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Environmental News

MPR News is your source for environment news from Minnesota and across the country.

Getting to Green: Minnesota’s energy future

Getting to Green is an MPR News series that shares stories about Minnesota’s clean energy transition, including what needs to be done to get there.

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Climate Cast

Listen to Climate Cast, the MPR News podcast all about our changing climate and its impact in Minnesota and worldwide.

Composting in Minnesota could heat up under proposed rule change

Composting in Minnesota could heat up under proposed rule change

Although about 40 percent of the garbage Minnesotans throw away is organic and compostable, the state captures only about 4 percent of the waste through organics recycling.
by Elizabeth Baier

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PolyMet mine hearing in Duluth draws large, passionate crowd

PolyMet mine hearing in Duluth draws large, passionate crowd

The first public hearing on what could be Minnesota's first copper-nickel mine drew some 1,300 people to Duluth on Thursday to rally for jobs, ask questions and poke holes in the 2,200-page environmental study that must pass muster before the project can go forward.
by Elizabeth Dunbar and Dan Kraker

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Live: Public hearing on PolyMet mine proposal

Live: Public hearing on PolyMet mine proposal

Minnesota is potentially on the brink of a copper mining boom. Tonight in Duluth is the first of a series of public hearings on a proposed copper-nickel mine in Hoyt Lakes. Follow updates from MPR News and Duluth News Tribune reporters.

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EPA: Mining poses risks to Alaska salmon

EPA: Mining poses risks to Alaska salmon

A government report indicates a large-scale copper and gold mine in Alaska's Bristol Bay region could have devastating effects on the world's largest sockeye salmon fishery and adversely affect Alaska Natives, whose culture is built around salmon.
by The Associated Press

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First PolyMet hearing tonight in Duluth, but do comments matter?

First PolyMet hearing tonight in Duluth, but do comments matter?

Department of Natural Resources officials said recently that they prefer substantive, technical comments on the environmental study rather than statements of support or opposition. So how important are the thousands of comments that have already been received?
by Elizabeth Dunbar

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An argument to charge more for water

A resident in Woodbury pays 88 cents for 1,000 gallons of water. If he or she uses a lot of water, say, for sprinkling the lawn, the price goes up — to $1.88, then $2.88, then $3.88 and so on, says Klayton Eckles, Woodbury’s public works director. • Beneath the Surface: Minnesota’s Pending Groundwater Challenge Read more →
by Dave Peters

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Meeting tonight for Park Rapids groundwater management area

Farmers, residents and others in the Park Rapids area are learning more tonight about a Minnesota Department of Natural Resources project to deal with, and possibly restrict, groundwater pumping.
by Elizabeth Dunbar

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Is Minnesota prepared for a world where water scarcity is widespread?

Is Minnesota prepared for a world where water scarcity is widespread?

Jedediah Purdy writes in the New Yorker about the politics of “no ones job” and how it is seen in the response to the chemical leak in West Virginia’s Elk River. Last Thursday an estimated seventy-five hundred gallons of MCMH, “a chemical used to remove impurities from coal, ran into the Elk from a one-inch…
by Michael Olson

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Bill would spend $300M on Great Lakes restoration

Bill would spend $300M on Great Lakes restoration

A spending bill crafted by congressional leaders would allocate $300 million to a Great Lakes cleanup that had been threatened with a massive cut during last year's budget fight, supporters said Tuesday.
by John Flesher, Associated Press and The Associated Press

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How to avoid a national water crisis?

How to avoid a national water crisis?

Most Americans are spoiled when it comes to water, according to Robert Glennon. We open the tap and get as much water as we want and it costs us less per month than a cellphone. • Beneath the Surface: Minnesota’s Pending Groundwater Challenge Glennon, a professor of law and public policy at Arizona State University Read more →
by Dan Gunderson

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