Restore and Protect Clean Water in Minnesota

40% of tested water bodies in Minnesota are polluted to the extent that they are officially labeled "impaired." Despite all the resources going towards clean water, we do not have indications that this number is going down.

The problem is that we – the state, the country – have not figured out how to protect our water resources from the polluted runoff that is causing most of our water quality problems today. When pollution comes out of a single point, like industrial discharges, it is relatively easy to find, measure, and regulate, and we have done a lot to reduce industrial pollution in the past few decades. Now, we must learn to deal with the runoff from parking lots, construction zones, and farm fields.

It is diffuse and virtually impossible to measure, and the regulations and technological advances that have reduced point-source pollution are not being effective with this different challenge.

Rather than relying primarily on government to “fix” water pollution, we need to set up the environments where we all work to protect clean water because we meet our own interests in the process of doing so. Rather than looking for “fixes” for particular problems, we need to attach value to the outcomes that we want to achieve.

The individuals, businesses, farms, and other organizations at the center of these issues are key to figuring out how to do this and setting up the models in which it happens. The Citizens League is working with partners in these sectors and in government to create this new model for water governance.

Find out more at www.citizensleague.org/water.

Photo by chimothy27 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5