Minnesotans celebrate and use our state’s abundant water, but we lack timely information about its decreasing quality — and this is dangerous. We drink water without knowing whether it came from unsafe private wells and we swim in and eat fish from lakes and rivers unaware of contaminant levels. The status quo threatens the public health, economic stability, recreational economy and environmental sustainability of our state.
It is time for Minnesota leaders to face the fact that Minnesota has a water problem. Water management within Minnesota falls to under-resourced and over-burdened public agencies with overlapping mandates, and no cohesive strategy and central leader. Each year, the management of water resources becomes more urgent and more complex, and Minnesota’s current reliance on diffuse agency-led management is not working.
Our state is full of innovative local leaders, including mayors involved in the Regional Council of Mayors and Minnesota Mayors Together, as well as companies and nonprofits with solutions that can improve statewide water resource management, such as tools to assess and disseminate near real-time water quality data. I encourage Minnesotans to set a new, modern trajectory for statewide water resource management by adopting and funding statewide plans to accomplish the following goals:
- Appoint a state water commissioner. Other states, like California, Colorado and North Dakota, have a designated water leader. Minnesota does not. In Minnesota, seven agencies and a legislative council share responsibility for water issues (Board of Soil & Water Resources, Department of Natural Resources, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, Minnesota Department of Health, Met Council, Minnesota Department of Agriculture, University of Minnesota and Clean Water Council) with DEED’s Public Facilities Authority managing the State Revolving Loan Fund. We have a kitchen full of cooks, but no head chef. What business runs without a CEO? Minnesota would be better served by a cabinet-level role of state water commissioner with primary responsibility for ensuring Minnesota’s long-term water quantity is sufficient and overall water quality is above average.
- Grade community water system infrastructure needs to set transparent investment priorities. Minnesota needs to follow the lead of Louisiana and Wisconsin and develop a grading system for community water system (CWS) accountability that measures community water system quality and performance. Each of Minnesota’s 965 CWSs would receive a grade for quality and performance based on infrastructure, accountability and overall health risk of drinking water to consumers.
- Test private wells. Many of the state’s 2 million+ private wells are located on farms and non-urban locations throughout Greater Minnesota. Most private well owners don’t know if their water meets safe public health drinking water standards, as we saw in a recent lawsuit-induced response (from the Department of Health, Department of Agriculture and MPCA) to an EPA request that the state develop a plan to reduce nitrate contamination. Minnesota’s leaders could prioritize and fund a statewide campaign to test 50% of the drinking water private wells by 2035 by testing 100,000 wells each year for the next 10 years with an overall goal of 100%. Testing would inform well users of risk, and assuming high contamination rates are pervasive, it could facilitate market shifts to reduce remediation costs.
- Track and share lake and river water quality data. Minnesota’s visitors and residents are drawn to the state’s 10,000+ lakes and 92,000 miles of rivers and streams, but we don’t know if it is safe for kids to swim in that river, if that lakefront property is on a healthy lake, or if the fish from that river are safe to eat. The impaired waters database is updated only every two years while modern technology could facilitate almost real-time data! The public deserves access to 24/7/365 data about the water quality of all public lakes and rivers. It is time for Minnesota leaders to adopt and fund a plan to frequently test all public lakes and rivers in the state, share that data with the public, and aggressively restore impaired waters.
In conclusion, by appointing a water leader and taking a few key, bold steps, Minnesota can change the downward trajectory of state water quality, and improve our state’s overall public health and economic vitality.
Jeremy Lenz, a water consultant, lives in Northfield.
