comprehensive water study. But, again, no action was taken.

This gross neglect must end now, and it can be done with a simple directive from Gov. Tim Walz instructing his Department of Health to expand its current review of water to include need and supply projections for the next five to 20 years. Certainly, there is adequate funding available for such an absolute necessity, and it partners well with his proposal on reducing our carbon emissions.

As citizens, we also must recognize that we cannot expect the public good to be served when our political system is so heavily influenced by the monied interests that fund political campaigns. That will destroy democracy as much as the attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. How about some public debates on this, including a discussion on public funding of campaigns, as is done in Connecticut?

This would build the foundation that is necessary for the consideration of interesting proposals designed to improve our future such as that advanced by Prof. Fisher, and further assure Minnesotans that their government serves the public good and only the public good.

Arne H. Carlson was governor of Minnesota from 1991 to 1999. Tom Berkelman (DFL-Duluth, 1977-83) and Janet Entzel (DFL-Minneapolis, 1975-84) were members of the Minnesota House. Chris Knopf is executive director of Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness. Duke Skorich is president of Zenith Research Group, Duluth.