What is Act on Minnesota Water?

Act on Minnesota Water is a statewide campaign to focus public awareness on the decline of Minnesota’s water quality and to take action to protect and restore our water resources for the current and future generations.

Minnesotans say that water is our state’s most important natural resource.  

“It’s as Minnesotan as apple pie to mouth support for clean water, which makes for a puzzling disconnect from the inconvenient fact that the quality of the state’s legendary waters is spiraling in decline.” – Ron Way, Star Tribune, February 5, 2016.

* Campaign Goal – To work collaboratively to raise awareness and to educate the public, key stakeholders, and decision makers about our state’s water quality and water quantity problems.

Minnesota’s water belongs to all of us.

Last year, when Governor Dayton announced his buffer initiative he reminded farmers that, “The land may be yours, but the water belongs to all of us.”

Water is essential for life, and is critical to the health of our environment, communities, industries, and economy. The state has long played a leadership role in protecting and restoring our water, and Governor Dayton is right to call for further action on a variety of urgent water quality issues in our state.

* Campaign Goal – To fervently advocate for transformational solutions that will protect and restore Minnesota’s waters now and forever.

The Clean Water Act was passed in 1972.

Minnesota’s governmental agencies have had oversight authority over Minnesota’s water quality for decades. And advocacy groups have worked in the public interest to improve water quality for just as long. Then why are the efforts to protect and restore our state’s waters not matching up to the challenge?

Power and politics is why.

The public health and the environment are pushed aside while polluters make deals with politicians, get a free pass, and push the costs of cleaning up our waters off to the rest of us.

* Campaign Goal – To shine a light on polluters and hold them responsible for the water quality degradation they cause and to demand real corrective action from those who are charged with holding polluters accountable.