Single environmental agency gathering momentum?

Legislation introduced today in the Minnesota Senate (see Senate File 1657) would move us in the direction of the single comprehensive and well-integated environmental agency I have advocated for here and in a recent Strib commentary. Senators Mary Olson (Bemidji), Satveer Chaudhary (Fridley), Tom Saxhaug (Grand Rapids), Dan Skogen (Hewitt), and Scott Dibble (Minneapolis) deserve high praise for their willingness to take on such a complex issue and the plan they present is well conceived and entirely plausible. [Note: As of today, there is no companion bill in the House.]

If passed and signed in current form, the bill would establish an 18 member citizen advisory committee to develop a plan for strategically restructuring state functions related to environment and natural resources. As directed in the bill, members of this committee "shall have experience or expertise in the science, policy, and practice of the protection, conservation, preservation, and enhnacement of the state's environmental and natural resources." This committee would operate from September 2009 through August 2010. The charge to the advisory committee "is to "recommend a structure to provide an efficient and effective organization for state agencies and local governments to administer environment and natural resource policies. " Specifically, the committee is to outline an agency that will:

• reduce administrative personnel
• increase public accountability
• consolidate and simplify permitting functions
• foster professionalism in providing services
• reduce political influence in environmental decision-making
• enhance public interaction and participation
• align services to meet changing needs
• utilize appropriate new technologies
• help businesses create and maintain a green economy
• achieve personnel reductions through attrition

Section 2 of the bill calls for abolition of the the DNR, BWSR, and PCA effective at the end of June 2011 and the establishment of single agency. Section 3 consolidates specific environmental functions currently administered by departments of Agriculture, Health, and Commerce. Section 4 abolishes the Environmental Quality Board, the Harmful Substances Compensation Board, the Petroleum Tank Release Compensation Board, and the Agricultural Chemical Response Board and move these functions to the new agency.

The changes envisioned are profound and critically important to the economic and ecological future of Minnesota and this proposal merits serious consideration. There undoubtedly will be resistance to this bill within existing agencies and the obstacles standing in the way of such progressive legislation are formidable. Nonetheless, the coincidence of a global economic transition and passage of the Clean Water, Land, and Legacy Amendment provide us with a unique opportunity for strategic reform. Look the bill over and contact your legislators (especially on the House side).

Ice out progress 2009

Last spring I made a short post here linking to daily satellite imagery useful for monitoring ice-out progress. This University of Wisconisn based site has now been moved to http://ge.ssec.wisc.edu/modis-today/ and I have learned a bit more about how to get maximum utility out of the images. When you get to the site, first click anywhere within the boundary Minnesota which will open the USA3 image for the day. Next choose the '250m' scale to zoom in. Now for the cool part...select the 'false color' option and any open water will be immediately obvious! As another hint to anyone following ice-out progress on the Rainy River, toggle off the 'State borders' so as to not mask image data. Enjoy!

Urban metabolism and the pace of rural life

In the course of looking for something else, I came across a fascinating paper on "urban metabolism" (see pdf of Bettencourt, L. and others. 2007. Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 104(17): 7301-7306 ). Among many other interesting things, this article shows that mean walking speed increases as function of population (see top figure). For those not familiar with natural logarithmic scales, what the figure shows is that in a city of around 3000 people (~e⁸), average walking speed is about 1 meter per second (e⁰) . In a village of 400, average walker velocity slows to roughly 0.8 meters per second while in a city of 1.2 million the typical pedestrian is hustling along at 1.5 meters per second.

Two things are remarkable about this finding. First, and as is shown in the lower figure, metabolic rates of individual organisms typically decrease as body size increases. Somehow, cities as organic entities function in a way that is fundamentally different than what we see in individual animals. Second, the incredibly tight scaling of walking speed to city size is extraordinary. That such a basic human behavior is so closely tied to population density has profound implications for the way we perceive the world.

As I have worked with lakshore property owners from around Minnesota over the past couple years I have often been struck by the starkly contrasting perspectives of urban and rural residents. Perhaps this work offers a hint at why what we value here in northern Minnesota is so different than what is valued by residents of the Twin Cities metropolitan area. If population density can influence our mean walking speed is it any wonder that it might also influence more subtle attitudes and behaviors?

'...what that must do to their souls, how different they must be in their private concerns and evaluations and wishes.' -- Dean Moriarty, in Kerouac's 'On The Road'

Motorized Watercraft Effects in Aquatic Ecosystems

As the intensity of boat traffic and typical horsepowers increase with demographically-driven(re-)development of lakeshore, we have reason to be concerned about adverse impacts of boat motors on aquatic ecology. Asplund (2000) provides an excellent and understandable 21-page review of relevant studies. Unfortunately, the trends revealed are more than a little disconcerting. Asplund's review deserves wide circulation among lake associations and others concerned with maintaining ecological integrity of our lakes and streams.

As the preceding fihure shows, adverse impacts are not limited to very shallow areas. A 100 HP motor can stir-up phosphorus-laden bottom sediments down to water depths of 18 feet! When the paper this figure is derived from was published in 1991, a 100 HP motor was near at the upper end -- now motors in excess of 200 HP are relatively common even on small lakes.

Prop wash can greatly increase turbidity, re-suspend algae stimulating phosphorus, and disturb critical spawning and nursery habitat for fish and other aquatic animals. Perhaps most critically, prop wash can destroy plant communities effectively "plowing" lake bottoms and opening sediments to invasive species such as Eurasion watermilfoil (EWM).

Want to reduce the likelihood and adverse impacts of EWM on your lake? Consider comprehensive educational campaigns or local ordinances to reduce damage to native plant communities caused by careless (though seldom malicious) powerboaters. That will, of course, be a very tall order since old habits die hard.

One excellent place to start would be to provide signage at accesses discouraging the now almost ubiquitous practice of power-loading (i.e., driving your boat on to the trailer) . Power-loading produces a pronounced scour hole and wide spread sedimentation at just the place where invasive species are most likely to enter a lake. In effect, power-loading is equivalent to putting out a welcome mat for Eurasion watermilfoil and other invasive plants. With spring just around the corner, it is time to think about such things...

March HydroClim Minnesota

The March edition of HydroClim Minnesota has been posted. This past meteorological winter was 3-6 degrees F below the long term average and was the coldest since 2000-2001. Major flooding of the Fargo-Moorhead area appears to be a near certainty. Have a look!

Streamlining Minnesota

My commentary calling for creating a single, comprehensive Minnesota natural resource agency appeared in today's Star-Tribune. It had great placement with a full banner headline across the right side of the Op-Ed spread so it should generate some (hopefully constructive) dialogue. I must admit I am a bit disappointed with the lack of comments on Strib's web posting but perhaps there will be moer lately. I have had quite a few personal responses today -- for the most part positive -- but generally folks don't seems to think such changes are likely. We'll see. It just seems to me that the coincidence of a global economic shift and passge of the Legacy Amendment present us with an historically unique opportunity for reform. Note: Because the submitted text of my piece was shortened a bit editorially, I have posted a pdf of the full version here.

DNR Restructures around Watersheds

The Minnesota DNR announced last Friday that its Divisions of Waters and Ecological Resources will be combined into a new division focused on Watershed Management. This is definitely a step in the right direction. As I noted in previous posts and detailed in my paper submitted to the legislature, watersheds comprise natural landscape units and should become the jurisdictional boundaries not only for resource management but for other social and political functions as well. For example, I would like to see 50 watershed-based units replace our 87 arbitrarily delineated counties. We are at a unique historical moment and have an opportunity to fundamentally restructure natural resource management (and state-local governance) in ways that prepare us to participate fully in a global green ecconomy.