You've heard it said that "we're all in the same boat." You've also heard "politics makes strange bedfellows." Somewhere in between these figures of speech lives the Fix The Pipes Coalition , a non-partisan statewide alliance asking for water infrastructure funding.

Our recent conversations about "local food" have been fascinating, and they're more relevant than ever. The last time the country was turned upside down, during WWII, our food supply system moved from small diversified farms to the huge corporate operations most farms are today. Will COVID-19 be the impetus for yet another rethinking of our food systems?

If there's one thing the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us, it's that we really can change things dramatically and quickly. And when "this" (whatever "this" is) is over, Grace Guenthner of MN350 says we will have a hard decision to make: return to "business as usual" or take advantage of an opportunity to rebuild for resiliency and justice. And here is a list of just some of the actions MN350 says you can take: Use MN350 Action’s simple online form to contact your legislators to press for bold and

We might be forgiven for looking a little harder than usual to find something to be happy about these days.

When Cindy Hale and Jeff Hall saw the income from their small farm drop "from several thousand dollars a month to zero, overnight," they realized the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic wasn't going to be over anytime soon.

Road salt is useless if it's colder than 15°. It corrodes pavement and metal and it doesn't biodegrade. Not to mention what it does to water quality when it washes into streams, rivers and lakes. Beet juice and cheese brine aren't bad de-icing options, but deer love them, and attracting deer to roadways isn't exactly improving safety. And then there's potassium acetate. It has a lower freezing point, it biodegrades ... it's just so gosh-darn expensive. But MN DOT thinks it's worth looking into

If you've never heard of "wake boats," you're not alone.

If you think college students keep members of "the establishment" on their toes, you should see what effect high school students have. MPIRG (Minnesota Public Interest Research Group) has had a chapter at UMD since 1971, and even all these years later, incoming freshmen arrive with a passion to make a difference. Even fifty years after the first Earth Day, students at UMD are galvanized by environmental justice issues, and they're already pulling details together for the next environmental

A dab of taconite tailings. A soupçon of dredge sediment. A pinch of wood-processing byproducts. It's all a part of the process as NRRI researcher Marsha Patelka pursues her goal of turning waste resources into good topsoil.

Refineries, paper mills, wastewater plants, lumber companies, paint factories, steel furnaces, and meat-packing plants all lined the St. Louis River Estuary at one point, and, before it was illegal to do so, dumped their waste directly into the river.