Minnesota is at the northwestern edge of skunk cabbage range, and it grows only in moist swampy lowlands, the kind of places where the coldest and densest air of the night settles out and intensifies its chill.
While ideal canopy cover is around 45 percent, according to the Metropolitan Council, different parts of the Twin Cities fall far above or below that, with neighborhoods that are whiter and wealthier tending to have more trees.
The state has found that neighborhoods with mostly residents of color had five times the rate of asthma emergency room visits as majority white areas.
Metro Transit idled its first batch of electric buses due to mechanical and charging problems. They’re now back in service, along with a plan to convert almost 12% of its fleet to electric models over the next five years.
Talk about unfriendly skies.
The Minnesota DNR has records on ice out going back to the 1800s for some lakes.
New research from the University of Minnesota suggests wakesurf boats would need to run at least twice as far from shorelines, docks and other lake-goers for their waves to have the same impact as other common recreational boats used for sports like tubing, waterskiing and wakeboarding.
The ruling wasn’t a total victory for mine opponents, however. The court ruled in favor of PolyMet and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency on several other issues.
Talon Metals Corp. wants to build an underground mine that would operate for nine years and primarily extract nickel, but also some copper, cobalt, platinum group metals and iron.
It’s not just the social relations that are icy.
What to know about where the $1 billion proposal stands today — and what’s in store for PolyMet in the coming year.
Wednesday’s storms even produced a tornado in Southern Minnesota — something that has never been recorded in the state in December.
Life in the resistance camps is difficult, but activists say important work remains.
A new pilot program helps districts replace diesel buses with electric ones — vehicles that cost about $300,000.
Stormwater runoff is easy to ignore in an urban environment, since, at least when everything’s working correctly, it runs into storm drains, under the street and out of sight.
In third-party solar, a company installs panels for a customer and then either leases the panels or sells the power or net-metering credits to the property owner.
On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced it will seek a “mineral withdrawal” for lands in the Rainy River watershed in Superior National Forest, near the Boundary Waters.
The study, begun in the final days of the Obama administration, was canceled by former President Donald Trump just four months shy of its completion.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency worked on the revisions for ten years and formally proposed the changes last winter. But the federal approval has left environmental activists reeling.
