LETTER: Time to vote for clean water

From Sen. Gary Kubly
District 20, DFL-Granite Falls and Rep. Aaron Peterson District 20A, DFL-Appleton

Minnesotans are all for clean water — and with good reason. Clean water for drinking, for health and hygiene, for agriculture, for industry, for the outdoor recreation on our lakes, rivers and wetlands that is so central to Minnesota life. Yet while we Minnesotans talk a good game on clean water, our actions fall short.

Minnesota is working hard to clean up its waters, but the water quality monitoring, enforcement, cleanup and restoration challenges are immense and, as Gov. Pawlenty recognized in 2003, a significant rollback in federal Clean Water Act jurisdiction “could lead to greater loss and degradation of our state’s and the nation’s waters and increased costs to the state of Minnesota and our local governments at a time when we can least afford it.” (Letter to the EPA and Corps of Engineers, April 14, 2003).

In fact, a significant Clean Water Act rollback is exactly what we face right now in the wake of two recent contentious U.S. Supreme Court decisions: Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. United States Army Corps (2001) and Rapanos v. United States (2006).