Pets can bring so much joy. But there’s also a lot to learn about how to train and care for a dog, cat or other animal companion.

How do you help an anxious rescue dog? Do indoor cats need vaccines? What’s the etiquette at the dog park? What do I feed a rabbit?

And, if you’re thinking about getting a pet, what should you be thinking about ahead of time?

Coming up at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, MPR News host Angela Davis talks with a veterinarian about how to help your pets stay happy, healthy and well-behaved.

And we want to hear from you, too.

What questions do you have about how to train or care for a dog, cat or other animal? What do you want to ask the vet?

Call us during the 9 a.m. hour at 651-227-6000 or 800-242-2828. 

Guest:

• Dr. Eric Ruhland is a veterinarian and founder and owner of St. Paul Pet Hospital. He grew up on a dairy farm in central Minnesota and graduated from the University of Minnesota’s College of Veterinary Medicine. He also offers regular advice to pet owners on Fox 9.

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Sitting in the driver’s seat of an antique combine east of Moorhead, Sam Stueber can see the past, present and future of Minnesota’s changing environment.

On this day, she’s working in a field of ancient and unspoiled prairie in Clay County, rounding up thousands of pounds of wild grass and wildflower seeds at the Nature Conservancy’s Bluestem Prairie Scientific and Natural Area. It’s one of the few places left where you can see the sweeping native prairie that once covered much of western Minnesota.

Beyond their beauty, these lands are helping in the larger fight against climate change. Grasslands are one of the world’s best places to store carbon. University of Minnesota researchers found an acre of prairie grassland can pull a ton of carbon out of the air each year.

The roots of wild prairie grasses can extend 15 feet down into the dirt, trapping the carbon underground. If a wildfire comes along, grasses will burn and some carbon will escape but most of the carbon stays underground.

The Nature Conservancy along with other nonprofits and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service collects about 15,000 pounds of wild grass seed each fall using special Allis-Chalmers combines, which are lighter than modern combines that can rut the sandy soil.

Keeping the ancient prairie healthy and growing into the future is vital. As we humans continue to dump carbon into the atmosphere, trapping carbon is crucial to the future of our warming planet.

Click the play button above to listen to the full podcast.

On a corner lot in south Minneapolis, community gardeners celebrated the end of the season Saturday by cooking blue corn tortillas over a fire. Leticia Cordova said they grew the corn a few yards away.

It was “everybody’s work,” she said. Together, the gardeners picked and shucked the corn. Then Cordova used a friend’s grinder to prepare the purplish masa, or dough.

The organization Plant Grow Share, part of the Central Area Neighborhood Development Organization, began cultivating the site a few years ago after a lot they were using was set to be developed. Volunteers dug up shrubs, hoisted garden beds and a shed, and moved it all six blocks, said Lane Brown, the group’s co-executive director.

“We’ve kind of had to be nomadic,” Brown said. “Which is odd because we’re a garden.”

They recently learned their lease was renewed, but the sense of stability was short-lived. The funding for a city program that supports their work is at risk due to proposed cuts in Mayor Jacob Frey’s budget for 2027.

The proposal slashes about $4 million from environmental programs within the city’s Climate Legacy Initiative, which is funded by franchise fees paid by utilities.

Supporters of food and home energy services are urging the city to preserve the funding and find a different way to close the city’s $30 million budget gap. They will have an opportunity to speak to city leaders at a public hearing Monday night.

‘We are not on track and probably not close’

During a recent City Council meeting, Patrick Hanlon, deputy commissioner of sustainability, healthy homes and environment in the Minneapolis Health Department, broke down what he called “a significant reduction to climate spending” in 2027.

His presentation showed the loss of three full-time staff positions and $3.6 million in Climate Legacy Initiative contracts related to local food, green workforce training and home energy efficiency.

Hanlon said the city will spend money on climate initiatives in other parts of the budget and prioritize funding that addresses hard-to-reduce emissions and reaches low-income neighborhoods.

Council member Soren Stevenson asked Hanlon about the city’s progress toward its climate goals, which include reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Hanlon said the city needs to do more, noting “we are not on track and probably not close.”

The city’s climate initiatives will soon begin to show results in emissions data, he added, although many of those initiatives face potential cuts under the proposed budget.

Food policy work under the radar

The Homegrown Minneapolis initiative oversees leases for more than 50 community gardens in lots across the city. It also runs compost, farmers market and food waste programs. Brown said the garden lease program is a national model.

“It helps decrease blight in neighborhoods. It helps decrease crime. But it also just helps uplift community connectedness and education and food access,” Brown said.

The mayor’s budget proposes cutting all of Homegrown’s contracts to help close the projected 2027 budget gap. In 2026, the city budgeted about $540,000 for the program. Like many Minneapolis Health Department programs, it relies on grants for much of its funding.

This type of work often gets taken for granted, said Jenny Breen, who serves on the city’s food policy council and helped create Homegrown more than a decade ago.

“I don't think most people disagree with the idea that it's important,” she said. “I just think most people don't realize how much it's connected to our daily lives and the quality of life that we have in the city.”

Breen said food policy is inseparable from human health as well as the causes and challenges of climate change.

She doesn’t know what the budget cuts would mean for the leased gardens or Homegrown’s other projects, including a $1.3 million food waste prevention grant she said the initiative has been awarded from the state.

Door-to-door home energy projects

The proposed budget also cuts 32 percent from services that subsidize energy projects in homes and businesses. That includes simple steps like improving insulation or sealing windows as well as more costly ones, like switching to electric appliances or renewable heat or power.

Andres Alvarez Arboleda goes door-to-door in green zones, or areas of the city designated as historically underserved and over-polluted, to spread information about funding available for home energy improvements. He said some residents are uninterested or skeptical but others are excited, even relieved.

He remembers one moment when he knocked on the door of a woman with an unsealed attic and old furnace. “She basically started crying because she was so happy. Earlier that year, maybe it was two years ago, she ended up getting frostbite on her toes because of how cold her house was,” he said.

Alvarez works for Unidos Minnesota, which contracts with the city, but he doesn’t know if his contract will be canceled. As the federal government turns away from climate investments, Alvarez says the city should double down.

"There's not enough funding to help the residents of Minneapolis transition off of relying on carbon, and so the franchise fee is the last line of defense that we have,” he said.

Last year, Unidos and other groups successfully pushed the City Council to raise the franchise fee to generate $4 million in additional funding. It angers Alvarez to see about that same amount in proposed cuts.

“It's almost like a slap in the face because it's like some of these programs, the annual budget is basically the equivalent of three days of overpay for policing,” he said.

Frey wants to hike the police budget by more than $20 million with much of that expected to go toward overtime.

In a speech announcing the budget this summer, Frey said due to staffing limitations, the department needs to use overtime to provide services expected by residents. He said he’s trying to match the budget to what the police department spends each year.

Supporters of the at-risk climate programs plan to speak to council members at Monday’s 6 p.m. meeting at City Hall. It's the final public hearing scheduled before council members present budget amendments next month. They are scheduled to finalize a budget in mid-December.

A new report says so-called “forever chemicals” are contaminating rivers, lakes and streams across the U.S., including in Minnesota.

Environment America Research and Policy Center, a national advocacy and research organization, analyzed federal, state and nonprofit testing data from more than 1,600 sites across the U.S.

According to a report released by Minnesota’s chapter, the group found per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, were detected at all 91 testing sites in Minnesota’s waterways. Those included dozens of locations along the Mississippi River.

The report says once in rivers and streams, PFAS pose a risk to drinking water, fish and wildlife.

“Minnesota's waterways should be clean and free of toxic chemicals, yet PFAS contamination of our rivers and lakes is still widespread,” said Dylan Fox-Arnold, a conservation associate with Environment Minnesota, at a press conference Wednesday in St. Cloud. “We shouldn't have to worry about tainted drinking water or catching and eating contaminated fish.”

PFAS are a large class of human-made chemicals found in a variety of consumer and industrial products, including nonstick cookware, water-resistant clothing, carpet and cosmetics.

They’re known for being extremely durable and tend to accumulate in the environment and the human body. Long-term exposure to some PFAS has been linked to negative health effects, including cancer, liver and thyroid disease and fertility problems.

PFAS enter rivers, lakes and streams in several ways, including industrial facilities or wastewater treatment plants that release the chemicals into waterways; water seeping from landfills where consumer products with PFAS often end up; and contaminated sewage sludge that’s applied to farm fields. Firefighting foam containing PFAS also polluted some Minnesota waters near airports and military bases.

“Because they are so widely used in our economy, they wind up in our waterways through an astonishing array of pathways,” Fox-Arnold said.

The report says the findings are likely the tip of the iceberg, because the data does not include all sources of PFAS testing. And many waterways haven’t been tested for PFAS.

Chemicals in the Mississippi

Some of the locations where PFAS were detected weren’t surprising, Fox-Arnold said, such as in the Mississippi River downstream from the Twin Cities.

Minnesota-based 3M manufactured some PFAS at its Cottage Grove facility for decades, beginning in the 1940s until they were discontinued in the early 2000s.

In 2018, the company agreed to pay the state of Minnesota $850 million to settle a lawsuit alleging environmental contamination in the east Twin Cities metro area. 3M stopped producing PFAS at the end of 2025.

The highest concentration of the chemicals was detected near Hastings, which is downriver from the Cottage Grove facility.

But Fox-Arnold noted that PFAS were also detected in the Mississippi upstream from 3M’s plant and at other locations across the state, including Tischer Creek, a coldwater trout stream in Duluth.

“I think the main takeaway from this report about scope and scale is that these chemicals are more pervasive than we previously thought,” he said.

Minnesota passed a law banning intentionally added PFAS in certain products starting in 2025, including cookware, dental floss, menstruation products and ski wax. A complete ban on the sale or distribution of nearly all products containing intentionally added PFAS takes effect in 2032.

Fox-Arnold said other states should follow the state's example by phasing out of the use of the chemicals.

Environment Minnesota also recommends barring industrial facilities from discharging PFAS into rivers or sending them to wastewater treatment plants, and ending the application of sewage containing PFAS on farmland.

Amid growing opposition to Google’s proposed Pine Island data center near Rochester, a major local business organization is voicing its full support for the project.

The Rochester Area Chamber of Commerce, the second largest chamber in the state, announced it is formally backing the controversial massive data center proposal, known as Project Skyway.

Pine Island, where the data center would be built, is about 15 miles north of Rochester, but the chamber’s president, Ryan Parsons, said the economy of the entire region will benefit from new jobs the project will create.

"The job growth that will occur as a result of this in the short term is going to be 700 construction jobs,” Parsons told MPR News. “When we look long term, this will generate a little over 100 new employees in this Google project."

Parsons says this will make the data center the second largest employer in Pine Island after the Land O'Lakes dairy processing facility.

The mega project has been taking a lot of heat recently from southern Minnesota political candidates like DFLer Jake Johnson, who is running to oust Republican U.S. Rep. Brad Finstad, as well as local residents and environmentalists. The fierce community opposition has even spurred some political newcomers to run for local office in Pine Island, as well as in other communities across Minnesota.

The big tech companies behind the hyperscale data center proposals, and their developers, are taking notice of the grassroots opposition to them. Google, for example, recently launched a charm offensive in both Hermantown, near Duluth, and Pine Island, where it is hoping to build enormous data centers. The company held open houses and community celebrations to try to smooth over some ruffled feathers and win over naysayers in town.

Parsons said he’s aware of the opposition to Project Skyway, but he maintains that the immense capital investment and job growth will do wonders for the region.

“This is an outstanding opportunity for a community, especially as they look at what they'll need to continue to grow,” Parsons said.

Google has also promised to invest $24 million into Pine Island schools over the course of 20 years if its project is approved, in addition to the significant amount of property tax revenue the company will pay.

Parsons encourages opponents of the project to learn more about them, explaining that Google and the developer, Ryan Companies, have been very willing to share information, provide resources and answer questions about the proposal.

Critics say that recent openness to sharing details about the projects comes after months and even years of developing their proposals in secrecy, having local government officials sign non-disclosure agreements to keep the plans from being revealed. Google didn’t even acknowledge it was behind the Pine Island project until after the City Council had approved the proposal.

The data center is currently on pause as a judge considers whether the project requires further environmental review.

To mark the fall member drive, Kerri Miller dips back into three conversations she’s had this year with authors who write about nature — and thus, wrestle with what they see climate change doing to our planet. How do we live richly in the midst of a great unraveling?

We start by revisiting the Big Books and Bold Ideas with Terry Tempest Williams, a writer and teacher at the Harvard School of Divinity. Her latest book is "The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary," which itself is a meditation on attending to beauty and carrying forward against all odds.

Naturalist Robert Macfarlane's new book "The Book of Birds” — done in collaboration with artist Jackie Morris — is an ode to our avian friends. Macfarlane insists he's not a birder; he's just an appreciator. But he's thoughtful and poetic about what he observes. He says he wrote "The Book of Birds" to reignite a sense of wonder about about birds because "we will not save what we do not love."

Author Cal Flynn lives on a remote island off the coast of Scotland, so maybe it's no surprise that she's obsessed with wilderness. Research for her new book, "The Savage Landscape," led her to climb mountains, plunge into forests and helicopter to volcanoes. But more than adventure, Flynn was in search of what these wild places mean for humanity.

Subscribe to Big Books and Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS or anywhere you get your podcasts.

Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations.

Katurah Carr had been looking for more affordable housing for herself and her teenage sons when she discovered the new Ridgeview Heights development in downtown Faribault. The 36-year-old loved the look and feel of the three-bedroom unit she saw on Zillow with the marble kitchen island, large windows and shiny new appliances. But the main attraction was the price of the townhouse — only $1,800 a month with utilities included.

Carr said she hadn’t seen anything like it close to that price point in Faribault, a town of about 25,000 residents about an hour south of the Twin Cities. She jumped at the chance to rent it. She was the one of the first to apply and the first tenant to move in when the development opened last month.

She loves living in Ridgeview Heights so much that she jokes she’ll happily keep living there, even after her teenage sons move out one day.

“It’s affordable and they’re so nice,” Carr said. “Like, these places are so cute. I might stay. ‘Get out, kids.’ You know, they’re getting older. ‘See ya. Office. Workout room. Bye. See you later.’”

The eight-unit Ridgeview Heights project is the second affordable housing development built by Community Action Center, a nonprofit social service agency and food shelf in Faribault and Northfield. CAC’s developments provide affordable townhouses to area families, with a few units set aside to provide emergency housing for those experiencing homelessness. And the homes are all net zero, and they will eventually be powered entirely by renewable energy.

CAC says its first development, Hillcrest Village in Northfield, which began renting to tenants in 2022, was a first-in-the-nation net-zero-energy emergency shelter and supportive housing development where 100 percent of the electricity is generated by on-site solar panels.

At the time, net-zero housing was believed to be too expensive to incorporate into affordable housing. But CAC has shown with its projects that net-zero housing can not only be altruistic — it can be affordable, too.

The nonprofit hopes that its model will incentivize more private developers to invest in affordable, net-zero projects, moving Minnesota towards a greener future.

‘Pie in the sky’

Scott Wopata, the former director of CAC, said that the center had long wanted to help address the overwhelming need for affordable housing for years, and that need began to feel more urgent during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“If your goal, especially as a social service agency, is to help house people who are literally living in their car or living on the street. There's a real moral push towards more housing, cheaper housing and to stretch your dollars to get as many beds as you can,” said Wopata, who recently started a new job as community development director with the city of Northfield.

That’s when CAC came up with the idea for the Hillcrest Village project, a collection of 17 apartments and townhouses on a small cul-de-sac in Northfield, the town next door to Faribault. Rents for 16 of the units are kept affordable for lower-income families, while one is reserved for emergency housing for those experiencing homelessness.

To stay in line with the organization’s mission, Wopata wanted the housing to be high quality and powered by renewable energy.

But there wasn’t much precedent for doing this, and Wopata said there was a belief amongst builders and developers that constructing net-zero housing would cost them 30 to 40 percent more than a traditional build. Wopata wanted to debunk that myth, but it was hard to get builders on his side.

“It sounds like pie in the sky,” Wopata said.

Steve Schmidt, co-owner of Schmidt Homes, which developed both CAC sites, acknowledged that he was slow to come around to the idea.

“I was looking at it as, ‘OK, we’re going to build affordable housing. That means we build typical affordable housing that we’re all used to, which is vinyl siding and cheap windows and minimal insulation, just barely meeting code,’” Schmidt recalled. “And Scott said, ‘No, we’re not doing that. We are going to set a standard of what can be done when you use proper techniques and methods, and we’re going to build these [units] net-zero energy.’

“[I told him] it wasn’t going to work,” Schmidt said. “If it would work, other people would be doing it. And he said, ‘I don’t care. We’re going to make it work.’”

Schmidt said he and his team began to look into different models and concepts and partnered with the University of Minnesota’s Center for Sustainable Building and Research to strategize.

A breakthrough came when they settled on a double-wall system with massive insulation in between. The design ensured the homes were essentially vacuum-sealed with the exception of ventilation. The small amount of electricity needed to heat or cool the house could come from solar panels installed within the development.

Those and other elements of the design that Schmidt developed in partnership with CAC and UMN brought the price way down. Wopata estimates they only spent 7 percent more on construction to make it net zero, and they saved an additional 4 to 5 percent due to rebates from Xcel Energy.

Schmidt was so impressed with their findings that he brought other local builders on board.

“This is too good of information for us to keep,” Schmidt said. “We need to share this with other people so other people know how to build this.”

In developing the Faribault units this year, the designers and builders were able to innovate even further.

Schmidt said he hopes the model they’ve created can help other developers who might be wary feel comfortable wading into net-zero housing.

“I think sometimes, the market isn't ready to jump into doing some of these things, and if there's an entity out there that can show the standard builders how to do it, it can happen,” Schmidt said.

A changing tide

The new Faribault development could generate even more of a buzz as interest in net-zero projects soars across the country.

Dan Handeen, a research fellow at University of Minnesota’s sustainable building center, said he’s seeing more and more developers moving into the net-zero space. While the upfront costs can be more, the low cost of utilities could eventually make up for that higher construction cost — and then some. He adds that well-insulated, net-zero homes also tend to be more comfortable to live in; they’re quieter, with well-regulated temperatures and better air quality.

“It’s a win-win as long as you can get the thing built in the first place,” Handeen said.

Wopata hopes Ridgeview Heights in Faribault, and an upcoming net-zero project to be built by a private developer in Northfield next year, could give net-zero affordable housing development a boost well beyond southeast Minnesota.

A pair of kittens gazed up through the aquarium's shimmering blue waters as a (relatively) enormous fish passed overhead. One kitten stared transfixed through the glass while the other, unfazed, was more interested in darting around playfully.

Inside a clear dome, a kitten named Turkey Leg stood up on its back legs as brightly colored clownfish — think “Finding Nemo” — darted just inches from its whiskers. Raising a paw, it batted at the glass, mewing.

For nearly two hours, about two dozen rescue kittens with names like Lottie Dottie, Bendy Wendy and Mouth Trap romped through the Sea Life aquarium at the Mall of America, the largest shopping complex on the continent, located in a suburb of Minneapolis.

Some charged down a 300-foot (90-meter) underwater tunnel, stopping to stare at a sand tiger shark or sea turtles. Other cats found the aquarium's dim blue environment calming and closed their eyes for a little nap.

This was the sixth year the Bitty Kitty Brigade, a rescue organization in the Twin Cities that finds foster homes for orphaned neonatal kittens, held its “field trip” to the aquarium. Some of this year's kittens had Minnesota State Fair -themed names like Funnel Cake or Apple Fries.

“We just thought it’d be a really fun, engaging thing for kittens to see,” aquarium spokesperson John Sullwold said. The kittens came early Monday morning before the aquarium opened to the public.

In addition to raising awareness for the Bitty Kitty Brigade, these field trips are a great way for the young cats to socialize, said Kya Anderson, an event director with the group. That can make it easier for them to adjust to new homes if they get adopted, she said. The group is overseeing some 1,000 kittens this year.

“The kittens just get so excited to see, like, the fish swimming around,” Anderson said.

Sea Life has also invited puppies from Safe Hands Rescue, another foster-based animal rescue, but obviously not on the same day as the kittens.

“Much more running involved with the puppies,” Sullwold said.

President Donald Trump last week announced plans for a $15 billion steel plant in eastern Iowa that will use iron ore mined on Minnesota’s Iron Range.

Meanwhile, Iowa’s legislature cleared the way for nearly $1.4 billion in tax incentives for the mill, which will be one of the largest in the nation.

The announcement was applauded for promising, long-lasting jobs for northern Minnesota. But some have asked why Mesabi Metallics went to Iowa instead of building the plant in Minnesota.

Monica Haynes, director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Minnesota Duluth, joined MPR News host Clay Masters on All Things Considered to discuss the economic impact on the region.

A man and his dog received minor injuries from an early morning encounter with a bear this week in northeastern Minnesota.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources said it happened at about 4:30 a.m. Monday in Solway Township, west of Duluth.

The man let his dogs out of the house, and a short time later a bear pinned one of the dogs to the ground. The man was bitten when he kicked at the bear to get it off the dog.

The bear climbed a tree, and was gone by the time a conservation officer arrived at the scene.

The man declined medical care, and authorities said he planned to take the dog to be evaluated by a veterinarian.

The DNR said it appeared that the bear was acting defensively after being startled by the dogs. It may have been attracted to bird feeders on the property.

The agency said it encourages anyone living in areas populated by bears to remove potential food sources, including bird feeders, that might attract bears.

Turning on a light and making some noise, before letting dogs outside at night or early in the morning, can also help ensure a bear is not startled.

BearWise offers more safety tips for dog owners.

The Minnesota DNR also offers safety tips for people who live in, or visit, parts of the state populated by bears.

Leland Feist and Colby Johnson carefully squeezed eggs from a female fish and sperm from a male fish, then fertilized the eggs in a Petri dish inside their St. Paul lab. Within minutes, the eggs began to divide and grow.

“We just made baby carp right there,” Johnson declared.

Not just any carp, though. These could be the newest recruits in Minnesota’s long and largely losing battle against invasive species.

Using a machine with a tiny glass needle, the researchers inject the common carp embryos with engineered DNA to introduce traits the fish could pass onto their offspring. One approach they’re testing would make female carp infertile. Another is designed to prevent female embryos from developing.

The idea is to release genetically modified male carp into a lake, where they would mate with wild female carp and pass on those genes. Eventually, the population would skew toward males, causing the carp population in that lake to dwindle, Feist said.

“The ultimate goal is to be able to manipulate the population dynamics of these fish,” he said. “If we can control how they reproduce, we can eliminate a reproducing population.”

The method has still only been tested in the lab. While the science is promising, it’s a long way from being ready to be used in Minnesota’s beloved lakes. The approach is also likely to raise ethical and policy questions.

Messing with an invader’s reproduction

Genetic engineering — altering an organism’s DNA to change its traits or add new ones — is already widely used in medicine and agriculture. But using it as an environmental tool is newer, said Nick Phelps, director of the University of Minnesota’s Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center, which is developing the genetic techniques.

“It seems a little out there, but it is the reality of where the science is now,” Phelps said “We’re really sort of forging new ground.”

“We’re still not all that close to deploying it in the field,” said Michael Smanski, a U of M professor of biochemistry and biotechnology who’s leading the common carp project. “There’s going to be a lot of laboratory tests that we need to do to make sure that it works, that it's effective, that it’s safe, that we can scale it economically.”

In other parts of the globe, genetically modified mosquitos are already being released to control disease-carrying populations. Researchers are also developing genetic approaches to control invasive rodents on some islands.

The carp fight provides a good test case for Minnesota.

Common carp are native to Europe and Asia, but they’ve spread to nearly every continent. They were introduced to Minnesota lakes as a game fish in the 1880s. The destructive fish uproot vegetation, stir up sediment and release nutrients that can contribute to algae blooms.

“They turn a biodiverse ecosystem into an ecosystem that's beneficial for them,” said Feist, a doctoral student working in the U lab. “If we can collapse those populations of invasive common carp, we can help preserve our natural bodies of water for both the wildlife and for human use.”

On a recent day in the lab, the researchers created common carp embryos so they could modify their genes early in their life cycle. By controlling light and water temperature, they had tricked the fish into thinking it’s spawning season so they didn’t have to wait until spring.

The researchers’ first test of the process was to insert a fluorescent protein gene from a jellyfish into the carp. Under blue light, the fish glow green.

Creating glowing fish isn’t the goal. But the researchers do use fluorescence to track which fish have been genetically modified.

The Minnesota scientists know genetic engineering can be controversial. They say the genetic traits they’re developing are designed to be self limiting, meaning they’ll decline and eventually disappear from the population unless researchers keep releasing modified fish.

That’s different from a self-sustaining trait designed to spread through generations.

“That gives us a level of control over the technology,” Feist said. “So if we want to stop treatment, we can stop releasing these modified fish.”

Genetic biocontrols tend to raise questions about potential impacts to public health and the environment, said Greg Kaebnick, a senior research fellow at the Hastings Center for Bioethics.

But they also can offer benefits when other strategies for controlling a destructive pest, such as trapping and poisoning, have been inadequate, Kaebnick said.

“The usual strategy for getting rid of it is itself really pretty environmentally harmful,” he said. “And some of these new strategies can be targeted exactly to the species that you’re trying to get rid of.”

Still, Kaebnick said some people will find making any sort of genetic change worrisome.

“People tend to think of the genes as sort of morally special, as sort of repositories of the essence of the species,” Kaebnick said. He said they tend to think “when you make genetic changes, you’re doing something that’s intrinsically troubling.”

‘Talk about it early and often’

Researchers at the U of M hope eventually, genetic modification techniques could be adapted to control other invasive pests, including silver and bighead carp that are moving up the Mississippi River.

They’re also working on methods of knocking down the expression of key genes in invasive zebra mussels, which have infested about 5 percent of Minnesota lakes. That project is less advanced, because while it’s fairly easy to grow common carp in a lab, they say it’s proving difficult to raise zebra mussels through their full life cycle.

But the researchers say there will need to be a public discussion over the policy, regulations and ethics of genetic biocontrol technologies before they can be widely adopted as a method of managing invasive species.

Phelps, the research center’s director, said they welcome the discussion. He said the center’s approach has been “to talk about it early and often.”

The center has convened focus groups and met with state, federal and tribal officials to discuss who decides and regulates the use of such technology, Phelps said.

They’ve also conducted surveys to gauge public attitudes, Phelps said, but found many people don’t understand how genetic modification works. Still, overall, people are more inclined to support it than the use of chemicals or pathogens to control pests, he said.

Smanski said genetic engineering isn’t a silver bullet. But he said it offers promise, and could be used alongside other control methods, such as netting and removing common carp.

“We're bringing a whole new class of technologies to bear,” Smanski said. “Even if nothing has worked in the past 100 years to get rid of this invasive species, these new technologies can really move the needle, I think.”

PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” were once thought of as impossible to remove from the environment.

They’re still seen as difficult and expensive to remove from wastewater, a common place for the PFAS to be found. A pilot project in St. Cloud tested a technology to do just that, and researchers found that the process they used destroyed more than 99 percent of the PFAS they tested.

Luke Langner, the public services director for the city of St. Cloud and Andy McCabe an environmental engineer with Barr Engineering who conducted the pilot, joined Minnesota Now to talk about the technology.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

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We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here

The Trump administration announced Monday it's scaling back how fuel efficient American carmakers need to make their fleets.

The Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards set average fuel economy levels for carmakers. The revised rules, which were finalized Monday, will now require carmakers to make their new passenger car and truck fleets up to 1 percent more fuel efficient each year, aiming for an average of 34.9 miles to the gallon in model year 2031.

This is down from Biden-era rules, which required an annual 2 percent increase in fuel efficiency with a goal of most vehicles getting, on average, 50.4 miles to the gallon by 2031.

The rationale: affordability. Administration officials argue that fuel efficiency technology is expensive, and has helped to drive up the cost of vehicles. They estimate that scaling back the standards will shave about $1,300 off the sticker prices of new cars.

"This administration is delivering relief to families and reviving the beating heart of American manufacturing," said U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in an online statement announcing the change.

President Trump weighed in over the weekend on Truth Social: "These new Standards will take the waste out of building cars in America. That means LOWER PRICES, saving families thousands on a new, beautiful, and safe car."

Climate advocates and auto industry observers say the rules change is another step in the Trump administration's efforts to roll back Biden-era climate policies — including cutting the federal tax credit for electric vehicle buyers, delaying federal dollars for a nationwide EV charging program, and striking down federal waivers that let California set its own strict pollution regulations.

In a statement emailed to NPR, Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Transport Campaign at the Center for Biological Diversity, wrote that rolling back the standards would increase gasoline usage and pollution, "costing consumers at the pump and at the doctor's office."

"Trump is tanking sensible mileage standards at the worst possible time for consumers, who're getting hit with sky-high prices at the pump," he continued.

According to AAA, the national average price for gasoline today is close to $4.50 a gallon, and for diesel, a gallon is hovering close to $6.50, just short of last week's record high.

Easing CAFE standards will hinder the industry's realignment toward more fuel-efficient and electric vehicles, said economist Sue Helper, who studies the auto industry at Case Western Reserve University.

"It's very bad in the long term, because it slows progress," she said. "Then we make our auto companies less competitive. We give them less practice in making the cars that both Americans will want in the future and that the rest of the world will want." After all, American carmakers hope to continue selling their cars in foreign markets that may have stricter emissions standards. And a future presidential administration could change the rules again.

A legacy of the 1970s oil shock

CAFE standards have been part of the auto industry for decades. In 1975, during that decade's great oil supply shock, Congress enacted rules that encouraged carmakers to make their fleets more fuel efficient in an effort to reduce Americans' dependency on the Middle East for oil.

Since then, the national conversation about fuel efficiency has changed; the U.S. is now the world's largest oil producer, and many regulatory changes have instead been driven by concerns about climate change. Since the early 2010s, the fuel efficiency requirements for passenger cars and light trucks have consistently risen.

In practice, the Biden-era standards meant carmakers needed to make electric vehicles to balance out their gas guzzlers — otherwise they were subject to a fine.

But the Trump administration dropped that penalty last July as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, effectively defanging the Biden-era CAFE standards. In December, the White House proposed scaling them back altogether. Soon after, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened a period of public comment.

In its final rule announcing the change, NHTSA also said it's eliminating the ability of carmakers to trade credits amongst themselves for making electric vehicles — a part of the Biden-era CAFE Standards that Republicans often criticized. This rule allowed automakers to buy credits from EV manufacturers to offset making less fuel-efficient vehicles. This helped them meet their CAFE targets.

Will easing CAFE standards make cars more affordable?

In announcing the new change, the administration said lowering the CAFE standards will make cars cheaper.

"Instead of allowing manufacturers to design and produce vehicles they believe their customers will want and need, while spreading real-world fuel economy improvements across their fleets, the system has increasingly led manufacturers to try to fit square vehicle pegs in round classification holes to force the adoption of technologies that do not meet the demands of American families," stated NHTSA in the final rule. "All of this adds inefficiency and cost — pushing even more consumers out of an already unaffordable new car market."

"It's true that the price of new cars has gone up quite a lot," says Helper at Case Western. But she contends that much of that is not because of fuel economy standards. Instead, she says, it's because vehicles have gotten larger, they've faced tariffs and supply chain issues in recent years, and they are often loaded with extras like infotainment systems.

A Consumer Reports analysis from 2023 found that between model years 2003 and 2021, vehicles got about 30 percent more fuel efficient, but attributed the rise in prices to an industrywide shift toward expensive SUVs, rather than from using more fuel-efficient technologies.

And when it comes to the monthly costs of a new car, there are external factors beyond a carmaker's control — like the cost of an auto loan, which is affected both by the Federal Reserve's benchmark lending rate and by an individual buyer's credit score.

"One of the cruxes of vehicle affordability right now is the average monthly payment getting jacked up, because interest rates are so high," says Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, who spent much of her career as Ford's chief global economist and now studies clean energy as a senior visiting fellow at the center-left Third Way think tank.

Plus, a cut in the sticker price might eventually be offset by spending on gas. If vehicles are less fuel efficient, that means drivers will need to fill up at the pump more often — which is especially salient in a year of high gas prices due to the war in Iran.

Will carmakers still make fuel-efficient vehicles?

For now, American carmakers are stuck in a kind of jam.

On the one hand, Helper said, a rules change that makes it easier for them to sell trucks and SUVs is "good in the short-term, because they make a lot of profits making these giant vehicles," though they are not as popular outside of the U.S.

This new move "allows the U.S. more of a playground in this protected little Galapagos of an ecosystem where no one else is wanting to compete," Helper continued.

But the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group representing car and light-truck manufacturers that sell vehicles to the U.S. and that includes automakers such as Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, praised the move. "We're still reviewing the final rule, but NHTSA made the right call to better align fuel economy standards with the law and current market conditions," said John Bozzella, president and CEO of the alliance, in an emailed statement to NPR.

"The standards finalized under the previous administration effectively required a switchover to electric vehicles that was out of step with market realities and customer demand. Today's final rule is an appropriate course correction," he continued.

But in the long term, the CAFE standards change risks hindering American carmakers in a global industry, said Hughes-Cromwick. " The future of the industry is all about the transition to electric vehicles," she said. "The rest of the world is marching on in this transition to EVs. We have a very powerful competitor in terms of the Chinese electric vehicle industry."

And automakers may have other reasons not to shift gears too quickly on fuel efficiency: The administration's latest move could face legal challenges, which could take a while to work their way through the courts. Or a future administration could put more aggressive fuel economy standards back in place.

For companies that need to make decisions years in advance, to decide which models to build, or which factories to design, the easiest course to keep might be the one they're already on.

Copyright 2026, NPR

Pulling on a pair of rubber gloves, Carrie Ruud waded into Clear Lake with a plastic bottle and a mission: search for the DNA of zebra mussels, the invasive pest that’s infested lakes across Minnesota.

Back on shore, Ruud pumped the water she collected through a filter. Using tweezers, she carefully placed the filter membrane into an envelope to send to the University of Minnesota where researchers will examine the sample for genetic residue that might signal the presence of zebra mussels.

“Pretty cool, isn’t it, what we’ve come to with our science?” she said. “I’m excited.”

Ruud and dozens of volunteers this summer collected samples of environmental DNA, known as eDNA, using test kits created by the U’s Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Center. It’s a novel approach that’s brought citizens and scientists together to fight invasives, and could eventually make it easier for Minnesotans to police their local lakes.

Environmental DNA can be an early warning system, “like the smoke detector in your house,” said Nick Phelps, the research center’s director.

“This is going to be a very efficient potential large-scale surveillance tool that’s going to make this haystack of where to look for invasive species much smaller,” he said.

Leaving genetic clues behind

Living organisms are mostly terrible at staying hidden. They’re constantly shedding eDNA into their surroundings.

Phelps compared it to the dust in a house, which is partially made up of human skin cells. If scientists collected some of it and sequenced the DNA, they could figure out who lives in the house, he said.

“The same premise exists for zebra mussels or carp or invasive plants in the environment,” Phelps said. “They're shedding their DNA into the water. And we can filter that water and get the molecular signature of that species.”

State and federal scientists used eDNA for years to search for invasive carp in rivers. But the complexity of the effort made them reluctant to enlist Minnesotans in the fight.

Phelps' team developed eDNA kits simple enough for citizen scientists to use. Each kit contains everything a volunteer needs to collect a sample, including gloves, filter, siphon, bottle and instructions.

Then, researchers set up a lab in St. Paul to test the samples. While this year’s pilot project is focused on zebra mussels, the method could be expanded to look for other invasive plants and animals, Phelps said, although those still need more work.

The invasive shellfish are found in about 5 percent of Minnesota lakes, where they can damage ecosystems. They filter out tiny plankton in the lake that native fish and other species depend on for food.

They make the water clearer, allowing sunlight to reach much deeper. That can fuel the growth of nuisance plants and algae.

Zebra mussels also can clog water intake pipes for water treatment facilities and power plants. And their sharp shells can cut swimmers’ feet.

New infestations often aren’t discovered until someone finds an adult zebra mussel clinging to the end of their dock, Phelps said.

“By the time they go out and actually do a survey of the lake, it’s all over the place,” he said.

But eDNA can give scientists an early warning before an invasive species becomes widespread, Phelps said.

“We can just filter large volumes of water without having to find the actual animal or the plant,” he said. “Early in invasions, when they’re hard to find, this becomes a very, very useful surveillance tool.”

Next up: DNA tests for more invasive species

Next month, researchers will start testing the samples that volunteers collected from 52 Minnesota lakes. They expect to have results in two to three months, which will be sent to the volunteers and to lake managers.

Currently, the tests can only tell whether zebra mussel DNA was detected or not. They can’t provide an estimate how many of the shellfish are in the lake.

Volunteers sampled lakes large and small, including some that are known to have zebra mussels and some that don’t. Among them were Big Sandy, Como, Leech, Ossawinnamakee, Ten Mile and Vermillion lakes.

The research center expects to have kits ready to survey more lakes for genetic traces of zebra mussels by next summer. They’ll roll out tests for other invasive species as they’re developed, Phelps said.

The research lab plans to offer eDNA testing for a fee to lake associations, local governments and others who want to help detect invasive species, he said.

Back at Clear Lake, near the town of Pequot Lakes and about 20 miles north of Brainerd, Ruud rinsed out the collection bottle before filling the sample. “We want to make sure it’s not my DNA in the bottle,” she said with a laugh.

She collected several more water samples from different spots on the lake, recording the latitude and longitude of each.

Ruud, a former state lawmaker who regularly volunteers to collect water samples, said using eDNA to detect the presence of invasive species sooner gives lake managers more options for controlling an infestation.

“If we catch them early,” she said, “we can’t eradicate it, but we can manage it.”

This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.

By Rachel Cramer | Harvest Public Media

During the winter of 2013, the number of eastern monarch butterflies sank to their lowest level on record after years of decline. Other pollinators, like honeybees, were also struggling.

In response, the Obama administration formed a task force to figure out how to reverse these trends. Orley “Chip” Taylor, the founding director of Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas, was invited to speak at a meeting in D.C. with highway managers.

“In that talk, I presented an idea that we could improve monarch habitat by creating strips of milkweed and native plant habitat along the banks of the interstate highways, especially along I-35,” Taylor said.

Interstate 35 is a major corridor in the U.S., stretching from Laredo, Texas, to Duluth, Minnesota. It also runs through the heart of the eastern monarch butterfly’s multi-generation migration route from the northern U.S. and southern Canada to the high-elevation fir forests of central Mexico.

The plan Taylor presented — returning strips of roadsides to milkweed and other native wildflowers — was called the “Monarch Highway.” The multi-year proposal aimed to offset habitat loss, which Taylor said has been a primary driver of the pollinator’s decline in recent decades.

“If you look at the interstates, it’s possible to put in a lot of habitats 100 feet or more away from the interstate traffic, and those were our targets,” he said.

The White House included the Monarch Highway in a national pollinator plan released in 2016. And the Federal Highway Administration signed a memorandum of understanding with the six state departments of transportation that manage I-35 – Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota. The partners even released a logo.

But the Monarch Highway lost momentum, Taylor said. One reason was financial. The state departments of transportation didn’t receive additional federal funding to implement the plan.

Another challenge was that the priorities of the state and federal agencies often changed with new leadership, Taylor said. In some situations, decision-makers at the top were supportive, but people who mowed the roadsides were unaware of the policy changes or didn’t adhere to them.

“All of these things take money, and they take personnel, and they take knowledge, and to a certain extent, they take training,” Taylor said. “So getting these things started is not easy. Maintaining them is hard.”

Even though the 1,568-mile long project stalled, some states have embraced creating butterfly rest stops along roads. Experts say adding areas where monarchs can eat, rest and lay their eggs, gives them a greater chance of completing their migration amid large-scale habitat loss – especially in states like Iowa and Illinois, where less than 0.1% of original prairie remains.

Growing interest in pollinator rest stops

In Missouri, the Highway 13 Butterfly Trail stretches 300 miles.

Started by residents in the town of Hamilton in 2017, the project aims to add butterfly habitat along roadsides and in parks and public spaces within roughly 13 miles on either side of the highway. Many of the partners involved also view it as a way to boost tourism along the route.

In Illinois, where the official state insect is the monarch butterfly, local governments, conservation groups and state agencies are working on a similar concept called the Route 66 Monarch Flyway.

The historic route between Chicago and St. Louis is one of the monarch butterfly’s main migration pathways in Illinois, said Susan Helm, co-president of the project.

A large part of her role is helping groups that want to add pollinator gardens within the 66-mile wide corridor.

“[These projects] tend to fail when the right things aren't done from the very beginning, from site prep to whether you use seeds or plugs … and then the maintenance along the way,” Helm said. “There is no such thing as a no maintenance garden, and that includes a pollinator supporting garden.”

Interest in the Route 66 Monarch Flyway has “snowballed,” she said.

“There's a lot of enthusiasm, whether it's a library, a park, even businesses, historic sites, or Lincoln's home, Oakridge Cemetery, where Lincoln's buried,” Helm said.

Monarch butterflies are good ambassadors for other species, like native bumblebees, she added.

“In helping monarchs, we're helping all pollinators,” Helm said.

A key partner for the Route 66 Monarch Flyway is the Illinois Department of Transportation.

Scott Hall, Illinois DOT roadside maintenance manager, said the agency issues some permits for conservation groups to establish and manage roadside pollinator habitat. But Illinois DOT does much of this work along Route 66 and across the state.

Hall recently worked with researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to identify seed mixes that benefit pollinators and thrive in the state’s roadsides.

“We have planted a bunch of native seed,” Hall said. “We have also found that just by changing our mowing practice and letting things come back naturally, the seed bank is already there.”

The agency follows the Illinois Monarch Project mowing guidelines to reduce habitat disturbances, especially during the eastern monarch butterfly’s peak migrations. That includes leaving two-thirds of the vegetation in a right-of-way in any given year and limiting mowing to specific windows from July to mid-August and after Sept. 30.

“When [the monarchs] are heading back south, we pause our operation, and then we get started up in October,” said James Schackmann, an Illinois DOT maintenance resource specialist.

There are some exceptions for invasive brush, potential safety issues and construction, Schackmann said. But reduced mowing helps monarchs and other pollinators while also cutting costs in fuel, labor and equipment wear and tear.

‘It's part of our landscape’

Purple and yellow blooms wave in the breeze near an I-35 exit in Ames, Iowa, on a recent summer day.

Iowa has long been a leader in returning roadsides to native plants, although monarch conservation wasn’t at the forefront of that change.

Decades ago, this area likely would have been covered with bromegrass from Eurasia. The state planted non-native grass seed, mowed from “fence to fence” and blanket sprayed herbicide across the entire right of way to control weeds, according to Rachel Harris. She’s the chief landscape architect in roadside development for the Iowa DOT.

But the 1970s gas crisis pushed the Iowa DOT to experiment with a new approach to roadside management, Harris said. By 1988, lawmakers had enshrined efforts to include native grasses and wildflowers and cut back on mowing and spraying in state code.

“The less amount of time we can spend on the side of the road mowing and putting down chemicals is better in our opinion – from a cost standpoint and also from an environmental standpoint,” Harris said. “So, it’s kind of a win-win situation.”

Native prairie plants are also better adapted to the local climate and soil conditions compared to many non-native species and stabilize roadsides with their massive roots, she said. Harris estimates the Iowa DOT has seeded between 500 and 750 acres with natives per year since 2020 through erosion control plans, which she said are required for road projects.

Cities and counties across the state have adopted similar practices. To date, more than 50,000 acres of roadsides in Iowa have been planted with prairie grasses and wildflowers.

Native plants in roadsides also provide critical habitat and corridors in a state considered the most biologically altered in the U.S. Historically, tallgrass prairie covered 70-80% of the state. Today, around 85% of the landscape is used for agriculture, primarily corn and soybeans.

“For biodiversity and for a lot of insects and small birds and small mammals, that connected corridor habit is so important for allowing them to travel between larger patches of habitat,” Harris said.

Another benefit is aesthetics. While reconstructed prairies can take several years to establish, Harris said the Iowa DOT receives emails from drivers expressing their appreciation for the ever-changing colors and textures across the seasons.

“That beauty is part of Iowa, and it's part of our landscape," Harris said. "We're really proud to be able to provide that for people as they travel across the state."

Near the I-35 exit north of Ames, Harris watches a tiny Eastern Tailed-Blue Butterfly flirt with purple prairie clover and bumblebees swarm fragrant beebalm blossoms.

On cue, a monarch butterfly flies overhead.

In 1966, a state wildlife survey found wild rice growing thick on Little Sandy Lake, just north of Mountain Iron in the northeastern part of the state. Sandy and Little Sandy lakes could produce about 200 acres of rice in a good year.

The next year, U.S. Steel's Minntac taconite operation opened nearby.

By 1987, state surveyors reported that wild rice was, "for all practical purposes," gone from both lakes. The 1854 Treaty Authority has surveyed Little Sandy regularly since 2006. In 2024, researchers found only two stalks of wild rice.

That history is laid out in the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's own documents for Minntac's new permit.

Both Sandy and Little Sandy lakes are within the 1854 ceded territory, about 5.5 million acres across northeastern Minnesota where tribal members exercise treaty rights, including harvesting wild rice.

"It's essentially gone in the lakes," said Darren Vogt, resource management division director at the 1854 Treaty Authority, which manages natural resources for the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa and the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.

MPCA says Minntac is the only possible source of the high sulfate in these lakes. Both lakes sit downstream of Minntac's tailings basin, which covers more than 13 square miles and has no liner at the bottom. Water carrying sulfate seeps out through the ground and into nearby lakes and streams.

State regulators say research has found sulfate can damage wild rice, even at low levels. Little Sandy Lake now averages more than 250 milligrams per liter of sulfate. The state's limit for wild rice waters, set in 1973, is 10 milligrams per liter. Nearby lakes untouched by mining average less than 3, according to MPCA documents filed with the draft Minntac permit.

The water flows from these lakes into the Sand and Pike rivers and on to Lake Vermilion. MPCA counts 14 wild rice waters downstream of Minntac. Half are listed as impaired by sulfate.

MPCA has written a new permit that would, for the first time, require Minntac to meet the wild rice sulfate standard in Little Sandy Lake. It sets a separate limit on the Dark River, west of the tailings basin, to protect wild rice in Dark Lake downstream.

But the MPCA’s permit timeline gives U.S. Steel as long as 45 years to meet those limits. That’s far too long, leaders of the Bois Forte and Grand Portage bands said at a panel discussion in Grand Portage on Wednesday.

"We believe that this permit is going to be the model for current and future permittees," said April McCormick, secretary-treasurer of the Grand Portage Band.

Tribal leaders say they haven't ruled out legal action.

"We're prepared to seek every opportunity that we can to make a change right here and now," McCormick said.

In an August letter to MPCA, Grand Portage said it could ask the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to strip Minnesota of its authority to issue federal water permits.

Minnesota set its wild rice sulfate limit more than 50 years ago. Only recently has the state moved to enforce it at Iron Range taconite mines. The Minntac permit is a major test. It's open for public comment through Oct. 12.

Bois Forte Chairman Carlos Hernandez said band members should not have to wait another generation for clean water.

"Our children shouldn't have to inherit our deadlines. Our grandchildren shouldn't have to sit in another meeting decades from now, asking why everybody knew there was a problem but nobody required it to be fixed," Hernandez said.

'Tribes are for responsible mining'

Tribal leaders were quick to say their push isn't about shutting mines down.

"I just want to make sure that everybody's clear that we're not against mining," Hernandez said. He pointed out that Bois Forte band members work in the mines.

"It's ridiculous because we're Iron Rangers ourselves," he said. "To think we oppose them is ridiculous when we work there. All we're asking for is for it to be done responsibly."

McCormick said she's heard for years that tribes oppose the industry.

"That narrative needs to die," she said. "Tribes are for responsible mining."

Jobs are at the heart of the debate around the state’s wild rice water quality standards. Last year, hundreds of people packed a public meeting in Virginia on a similar sulfate permit for U.S. Steel's nearby Keetac mine. Mine workers and union leaders warned that the cost of meeting the wild rice standard could force mines to close in a region that depends on high-paying mining jobs. U.S. Steel said water treatment at Keetac alone would cost more than $800 million. MPCA said at the time that the company had shown enough cash flow to afford it.

A 45-year timeline

The tailings basin at Minntac leaks in two directions, according to MPCA. To the east, polluted water flows toward Sandy and Little Sandy lakes. To the west, it flows into the Dark River and on to Dark Lake.

On the east side, U.S. Steel plans to build an underground wall down to bedrock to stop most of the leaking. But the polluted water already in the ground still has to work its way out. A consultant hired by U.S. Steel estimated that would take about 45 years. MPCA says the real number could be anywhere from about 22 to 67 years. The agency chose 45 years as the outer deadline.

Federal law requires the company to meet the limits "as soon as possible." The draft permit requires U.S. Steel to also build a system that actively cleans the water on the east side of the tailings basin, such as pumping out groundwater and treating it within eight years.

In response to questions from MPR News, U.S. Steel spokesperson Andrew Fulton confirmed the company will test groundwater pumping, as required.

On the west side, U.S. Steel must build a water treatment plant within six years. But no one has estimated how long the Dark River will take to recover. MPCA used the same 45 years as a stand-in. In its fact sheet for the new permit, the agency writes 45 years "is not the correct final date" and says it will lower it as new information becomes available.

Caring for the water

In a written response to MPR News, MPCA spokesperson Dan Ruiter described the draft as "the most protective yet for Minnesota's wild rice waters."

The Bois Forte and Grand Portage bands plan to ask the Minnesota Environmental Quality Board for a broader study, called a generic environmental impact statement, to better understand the cumulative impact of extractive industry in the 1854 ceded territory.

Instead of reviewing one project at a time, the study would look at the combined effects of past, present, and proposed mining across ceded territory. If a GEIS study moves forward, the bands want the state to hold off on approving new mining projects.

McCormick said the state too often reviews mines "just one at a time."

"We really want to know what the waters can actually handle," McCormick said.

Editor’s note (Sept. 25, 2026): This story has been updated to indicate that the tailings basin itself covers more than 13 square miles.

Nearly 70 miles along the Minnesota River, from Bloomington to Henderson, sits more than 15,000 acres of preserved water and land. It’s known as the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge.

This weekend, it’s celebrating 50 years of habitat conservation and restoration.

The manager of the refuge, Sonja Jahrsdoerfer, spoke more about the refuge on Minnesota Now.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

After nearly two decades of starts and stops, bankruptcy and controversy, mineworkers are finally blasting iron ore from deep underground at the first new taconite mine in Minnesota in half a century.

Last week, local leaders and mine company executives hobnobbed with Trump administration officials who came to the Iron Range to witness one of the first blasts at Mesabi Metallics, a massive new $2.5 billion iron ore mine and processing plant in the final stages of construction outside the tiny town of Nashwauk.

Workers placed over a million pounds of explosives deep in a crater-like mine pit. After a countdown, a series of detonations sent plumes of rock and dust, colored red, white and blue for the occasion, spewing into the air.

The ground shook like an earthquake as the blasts dislodged an estimated 1.3 million tons of rich iron ore, which will then be scooped with giant shovels into trucks the size of two-story houses. From there, the ore will be hauled to a series of mammoth new buildings to be crushed, concentrated and fired in ultra-hot kilns, where it will be molded into specialized taconite pellets.

Those pellets, in turn, will be shipped around the country and the world, where they will help provide the feedstock for a new generation of cleaner, more efficient steel mills.

"Today is a very, very big day for the Iron Range, for the state of Minnesota and for this country,” Mesabi Metallics President and CEO Joe Broking told those on hand for the mine blast.

"We've experienced a lot of contraction on the Iron Range in Minnesota, and today we bring back the industrial might of the Iron Range to produce the Patriot Pellet," Broking added.

The mine’s opening comes at a critical time in northeast Minnesota, which is still reeling from closures last year at two of the region’s six taconite facilities: Minorca in Virginia and Hibbing Taconite.

“We have 600 people [who are] going on 17 months without permanent jobs,” said John Arbogast, a United Steelworkers Union district representative based in Eveleth. “So it is a big deal, and it's perfect timing for us.”

Many of those laid-off workers have already left the region, including some who moved to Arizona to work at mines there. But Arbogast said others recently found jobs at Mesabi, which has hired more than 200 workers thus far out of a planned 350 full-time employees.

About 1,500 construction workers are still on site, scrambling to finish the remaining work and have the mine’s new pellet plant open by October, when Broking said Mesabi Metallics would start production.

Broking said Essar, the Indian conglomerate that owns Mesabi and the mine and had filed for bankruptcy a decade ago, is funding the project. But the Export-Import Bank, a U.S. government agency, has also awarded Mesabi a $770 million loan, said President John Jovanovich.

"This is not just a rebirth of a new part of the Iron Range,” he said. “It's really bringing it into the 21st century.”

‘Huge shot in the arm’

Mesabi Metallics is being built at the former site of Butler Taconite, which closed during a major economic downturn in the 1980s.

"Every taconite plant up here was shut down,” recalled Nashwauk Mayor Greg Heyblom. “It just ravaged the Range."

Many workers and their families left for jobs in the Twin Cities and beyond.

“It was a mass exodus out of here,” said Barb Kalmi, Vice President of the Nashwauk-Keewatin School Board. “Our school enrollment dropped dramatically. Church pews emptied out.”

Mike Anderson was superintendent of Butler Taconite when it closed in 1985. He was one of the last people to leave the mine. Now 75 and retired, he returned to witness firsthand mining's return to the site, where millions of tons of high-grade iron ore still sits underground.

“It's going to be a huge, huge shot in the arm for this whole area,” Anderson said.

Al Guddeck stood by Anderson’s side, kicking the red, dusty soil with his boot. He worked at Butler Taconite for 20 years before it closed.

When he was growing up, he remembers his Grandma hanging laundry on a clothesline perpetually stained red.

“The first thing she did is she went out and wiped the ore off the clothesline,” said Guddeck, now 80. “She never complained about it because Grandpa was working in the mines, so it was money.”

Now, local officials say Mesabi Metallics is poised to deliver a badly-needed economic jolt to the region.

The mine’s projected to produce about 7 million tons of ore pellets annually, and it is expected to generate tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue for schools and local communities, in addition to six-figure salaries that are among the highest-paying in the region.

It marks a major turnaround for Essar, which declared bankruptcy 10 years ago with the mine half-built. The company owed tens of million dollars to the state and several contractors. Minnesota officials yanked state mineral leases and gave them to rival miner Cleveland-Cliffs. Gov. Tim Walz even tried to ban Essar from the state.

But despite all those setbacks, Essar restarted construction at the mine site in earnest a few years ago and now is on the cusp of finishing the massive project. The company has repaid the state nearly $50 million, and has made another $47 million in tax, lease and rent payments. Local leaders like Heyblom say the company has worked hard to rebuild trust.

"A lot of those naysayers, I see them now, and now they're supporters," Heyblom said.

Next-generation steel

There’s additional excitement surrounding the Mesabi Metallics project because the mine will produce what are known as “DR” pellets, which can be used to create a high-grade iron product called “Direct Reduced Iron” that can feed smaller, more nimble electric arc furnaces, which now produce 70 percent of steel made in the U.S.

Two other Minnesota mines recently upgraded to produce DR pellets: Northshore Mining in Babbitt and Silver Bay, owned by Cleveland-Cliffs, and U.S. Steel’s Keewatin Taconite mine.

Mesabi initially plans to ship its pellets to customers around the country. But it has bigger ambitions. It's also planning another $5 billion dollar investment to build a new facility to make its own DRI product.

"We're preparing to launch one of the biggest investments in the history of this country in iron ore and DRI,” Broking told the Itasca County Board at a meeting just days before the mine blast.

Broking said Mesabi intends to submit permit applications for the new plant to the state by the end of the year. But it's also considering building outside Minnesota. The company currently has about 20 jobs posted for a proposed DRI and steel plant in Paducah, Ky.

Broking told MPR News that Mesabi is exploring several locations for possible "downstream facilities," including on the Iron Range.

But he told the Itasca County Board that in order for Mesabi to make such a large investment in Minnesota, the company needs a faster state-level environmental permitting process.

“For an investment where we're going to decarbonize the steel industry, where everything that we're doing is about sustainability, there must be a way to get things like this done efficiently,” Broking said.

In addition, Broking said the company needs more competitive state incentives, and the return of mineral leases that Minnesota stripped from Essar after it failed to meet contractual agreements.

The state subsequently awarded those leases to Cliffs, which has argued it needs the leases to extend the life of Hibbing Taconite. But Cliffs has not moved forward with plans to mine the site.

Without those additional leases, Mesabi Metallics has an estimated mine life of 23 years, Broking said. Mesabi has requested that Minnesota cancel Cliffs’ leases, something the state could do with the approval of the state’s executive council.

Meanwhile Mesabi Metallics has filed an antitrust lawsuit against its competitor, accusing Cliffs of using anticompetitive behavior to block the development of its mine.

Mesabi is seeking more than $5 billion in damages in the case, which is scheduled to go to a jury trial next May.

State health officials say a bat found in downtown Minneapolis last week tested positive for rabies — and they’re trying to find anyone who may have been in contact with it.

The bat was found last on Sept. 15, on the sidewalk along Hennepin Avenue between Washington Avenue and Third Street, not far from the Minneapolis Central Library.

The Minnesota Department of Health said at least one person — a woman with a dog — was seen crouching by the bat and putting it into a bag.

Officials had posted notices over the weekend seeking information about that woman, and asking her to contact authorities. In an update Monday afternoon, the Minnesota Department of Health said the woman had contacted the agency.

Anyone else who may have touched the bat is advised to talk with a health-care provider, or contact the Minnesota Department of Health at (651) 201-5414.

Health officials said bites from a bat can be small and painless, and may not leave a mark.

Officials said anyone who saw the bat but did not have any contact with it, is not at risk of rabies.

It’s not the first time that a rabid bat has been found in downtown Minneapolis. There was a similar case in 2019.

There was also a rabid bat found near Como Lake in St. Paul in 2018.

And in 2024, a person who came into contact with a rabid bat in western Minnesota died from the disease.

In an unrelated case last week, officials said a cow in Brown County tested positive for rabies. Public health officials recommended that nine people who came into contact with the animal undergo rabies post-exposure treatment as a preventative measure.

More than a decade after an aquatic invasive species called starry stonewort was first discovered in Minnesota, it’s taking an ecological and economic toll on a growing number of the state’s beloved lakes.

Nicknamed the “lake killer” early on, the fast-growing algae can form dense mats that choke out native plants and tangle around boat motors and swimmers’ legs.

Since Minnesota confirmed its first infestation in 2015, it has spread to 40 water bodies, including Six Mile Lake in Cass County, which was confirmed just last week.

If caught early, starry stonewort is no longer considered a death sentence for lakes. Authorities, though, say it’s never been eradicated from any U.S. lake or river. It remains a costly problem with no permanent cure.

Researchers have found that chemical treatments or hand pulling can temporarily reduce the algae’s abundance, but don’t stop it from regenerating.

The problem is evident in Lake Koronis near Paynesville, the first Minnesota lake confirmed to have starry stonewort.

Initially, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources staff mistook it for a native species it resembles called chara. By the time starry stonewort was discovered at a public access in 2015, the invasive algae had already spread to 250 acres, an area about twice the size of the Mall of America.

“When it came in, it was winning the battle until we came along and started knocking it back,” said Kevin Farnum, aquatic invasive species manager for the Koronis Lake Association.

But Farnum acknowledged that the lake association’s efforts aren’t going to stop the invader permanently.

“Is it still finding areas where it can grow in the lake? Yeah, probably,” he said.

‘Don’t want to be known as that kind of lake’

Killing starry stonewort is challenging, because unlike plants, it doesn't have a vascular system that transports nutrients. Every stem or tiny branch is a single cell. So killing it requires bathing every cell in algaecide.

And even then, the treatment doesn’t wipe out the infestation. Starry stonewort can regenerate from tiny, star-shaped structures called bulbils left behind in the lake.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota’s Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center found that applying algaecide to starry stonewort can reduce its biomass. But it doesn't stop it from coming back the following year.

On a July morning, Farnum checked the lake to see how much starry stonewort had grown by tossing a metal rake attached to a long rope over the side of his boat.

Slowly, hand over hand, he pulled in the rake loaded with what looked like bushy, bright-green weeds. Except for a few strands of chara, “that’s all starry stonewort,” he said.

When the invasive algae was first found in Minnesota, the situation was grim. Farnum and other Lake Koronis property owners launched an effort to save their lake.

“We've had situations where people that should be very athletic have said, ‘I got tangled up, and it was kind of scary,’” he said. “We don't want to be known as that kind of a lake.”

They started with a mechanical harvester, cutting and removing dense mats of starry stonewort. It cleared some areas, but the algae quickly grew back.

So they tried another strategy: surveying the lake, identifying the most heavily infested spots and treating those with a copper-based algaecide. A contractor applies the chemical by dragging a weighted hose along the lake bottom.

“It's a little bit like the game of Whac-a-Mole,” Farnum said. “You just keep knocking it down wherever it's the highest. And you hope that you don't have to repeat it in the same year.”

It's a costly battle. Every year, Lake Koronis spends about $170,000 controlling starry stonewort. The money comes from a local watershed district, which has the authority to levy property owners, as well as a grant from the DNR. So far, residents haven’t pushed back much on the cost.

If left untreated, it’s possible that starry stonewort could eventually reach an equilibrium with native plants, Farnum said. But that could mean the algae spreads throughout the lake. “We don't think people are going to want that,” he added.

Early detection is critical

One positive finding from the past decade: Researchers have learned that if they find starry stonewort early, they have a better chance of keeping it contained.

“What we can do when it's found early in small isolated populations is use hand pulling to contain it, and that's proven to be really effective,” said Dan Larkin, an aquatic plant researcher at the University of Minnesota.

That’s been the strategy on Rush Lake, part of the Whitefish Chain of Lakes north of Brainerd.

In early July, divers from the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe combed the bottom of a channel where starry stonewort was first discovered two years ago.

They used a method called diver-assisted suction harvesting, or DASH. It doesn’t use chemicals. Instead, the divers pull the algae from the lake bottom with long suction tubes and send it up to a floating barge.

Workers on the barge filter out the plant material into mesh bags for disposal, and release the filtered water back into the lake.

Early detection and quick action helped prevent a catastrophe, said Tony Coffey, president of the Whitefish Area Property Owners Association. If starry stonewort had escaped into the main part of the channel, it could have spread across Rush Lake — or the entire Whitefish chain, he said.

“Containing it on one acre is one thing,” Coffey said. “Containing it on 14,000 (acres) is just not going to work."

The Whitefish association now combines hand pulling with chemical treatments to keep the starry stonewort contained to that one spot. At the end of last summer, divers found only a small amount, Coffey said.

Property owners pay for the effort through annual dues and donations. They even bought a remote-operated vehicle to search the lake bottom for signs the algae has spread.

Costly battle with no end in sight

There’s no clear statewide price tag for fighting starry stonewort and the problem continues to grow. And there’s still a lot researchers don’t know about starry stonewort’s effects on water quality, fish and native vegetation, including wild rice.

While the invasive algae has now been confirmed in 40 Minnesota water bodies, the size of the infestations varies from year to year. Lake conditions and weather can play a big role.

“Not every lake that gets starry stonewort is going to end up like Koronis,” Larkin said.

Once an invasive species is in a lake, the DNR typically does not treat it directly. Instead, they issue permits to lake associations, local governments or property owners to mechanically remove or chemically treat it.

Of the 482 permits issued last year, most were for curly-leaf pondweed or Eurasian water milfoil, according to a DNR report. Thirty-two permits — about 7 percent of the state total —were targeting starry stonewort, mostly in northwestern and central Minnesota.

The DNR also provides grants for invasive species management. In previous years, the grants totaled about $400,000 statewide.

This year, the total jumped to about $1.4 million, said Michael Verhoeven, a DNR natural resources consultant. The increase follows a legislative change that raised the surcharge on Minnesota boat licenses to fund aquatic invasive species work.

But local resources available to manage and control starry stonewort vary from lake to lake. Even when a lake has an association, it might not be as well resourced or financed as Whitefish, Larkin said.

“Other places aren't going to be able to have money in the bank and have the really engaged, knowledgeable people to be able to jump in,” he said.

Some Minnesota lake groups are turning to technology to keep starry stonewort from spreading to more lakes.

At a public landing on Grand Lake in Stearns County, a motion-activated speaker greets boaters, and reminds them to inspect their boats and trailers and remove any aquatic plants or animals. A video camera watches to see whether they’re dragging plant fragments.

"It'll pick up the license number on the boat, so you can track the boat, and it'll pick up detail where you can see a little teeny weed on the trailer,” said Jim Bartelme, who has lived on Grand Lake since 1952.

Bartelme has helped combat starry stonewort since it was discovered there in 2017. Divers hand-pull the plant four times a year and so far, have managed to keep it from spreading, he said.

"What we wanted to make sure is to contain it, and we didn't end up like Koronis with it all over the lake,” Bartelme said. “We've been able to do that.”

Last year, the lake improvement district added chemical treatments, too. But Bartelme said no matter what they do, starry stonewort ends up in the sediment at the lake bottom, where chemicals can't reach.

"By the end of summer, early September, we normally have it down to nothing almost,” he said. “Then we come back in July, and there it is."

‘If we stop, what’s going to happen?’

Grand Lake residents want to keep starry stonewort from spreading to other water bodies, Bartelme said. In addition to the camera system, they installed a self-serve power-washing station for boaters leaving the lake.

On a recent summer day, Bob Litfin of St. Cloud and his grandson, Jaydyn Johnson, sprayed their boat and trailer after a day of fishing, washing away any invasive species that might have hitched a ride.

“It's just one of those things that people either they didn't know about, or they didn't take care of it when they pulled their boat out,” Litfin said.

Every year, the Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center hosts “Starry Trek,” a one-day statewide search for starry stonewort in Minnesota lakes. Volunteers receive training, then are sent to nearby lakes to bring back any suspicious-looking species.

About 1 in 4 new infestations of starry stonewort in Minnesota were discovered by Starry Trek volunteers, Larkin said.

He noted that the "lake killer" moniker used by the media when starry stonewort was first discovered was hyperbolic. Still, the algae has created ecological and recreational problems and made itself another invasive plant that Minnesotans need to manage.

Forty Minnesota lakes are now wrestling with the thorny question of how to keep this aggressive invasive species in check into the future.

Farnum’s encouraged that a younger generation is taking up the fight. His granddaughter, Ezri, was a teenager when starry stonewort was first discovered in the lake. Now 23, she’s president of the Koronis Lake Association.

“It's nice to have the younger people involved,” Farnum said. “They need to be involved because they're the ones that are going to have it in the future and have to deal with it."

At the same time, he acknowledges that keeping up the battle against starry stonewort is challenging. He doesn’t know how long they’ll be able to sustain the effort.

"Part of the problem,” he said, “is if we stop, what's going to happen?"

Monarch butterflies are making their 3,000-mile migration to central Mexico after spending the warm months in much of the United States — including Minnesota. In 2024, there was talk of the pollinator being named a threatened species. However, this year the population increased by 64 percent, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

“This seems to be a pretty good year for monarchs in their migration,” Erik Runquist, conservation biologist with the Minnesota Zoo told MPR News. “A lot of times, you can tell a migrating monarch, will be about 20 to 30 feet up, kind of drifting southward this time of year.”

Roughly four generations of monarchs are born in Minnesota every summer. Each generation lives for about four weeks except the last generation. The last in the brood survives for approximately six months to make the journey to Mexico where they overwinter.

“This is the super generation that will migrate from here and even southern Canada all the way to central Mexico, and so this is a really magical time,” Runquist said.

Conservationists estimate how many monarchs are out there by counting the number of acres of trees where they rest in a semi-hibernation state over the winter. They won’t know how strong the 2026 brood is until late winter or spring when they are able to take the measurement.

“Monarchs are very good indicators of environmental health and ecological health,” Runquist added. “They are very sensitive to small changes in the environment, and so we can use these flagship species like monarchs or other insects and track their populations.”

“When we see more of them, that's probably a good indication that we are doing well, or at least the conditions have been well.”

Runquist says there are a number of reasons for seeing increased numbers this season — some, even spurred by humans.

“Some of it is weather year over year, but also it is concerted efforts to try to help monarchs in our own yards,” he said. “There is a real collective love of monarchs, and the actions that we can be doing as a group are helping.”

While weather is an important factor to the strength of the monarch population, having enough food is also crucial to expanding over generation. Monarch caterpillars eat the leaves of milkweed and adult butterflies drink nectar from a variety of flowers including meadow blazing star.

“We do encourage people to plant in their backyard, no matter the size of the habitat space you have available,” Monarch Joint Venture Executive Director Wendy Caldwell said. “The more often we can help those butterflies in the wild encounter milkweeds, the more reproductively successful they’re going to be.”

“If conditions are really good, they have high potential to produce a lot of butterflies to produce a lot of individuals” she told MPR News. “If it’s a good year for growing crops, it’s generally a good year for growing insects, and so monarchs are like that.”

While increased numbers are a good sign — the growth needs to continue over time to build up the population.

“We need to see that sustained through time,” Caldwell said. “So even though we’ve seen increases the last couple of years, we still want to see that population sustaining at about double where it was last year.”

Monarch Joint Venture is a Minnesota-based national nonprofit focused on pollinator conservation.

“One in every three bites of food is thanks to a pollinator, and if we if we lose our pollinators, we're going to lose the diversity of foods that we eat every day,” Caldwell said.

“We can’t live without pollination in the world we live in,” she added. “There’s a lot of artificial ways to do things, but perhaps not at the scale that we need them to.”

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has canceled a mineral lease that was held by the mining company Twin Metals. The site is located south of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The cancellation comes amid ongoing debate over mining in the area.

MPR News host Clay Masters spoke with James Coleman, a University of Minnesota professor with expertise in energy law, about the specifics of the cancellation and how it relates to the state's broader approach to mining in the Boundary Waters region.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

The Environmental Protection Agency said Monday it is repealing rules that limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas and announced it is taking a separate but related step to prevent future administrations from regulating climate pollution from power plants.

The rule change, first proposed last year, represents a fundamental shift from efforts by Democratic Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama to address climate change and regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that trap the sun’s heat.

Environmental groups decried the change, saying it would come at a cost to Americans' health and further degrade the environment.

Revoking the Biden-era power plant rule would save industry more than $300 billion in costs and help “unleash” American energy, the EPA said. The change will allow utilities to “make the best decision for the ratepayers based on cost and cost savings, instead of being required to shut down facilities,'' said EPA Assistant Administrator Aaron Szabo.

The power plant rule, to take effect soon after publication in the Federal Register, is expected to face immediate legal challenges.

Environmental groups also are likely to challenge the separate rule proposed Monday that could prevent future administrations from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The proposal, expected to be made final next year, follows on EPA's action earlier this year revoking a scientific finding that long has been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.

The February action eliminated all greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks. The new plan would apply similar logic to a broader undoing of climate regulations on stationary sources such as power plants.

Announcements coincide with gathering of G20 energy officials

The announcements came as EPA chief Lee Zeldin, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright host a G20 ministerial meeting on “energy abundance” in Houston. The announcement of the rule, coming on the same day, is both a nod to the important role oil-rich Texas plays in the energy industry and a potential snub of European and other international allies in attendance who have pursued environmentally friendly policies that the Trump administration has moved to undo.

Republican President Donald Trump called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” at a speech to the United Nations last year, and his administration withdrew the U.S. — for the second time — from the 2015 Paris climate accord that sets voluntary goals to curb planet-warming emissions.

Trump has boasted of U.S. energy abundance even as the Iran war continues to disrupt global fuel markets and gas prices top $4.31 a gallon, up more than a dollar from a year ago.

The rollbacks are meant to fulfill Trump’s repeated pledge to “ unleash American energy ” and make it easier for utilities to supply electricity for homes and businesses.

Former Vice President Al Gore said the EPA's action moves the United States “in the exact opposite direction of the rest of the world. With ongoing disruption in global energy markets, the clear answer to rising costs and energy security is clean energy."

Even as the Trump administration “is dragging the U.S. backwards,” the transition to clean energy “will continue to take hold ... both in the U.S. and globally,” Gore said Monday in a email to The Associated Press. “That’s because clean energy is cheaper, creates more jobs and bolsters energy security.”

The administration has been undoing dozens of environmental regulations

The power plant rule is among nearly three dozen environmental regulations that Zeldin targeted in early 2025 when he announced what he called the “most consequential day of deregulation in American history.”

Zeldin said Monday that the Trump administration “has come in to protect American energy and to make sure you can afford to keep the lights on.”

Environmental and public health groups called the new rollbacks dangerous and vowed to challenge the rules in court.

“Tearing down our national protections against climate pollution from power plants will have enormous costs for the health, safety and well-being of families across the country,” said Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund. “Americans everywhere are already suffering from record-breaking heat, more dangerous floods and storms, and skyrocketing insurance costs.”

The EPA has a legal responsibility to protect the public from harmful pollution, Patton said, adding that “clean, affordable and reliable technologies are widely available to power our homes and businesses.”

Coal, gas and oil-fired power plants are responsible for about one-quarter of the nation’s total climate pollution, second only to the transportation sector. Pollution from power plants is one of the largest sources of climate-changing pollution in the world.

Trump proposals target EPA rules that could prevent thousands of deaths, AP analysis finds

The rules targeted by Trump's EPA could prevent an estimated 30,000 deaths and save $275 billion each year they are in effect, according to an Associated Press examination last year that included the agency’s own prior assessments and a wide range of other research.

Even a partial dismantling of the rules would mean more pollutants such as smog, mercury and lead — and especially more tiny airborne particles that can lodge in lungs and cause health problems, the AP analysis found. It would also mean higher emissions of greenhouse gases, driving Earth’s warming to deadlier levels.

Biden, a Democrat, had made fighting climate change a hallmark of his presidency. Coal-fired power plants would have been forced to capture smokestack emissions or shut down under a strict EPA rule issued in 2024. Those rules are now being upended.

In its proposal last year, the Trump EPA argued that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from fossil fuel-fired power plants “do not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution” or climate change and therefore do not meet a threshold under the Clean Air Act for regulatory action. Greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas-fired plants “are a small and decreasing part of global emissions,″ the EPA said.

Zeldin, a Republican and former New York congressman, said Biden-era actions were designed to “suffocate our economy in order to protect the environment,” with the intent to regulate the coal industry “out of existence” and make it “disappear.”

The coal industry and groups representing coal-fired power plants have denounced the Biden rule as “overreach” by the EPA and urged its repeal. Lifting the rule “will protect grid reliability and shield electricity consumers from higher costs at a time of surging demand from data centers, artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing,” said Michelle Bloodworth, CEO of America’s Power, a trade organization for the U.S. coal fleet.

Minnesotans love their lakes. But they don’t always love what grows in them.

Aquatic plants — often dismissed as weeds — are common in Minnesota lakes. Some property owners remove them with machines or chemical herbicides, creating open water for swimming or boating.

But those plants are doing important work to keep the lake healthy, from preventing shoreline erosion to reducing algae blooms to providing fish habitat. And there’s evidence that getting rid of native plants in a lake makes it easier for invasive species to move in.

“We know that if you plow up a prairie, there’s ecological impacts,” said Donna Perleberg, an aquatic plant ecologist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. “The same thing is true with a lake.”

In recent decades, lake advocates have urged property owners to avoid overdeveloping lakeshore and leave a natural buffer of trees and plants to protect the lake from pollution. Far less attention has been paid to plants that grow in the water.

Scientists hope that a better understanding of native lake plants and their importance will help shift public attitudes toward protection.

An underwater forest at risk

Nisswa Lake in Crow Wing County has some of the clearest water in Minnesota. A healthy population of aquatic plants is a big reason why, said Perleberg.

On a recent summer day, she stood on a city-owned dock in hip waders and pointed to nearly two dozen species of vegetation growing close to shore.

Some, like cattails and bulrushes, extend out of the water. Others, like water lilies, are rooted to the lake bottom with leaves that float on the surface. And some stay submerged, forming an underwater forest.

When she peers into the water, Perleberg sees a diverse ecosystem. But she acknowledges that for some people, there’s an “ick” factor.

“If you grew up maybe going down to Florida on a sandy beach and that’s what your perspective is, it's hard to realize that these are native species that are good at protecting aspects of the environment,” she said.

Those plants provide shelter for fish and other aquatic creatures. Their roots anchor the lake bottom, keeping sediment from getting stirred up and clouding the water. They take up nutrients from the bottom of the lake, which helps limit algae blooms.

Aquatic plants also help slow boat waves before they reach the shore, protecting it from erosion. On hot days, floating plants such as lily pads act like an umbrella for lake critters.

“They provide shade, so fish and invertebrates and other organisms get a little bit of break from that hot water and the sun,” Perleberg said.

Despite those benefits, Minnesota law allows property owners to remove some aquatic plants to create access for swimming or boating.

Another key reason for the loss of native aquatic plants is excess nutrients from urban storm drains and lawn fertilizers running off property that doesn’t have a buffer along the shore. Those nutrients can fuel algae blooms, which block sunlight and kill submerged plants.

“It wasn’t that long ago where our sewage went directly into the lakes. We thought of them as sort of the dumping grounds,” Perleberg said. “Now we’re paying the price for some of those things that we didn't know a lot about.”

A 2021 study highlighted the loss of native plant diversity in Minnesota lakes over the past century. Perleberg and her colleagues looked at data collected from lake surveys in the 1920s and 1930s, then resurveyed the same lakes.

In more than half of the lakes, they couldn’t locate at least one of the species that was common a century ago.

Leech Lake: A changing ecosystem

About 50 miles north of Nisswa, researchers on Leech Lake are studying whether an invasive plant, Eurasian water milfoil, is out-competing wild rice — and whether the loss of native vegetation has made the problem worse.

Leanna Goose, a researcher with the Leech Lake Tribal College and the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, remembers harvesting wild rice as a child when the rice beds seemed to stretch on forever.

“I used to lose my parents on it when I was a kid, and I would just wait at the edge of the rice bed because that's how big it was," she said.

Now, Goose said, some of those wild rice beds are small enough to see across. In places, they've been replaced by invasive Eurasian water milfoil, which has been in Leech Lake for more than two decades.

“We saw areas where there should have been manoomin, but there was just fields of Eurasian water milfoil instead,” she said. “So that was really concerning to see."

Goose is working on a project to restore wild rice in Leech Lake. On a warm August day, she and a team of researchers headed out by boat to a spot marked by a buoy. They pulled on snorkel masks and fins and dove beneath the surface.

Then, they resurfaced with armfuls of muddy Eurasian water milfoil, which they stuffed into mesh bags.

Raining White, deputy director of plant resources for the Leech Lake Band’s resource management division, hauled the waterlogged bags into his boat.

Tribal members have told White about native plants including water cabbage and lily pads that once grew in places where they fished. Some have disappeared.

White worries that removing native vegetation has helped create an opportunity for invasive plants to thrive.

“When people start removing things left and right because they want a sandy swim area or they want access to the lake, it kind of throws off the whole balance of the ecosystem,” he said. “Then you get things like invasive species moving in.”

White said aquatic plants often get a bad rap. In Indigenous teachings, everything in the natural world has value, he said.

“They help clean the water,” he said. “They provide fish habitat, waterfowl, food for humans — wild rice and other plants, food and medicines — and then food for our nonhuman relatives too.”

‘They just want to swim without any plants’

The DNR discourages the destruction of aquatic vegetation. But it also recognizes “that excessive plant growth may interfere with a homeowner’s reasonable need to access the water and recreate,” according to the agency’s website.

“We really want to protect that resource,” said Dean Paron, habitat program manager for the DNR’s fisheries section.

But at the same time, Paron said, lakeshore owners have the right to recreate on their property.

“So it’s a very delicate balance, but we’re doing the best we can,” he said.

Under Minnesota rules, a lakeshore property owner can cut or pull submerged vegetation in an area smaller than 2,500 square feet without a permit to create access for swimming or docking a boat. Property owners also can cut a channel up to 15 feet wide through floating vegetation to reach open water.

Larger clearing projects and using chemical herbicides require a DNR permit. Property owners often hire commercial companies to do that work, or do it themselves.

DNR staff review permit applications, visit the sites and work with property owners to make sure the removal is appropriate, Paron said. The DNR tries to steer people toward mechanical removal, but they often prefer chemical herbicides, he said.

“We try to make sure they’re using the right chemical in the right amount and in the right place,” Paron said.

When used carefully, chemical herbicides can be an effective tool to manage lake vegetation and reduce invasive species, said Jeff Forester, executive director of Minnesota Lakes and Rivers Advocates, which represents lake associations and property owners.

Today’s products are more targeted and used at much lower doses than in the past, Forester said.

“A lot of them are applied in parts per billion rather than parts per million,” he said. “That’s literally the difference between an applicator showing up with a couple of gallon jugs of product versus a tanker truck.”

But they can be overused, Forester said. One problem is people buying an aquatic herbicide at a local store and applying it illegally without a permit, making it harder to track and control.

Most people don’t understand the consequences of killing native aquatic plants, said Heather Baird, the DNR’s lake habitat supervisor based in Brainerd.

Aquatic vegetation can protect shorelines from costly erosion problems. The loss of those plants can be a strong indicator of where a shoreline is likely to crumble away, Baird said.

“We can basically look at an aerial photo and we can tell where the erosion is going to happen in the next few years,” she said.

Most anglers know the importance of aquatic vegetation for fish habitat. They often target patches of coontail or lily pads to catch that elusive bass or crappie.

But as Minnesota’s lakes get more heavily developed, some property owners only spend a few weeks at the lake every year, Baird said, and “don’t really respect and understand the importance of vegetation.”

“They just want to swim without any plants,” she said. “So that’s where the disconnect happens.”

Baird said if more people were aware of how many chemical pesticides are applied to Minnesota lakes every year, there likely would be more pushback.

Under a recently expanded Minnesota law, some aquatic pesticides are now considered to contain PFAS, a class of persistent human-made “forever chemicals” that don’t break down easily in the environment.

The DNR seeks to balance conservation of native plants with public recreation and access, Katie Smith, an assistant DNR commissioner, said in a statement responding to questions about how the agency regulates aquatic pesticides and plant life in lakes.

The agency recognizes that the same aquatic plants that may limit access from shore to open water also provide vital habitat that supports the lake’s overall health, she stated.

“It regulates activities that could harm aquatic vegetation and ensures removal is limited to what is necessary and sustainable,” Smith stated.

If the DNR finds clear evidence that aquatic plant removal is harming ecosystems, it can limit those activities, Smith stated. But she said currently, it doesn’t have evidence to support changing state laws or rules.

Chemical concerns

Some lake residents have raised concerns about the potential effects of chemicals on fish, other aquatic life, even humans. They’re seeking more natural alternatives.

Waterfront Restoration, a company based in the Twin Cities suburb of Long Lake, removes lake plants for homeowners, usually to clear a swimming area or make it easier to navigate a boat. Instead of chemicals, scuba divers remove invasive or native vegetation by hand.

“Especially if their kids are swimming, there's just uncertainty I think for a lot of people around the chemicals,” said Tom Suerth, the company's founder and president. “Whether it’s kids, pets, their lawn or whatever, they kind of prefer the peace of mind of not using them.”

There’s an educational aspect to the work they do, Suerth said. Some homeowners want the company to make their lakefront into a pool, with a perfect sandy bottom and nothing growing.

“Ninety-nine percent of the time, that’s not possible,” Suerth said.

Instead, his company encourages homeowners to leave some native plants to help prevent invasive species from moving in.

“As soon as you clear the space, nature's going to fill it with something probably a lot worse,” Suerth said.

Hoping for change

The research team from the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe will continue its work this fall, after the wild rice harvest.

They’ll return to the spots where they removed Eurasian water milfoil and plant locally harvested wild rice seeds. Next year, they’ll survey the areas again next year to see if there's been a resurgence of wild rice, and a decline of invasive milfoil.

White is also launching a project to map the aquatic vegetation across Leech Lake, and compare it with maps from 20 years ago. He hopes that will show how much the lake’s plant communities have changed, and provide clues about what’s driving those changes.

With what they learn, White hopes to raise people’s awareness and understanding of aquatic plants as vital to a lake’s health, rather than a nuisance.

“If this water is here for all of us and it's supposed to benefit Minnesota and the Leech Lake Reservation, then why are we letting individuals go in and remove things that belong to all of us, that benefit all of us?” he asked. “It’s really something I can’t wrap my head around. Hopefully it’s changing.”

About 300 corgis and more than 600 people gathered in Andover, Minn. for the Midwest’s Largest Corgi Meet-Up.

Vendors, photo competitions, costumes and a derby race allowed lovers of the breed to celebrate their short-legged canine friends.

Organizer Terra Smith said it was the fifth annual event they have hosted, and each year they try to introduce new elements to the event. This year, a popular corgi derby race debuted at the meet-up, with more than 70 corgis participating.

Blue Earth County took another step forward in its efforts to remove what’s left of the historic Rapidan Dam, which failed and was seriously damaged by severe flooding of the Blue Earth River in June of 2024.

An environmental assessment released by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which had been overseeing the use of the dam because it previously had been a hydro-electric dam, found that “removal would have a long-term beneficial effect on environmental resources by removing a now-obsolete structure, restoring the project embankments and reestablishing the river channel.”

Raging flood waters breached the Rapidan Dam and carved a path around it on June 24, 2024 after days of torrential rain storms. The flooding also damaged the nearby County Road 9 bridge, which had been closed ever since and still needs to be replaced.

The Rapidan Dam was built in 1910 to provide electricity to the region, which it did until 2019, but the dam was considered to be in poor condition long before it failed two summers ago.

Even though some area residents had hoped the dam would be rebuilt, the Blue Earth County Board voted to remove the historic dam later in the summer of 2024.

The environmental review process is moving forward, said Ryan Thilges, the public works director for Blue Earth Country. But he says it’s been a lengthy and complex process to navigate through, involving multiple federal and state agencies, including the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC.

Thilges told MPR News that figuring out the scope of the dam removal project was the most challenging part.

“It’s taken us quite a bit of time just to understand what the roles of all these different agencies were and how they were involved in this, and how does the process flow and work because of all the crossover,” Thilges said. “Now we’re to the point where we can start developing those permits, finalizing the project plans. It’s a good feeling.”

There were concerns about the impacts the dam removal project would have on water quality as well as wildlife habitats. But FERC found that Blue Earth County has mitigation plans for limiting stillwater and stormwater pollution, as well as working closely with the DNR to ensure that there’s minimal impacts to wildlife throughout the project.

“Project removal and restoration of the area would have an overall permanent beneficial effect on aquatic resources,” the report reads, “by returning the project reach to a free-flowing river which would allow unrestricted movement of aquatic resources through the project area.”

The Rapidan Dam removal project has faced several delays and obtaining relief funding from FEMA continues to be a challenge, Thilges said. The next steps for Blue Earth County will be applying for the federal and state environmental permits necessary to remove the dam and return the river channel to a free-flowing state.

“We’re going to be advancing project design plans from 60 percent complete to 100 percent complete, with the intent of hopefully being in an advantageous enough position to advertise and award a contract for the removal in early 2027,” Thilges said. “But again, that’s all so dependent on those federal regulatory agencies.”

The County Road 9 bridge was unsalvageable and Thilges said demolition work started in late 2024 and wrapped in early summer 2025.

He said there’s good progress on that ongoing project, as the county has now received bids for the construction work Thilges said the hope is that construction will begin later this fall, and he hopes the new bridge will open to the public sometime in fall or winter 2028.

By Abigail Bottar | Harvest Public Media

On a hot summer day, John Williams is walking through the vegetable farm he manages in central Illinois.

“All these white tubes coming up are tree tubes,” he said, “so they’re little protections for newly planted trees.”

Hazelnut, apple and pear trees run in between the fields and around the perimeter of the property at Sola Gratia Farm in Urbana, Illinois. The farm got funding to plant them through the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a federal agency under the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The trees will help protect the farm’s soil from strong winds and heavy rains, Williams said.

“That’ll help keep more of the soil on our land and less from running downhill,” he said.

NRCS staff in county offices across the nation help farmers like Williams implement practices that prevent soil erosion and improve soil health. On top of providing technical assistance, the agency also allocates grant funding that incentivizes farmers to try conservation practices.

The NRCS was founded almost a century ago in response to the Dust Bowl. But it lost nearly a quarter of its staff nationally in 2025 after President Donald Trump’s sweeping cuts to the federal workforce, leaving many farmers with less access to environmental conservation practices.

“They’ve always been a busy group of people,” Williams said of NRCS employees. “They have who knows how many hundreds or thousands of farmers that they’re working with, and they’re doing a lot with a little.”

In June, the USDA announced the NRCS will undergo "organizational improvements" along with other agencies under the department, although officials haven't indicated what the changes will be. The reorganization will sharpen the agency’s focus on conservation implementation, improve accountability and increase support for field operations, according to a press release announcing the change.

“By aligning leadership and resources closer to the communities they serve, USDA is strengthening service delivery, reducing unnecessary bureaucracy, and ensuring responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars – all while maintaining its unwavering focus on America’s farmers, ranchers and producers,” the press release states.

But conservation advocates argue the agency is already using taxpayer dollars in a sensible, efficient way.

“The NRCS is a really great example of government in action being really effective,” said Chuck Anderas, policy director of the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, a Wisconsin-based conservation nonprofit.

USDA officials did not respond to a request for comment.

Lost expertise, missed opportunities

Adam Griebie grows corn and soy on his farm in Hutchinson, Minnesota, about 60 miles west of Minneapolis. He was recently working on a project to prevent soil erosion, but then the NRCS staffer he was working with at his local office in McLeod County left the agency.

He was pushed to offices in two other counties to find help, he said, one of which isn’t even adjacent to McLeod County. That sometimes left him driving an hour away, where he felt like he was starting from square one with new NRCS staff.

“You kinda get pushed back to the bottom of the pile when you lose your technician or engineer,” Griebie said.

That’s becoming the new normal at NRCS offices across the country, according to Michael Happ with the Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy. He’s the program associate for climate and rural communities at the Minnesota-based nonprofit.

“Farmers have to, instead of driving 20 minutes to their county seat, they’re driving 40 minutes or an hour to the next county over or two counties over,” Happ said, “and then when they get there, they’re running into NRCS staff that are overworked, stressed out.”

Just across the state line, Wisconsin saw some of the steepest cuts to NRCS staff in the Midwest — losing more than 30 percent of its workforce. That’s left some highly agricultural counties without any NRCS staff at all, said Anderas with the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute.

“A lot of beginning farmers and a lot of people that are transitioning to grazing for the first time really rely on the technical assistance that they get alongside the cost share money,” he said, referring to NRCS grants that incentivize farmers to try out conservation practices.

Nationally, 144 counties were left without any NRCS staff after the cuts, former USDA senior staffer Bernie Kluger said.

Their expertise is not cheap or easy to replace, he added.

“That individual expert was an expert on the soils in that county, and they knew the history of the soil in that county,” said Kluger, who worked on NRCS staffing issues under the Biden administration and now works at a D.C.-based consulting firm. “They knew how the local river would flood differently in this county than it does maybe 10, 15 miles down the way.”

Farmers may be able to get assistance from their local soil and water conservation district, but those are often underfunded, he said.

Federal cuts have also wiped out programs and positions that were designed to assist farmers from underrepresented groups, including women, urban growers and people of color, Anderas said. Wisconsin, for example, used to have an urban farm specialist who worked for the NRCS, he said, but that expert has left the position — and there aren't any plans to fill it.

Michael Fields Agriculture Institute was one of many organizations that had a partnership with NRCS to help meet the needs of specific communities, Anderas said. The nonprofit created a program called Wisconsin Women in Conservation in collaboration with the agency to address problems facing women farmers.

“It was wildly successful. It’s being replicated in other states,” he said. “Very meaningful programming for the people involved, and that was cancelled almost immediately after the Trump administration came into office, because it was said that it was discriminating against men.”

Anderas worries these cuts are undoing work the USDA has done to address racism and discrimination in its programming.

“They’re just basically getting the message that the USDA isn’t for every farmer anymore,” he said of underrepresented groups.

Why soil conservation?

The benefits of soil conservation are numerous, experts say. Conservation methods like planting cover crops or perennial trees slow water movement, helping soil stay in place.

“Basically your soil becomes spongier and spongier, and it holds more and more water in the soil,” Anderas said. “And less of that runs off and so you have fewer problems downstream with things like flooding and infrastructure being destroyed.”

A 2022 study estimates Midwestern cropland is losing nearly 2 millimeters of soil every year to erosion, totaling more than 57 billion metric tons over the past 160 years.

Conservation practices can also stop fertilizers applied to crops from dissolving into rainwater and ending up in lakes and rivers, which can contaminate water supplies. A June 2026 report written in collaboration with Michael Fields Agriculture Institute found an acre of perennial grasslands saves more than $200 per acre annually by reducing potential downstream cleanup costs, compared to row crops like corn and soy.

“It pays for itself many times over again,” Anderas said. “The investment that we put in to solve or prevent a problem from happening in the first place is always much, much cheaper than trying to solve a problem after the fact.”

As demand goes up, funding goes down

It’s been feast or famine at the NRCS in recent years. The Biden administration poured more than $19 billion in additional funding for programs at the agency that address climate change, but those funds were rescinded by the Trump administration in 2025.

“You have this demand, you have this proven benefit for farmers,” said Michael Happ with the Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy, “and yet, they’re taking money away from it.”

He recently analyzed how these cuts are impacting the agency’s flagship initiative, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP, which had a 38 percent decrease in grants awarded from 2024 to 2025.

And the cuts might not stop there. The Senate’s version of the Farm Bill proposes a nearly $2 billion cut to EQIP.

That’s left a growing number of farmers competing for dwindling funding, Happ said. EQIP alone saw an 11 percent increase in applicants from 2024 to 2025.

“It seems like conservation as an idea keeps getting more and more popular among farmers,” he said. “We saw an increase in folks lining up out the door to apply for these programs. At the same time, the number accepted went down.”

Staffing cuts have also made it more difficult for small farmers to win contracts, Happ said.

“There’s this incentive now to get fewer and larger contracts out the door,” he said, “because a $100,000 contract is a similar amount of work to a $10,000 contract.”

Not only does that practice make it harder for small farmers to win contracts, it also is less effective, Happ said. Paying 10 farmers $10,000 to address conservation needs can be more impactful than paying one farmer $100,000.

Happ worries this high rejection rate will discourage farmers from applying for conservation funding, he said.

“Some farmers I’ve heard they’ve gotten rejected or they’ve heard of these stories of farmers getting rejected,” he said, “and they’re like, ‘Well, why should I waste my time?’”

That trend is something Adam Griebie has begun to notice in Minnesota, he said.

“There’s a few of my neighbors that we’re all struggling to get into the programs, and then you see other farms that seemingly find it pretty simple to get in,” he said. “And it’s hard to explain why.”

Griebie’s recent experience with NRCS won’t stop him from applying for future projects. But he said he can see why other farmers would be more hesitant or “lose the passion to do the work.”

That, he worries, could damage conservation efforts for years to come.

“We don’t get paid to be good stewards out here,” he said, “and so we really need that extra funding and expertise to try to take care of the land better.”

The Midwest Newsroom’s Daniel Wheaton analyzed Office of Personnel Management data for this report.

Harvest Public Media is a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.

A Virginia-based developer has withdrawn from a deal to transform the former Star Tribune printing facility in Minneapolis into a data center. The proposal drew heavy criticism from residents of the city’s North Loop neighborhood.

Minneapolis spokesperson Jess Olstad confirmed that Legacy Investing withdrew a land use application for the proposed facility, which would have included a 20-megawatt data center as well as other developments at nearby parcels.

“The city looks forward to working with other partners who may wish to look at the future of this site,” Olstad said. The city has not received any additional applications for the site.

Legacy did not respond to requests for comment. Emails to the company bounced back. Legacy previously developed a slightly larger data center in the Sleep Number building in downtown Minneapolis.

The proposed data center drew strong opposition at neighborhood forums last month from hundreds of city residents, who questioned the environmental impacts of the facility. Residents also doubted the facility would bring lasting jobs to the city.

Representatives for Legacy argued that the facility would only use as much water as two residential homes and that the facility would kickstart other nearby developments.

Data centers have become hot topics in Minnesota and across the country as tech companies seek to build the infrastructure for artificial intelligence operations. Earlier this spring, the Minneapolis City Council passed a six-month ban on data centers larger than 350,000 square feet.

The site is still owned by the Star Tribune which “remains committed to maximizing the value of the Heritage Printing Facility for the benefit of our community and our journalism,” Star Tribune Vice President Chris Iles said in an email statement.

Iles and the Star Tribune did not immediately respond to follow-up questions about why the company terminated the purchase agreement or whether any other developers have plans for the property.

The Forest Service this week declared that the wildfires that burned more than 100 square miles of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area this summer are finally fully contained, more than two months after they first ignited. What those intense and fast moving blazes left behind are full of seeming contradictions.

On one hand, the blazes were incredibly destructive. They scorched more than 71,000 acres of forest, killing centuries-old trees. They harmed businesses, disrupted lives, and filled the air with lung-damaging smoke. They left behind a blackened landscape in some areas.

But those fires also cleaned out the forest, and set the stage for renewal and rebirth. They helped create a diverse patchwork of different forest types and ages across the wilderness, which should prove more resilient against future fires.

That complex story is visible along the Echo Trail west of Ely at entry point number 14 into the Boundary Waters. In July, the Sioux Fire swept out of the wilderness here, through the parking lot and across the highway.

Trees are burned black. Crews have cut many of the dead standing trees for safety. Even the outhouse burned.

"The vent pipes on those are plastic, and that is completely melted,” said Tim Engrav, a District Ranger on the Superior National Forest.

"It's a bit dramatic,” Engrav admits.

Giant boulders that were once hidden by the thick forest are now visible through the burned trees. But the boreal forest, he stressed, is resilient.

“It looks terrible now,” said Engrav. But, he quickly added, “it’s going to grow back.”

Indeed, that process of forest regeneration is already visible along the portage trail to the Little Indian Sioux River.

Ferns and other bright green plants stand a couple feet tall along the trail. Moss has grown in, which stabilizes the soil and holds moisture for other plants, helping them sprout and grow.

Soil scientist Jeff Kroll points to pink wildflowers that stand out vibrant against the black soil.

"This is pink corydalis,” he said, pointing to a wildflower that’s a colorful contrast to the surrounding charred remains of the forest. “We see a lot of wildflowers come back that are dependent on a fire coming through,” explained Kroll.

Carl Skustad, a wilderness manager for the Forest, puts his ear close to a burned tree, and asks, “Hear him?”

Every second or two a creaking sound is emitted from the tree. It’s a long-horned beetle.

“They come immediately after fire,” explained Skustad. “They follow the smoke. They can smell it. You can see its little bore holes all over here. It helps with the decomposition and return of minerals back to the forest floor."

It's a small example of how quickly life returns to the fire-ravaged forest. The insects that come in then attract birds. Soon moose will likely congregate here to feed on the young forest that sprouts up. New blueberry plants will attract more wildlife.

"This is a fire-adapted ecosystem, and it wants to burn from time to time,” explained Drew Stroberg, Deputy Forest Supervisor for the Superior National Forest.

These forests evolved with wildfire. They need it to stay healthy, to clear out undergrowth, and to regenerate.

But not all the forest will grow back like it was before. At the bottom of the trail, enormous pines still soar to the sky. But the needles and branches are gone. All that remains are tree trunks that the fires scorched black.

In places like this one, where the fires burned extremely hot, those iconic pine trees won’t come back, said Lane Johnson, a fire ecology researcher with the University of Minnesota's Cloquet Forestry Center.

"Here? No. We don't have a seed source, and you ultimately need to have survivorship on the edges of these patches to have white pine and red pine seed in,” said Johnson.

This summer's wildfires – especially the Thumb and the Bear Trap Fires, which burned along Lac LaCroix and other huge lakes along the Canadian border, burned through some of the largest blocks of old growth forest remaining in the Boundary Waters wilderness, in areas that were never logged.

"Long-lived red pine and white pine that date to the 1700s, late 1600s,” said Johnson, noting that some trees more than 300 years old were likely killed.

“So that's some of what was impacted by this year's events,” Johnson said, pausing. “Yeah, it's meaningful."

But there's still hope that a lot of those ancient trees survived. Aerial photos show many of the trees still standing, especially along lakeshores, where many of those tall trees grow, and also where campsites are located. Forest officials say the fires appeared to burn hottest and fastest up along ridgelines between lakes.

Experts say these fires help restore what used to be a regular occurrence in the boreal forests of northern Minnesota, when lightning strikes would periodically cause large wildfires to sweep across the wilderness landscape. Ojibwe people also intentionally lit ground fires in what is now the Boundary Waters to manage the forest.

Johnson said tree ring data shows that wildfires burned regularly in the Boundary Waters through the early 1900s, but then abruptly stopped, after indigenous people were removed from the area and the U.S. and state governments began extinguishing all fires that started.

“We could consider what we're seeing this year as a return to an old normal,” said Johnson.

Large fires in the wilderness over the past few decades have helped restore a patchwork, what fire officials call a mosaic pattern, of trees of different ages. Over time, that creates a healthier balance and a more diverse and fire-resilient forest.

“I think that that's kind of a hopeful part of the message here,” said Johnson. “It's not just a disaster, but there's this restoration process that's underway for the forest.”

Meanwhile forest officials have already begun working to repair damage from the fires inside the BWCA. Crews are out assessing the 100 or so campsites that officials estimate need some kind of restoration.

Forest rangers plan to do some of that work during the winter. In some cases, they plan to carry in new latrines with sled dog teams or on skis.

Some entry points will remain closed for the rest of the season. And the most severely burned parts of the wilderness will also stay closed. But most of the BWCA has since reopened. And Skustad expects most portages and campsites will reopen by next summer. He encourages people to come see the beauty that can follow fire.

“Some of your favorite places are still going to be green,” Skustad said. “The contrast between green and fire-affected is beautiful. The forest is resilient, and even the areas that are temporarily closed will be back open soon.”

The towering maple trees and native hazelnut bushes on Salvatierra Farms break up the surrounding corn and soybean fields that sprawl across southern Minnesota.

Small compared with its neighbors, the 63 acres of land was once a conventional row crop farm. Transformed by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin, an agronomist and regenerative farmer who grew up in the northern Guatemalan rainforest, Salvatierra Farms embraces crop diversity and natural solutions — no herbicides, pesticides or chemical fertilizers — for its poultry or other operations. He wants it to be a model for others.

Drawing on his formal agricultural education and the wisdom of his Indigenous elders, Haslett-Marroquin's approach to farming has brought together an unlikely network of Midwesterners dedicated to caring for the Earth for spiritual reasons. They include Lakota tribal members, former large-scale farmers and Catholic sisters.

Their shared motivation comes amid rising interest in nature-based spirituality and related societal shifts: a rethinking of modern agriculture, growing secularization, climate change anxiety and intensifying interest in health and wellness.

“These dark green spiritualities — the ones that have a kind of sense of the intrinsic value of nature, of our belonging to it and not superiority over it — are growing rapidly around the world,” said University of Florida environmental studies professor Bron Taylor.

Regenerative farming has deep roots

Eco-spirituality and regenerative agriculture are not new. Nineteenth-century America saw homesteaders pledging to cultivate public land they received for free. In the 1960s, a “back-to-the-land” movement surfaced alongside a new wave of environmentalism. And many of today's approaches to land stewardship are rooted in Indigenous traditions developed over centuries.

These practices, to an extent, were overshadowed as the food system scaled rapidly to feed the growing global population. They are now finding new life on some large conventional farms and among young farmers drawn to the regenerative agriculture movement.

It's “farming in a way that is good for the health of the soil, the health of the land and the health of our people and communities,” explained Rob Myers, director of The Center for Regenerative Agriculture. What that means depends on the farmer. Many in the U.S. practice just one method, like planting cover crops or refusing to till the land to minimize soil disturbance; others take a more holistic approach.

Starting in 2020, Josh Payne, a Missouri teacher turned farmer, transitioned his grandfather's land from row crops to fully regenerative animal grazing and agroforestry, which incorporates naturally growing chestnut trees and other native vegetation into his practices. It's a shift based in his evolving Christian faith and influenced by the writings of Christians like the late Kentucky farmer Wendell Berry, who advocated for embodying the Bible’s teaching that the Earth is a gift from God meant to be cared for.

“My faith helped me understand that what I do is a vocation,” Payne said.

While Haslett-Marroquin doesn't believe in organized religion himself, he sees common ground among all who feel spiritually connected to the land, as he does. He envisions a regenerative system that empowers small farmers and their communities, a global movement that “restores all of creation and gives us a different reason to live and have purpose.”

A spiritual connection began in the rainforest

Growing up poor, Haslett-Marroquin and his brothers trekked into the rainforest to help their father plant crops. Though exhausting work, it awakened his kinship to nature.

“That’s where we lived,” said Haslett-Marroquin, who has Achi and other Maya heritage. “That can uplift an innate intelligence that we are born with.”

When he and his wife moved to Minnesota in the early 1990s, he knew he would challenge the system and farm with what he describes as a spiritual integrity that allows all living things to flourish naturally.

In 2022, Haslett-Marroquin co-founded Tree Range Farms, a group of independent poultry producers who use regenerative farming practices. The farms raise thousands of organic, free-range chickens under growing perennials — harvestable plants like hazelnut and elderberry bushes.

Salvatierra Farms, which doubles as a research and training facility for farmers, is part of that ecosystem. Haslett-Marroquin sees his farm, started in 2020, as the blueprint for a global movement he envisions. “To me, a little bit of knowledge with a lot of wisdom and solid spiritual grounding is where the solutions are going to come from.”

Midwest farmers find healing with the land

Nick Hernandez of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota is also part of Tree Range Farms' community. In 2016, he met Haslett-Marroquin while seeking ways to reconnect his community to the land through food, and learned regenerative poultry practices from the Minnesota farmer.

“I see food as a way of not only finding healing, both mentally, physically, spiritually, and culturally, but as a way of being able to develop ourselves,” said Hernandez.

In 2020, he started Makoce Agriculture Development, a nonprofit developing and rebuilding Indigenous food systems on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, including a fully functioning farm.

Gail Fuller, a former large-scale farmer who grew genetically modified corn and soybeans on 3,200 acres of family land in Kansas, met Haslett-Marroquin in 2020. They were both presenting at a soil conference in Salina. Fuller was on a journey to give up conventional farming practices, including chemical weed killer, after feeling mentally and physically unwell, and betrayed by the industry he loved.

“When you farm from a kill mindset for how many generations, how can that be a positive on the farmer or on the farm?” said Fuller, who now owns Circle 7 Fuller Farms with his wife Lynette, 50 miles from the land his family farmed for generations.

He now spends most of his days barefoot, working with grazing animals on land he says saved him.

A community grows around ceremony and food

For Haslett-Marroquin, ceremonies are a vital part of his physical and spiritual well-being. That includes the “Halfway to Harmony” summer solstice event hosted at the Organic Compound, a nearby family farm in Faribault, Minnesota.

“When it is all said and done, we are simply expressions of the energy of the Earth and the universe,” Haslett-Marroquin said, leading about 100 people in prayer around a bonfire in June.

The Crombie family, which owns Organic Compound, was among the early recruits to Haslett-Marroquin's extended community. They also were pioneers in embracing the regenerative poultry blueprint on a commercial scale.

They had returned to gardening on family land that was once used for rotational crops, but were looking to diversify in ways that paired well with Haslett-Marroquin’s approach.

“When we play together, when we pray together, when we sing together, when we work on the land together … of course it’s going to heal us,” said Wil Crombie during the solstice gathering. “That’s the future that I want.”

From fielding potential investment calls in his pickup truck to webinars with nuns, Haslett-Marroquin is persistent about realizing his dream of a food system grounded in spiritual integrity.

His latest aspiration is to partner with the Catholic Church. In its global landholdings and the environment-friendly additions to the church’s social teachings in the 2015 document, Laudato Si, he sees potential for change.

In southwestern Wisconsin, the Catholic Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa have been living out the belief that creation is sacred, which has guided their approach to farming for decades, said Sister Julie Schwab.

Today, the 179-year-old teaching community's land is leased to two regenerative dairy farmers as part of the nonprofit Fields of Sinsinawa, which doubles as a training facility for all farmers wanting to learn about innovative agricultural practices.

“The sacred moves through our farms,” Schwab said. “The divine is at work in evolution, which includes our soil, and includes all of life.”