UPPER MISSISSIPPI RIVER INITIATIVE
A Bottom Up Approach Toward Healthier Waterways
By Michael Furtman
On a flight back to his Minnesota home, past IWLA president Dave Zentner gazed out the window as they passed over portions of the upper Mississippi River. As beautiful as much of the scene was, he knew that there were still many problems facing the big river. Decades of conservation efforts had slowed it’s decline – yet the river still suffers insults on a daily basis.
“We have more than enough science to be much further along in cleaning up the river,” said Zentner in a recent interview. “Sure, we’ve set aside some beautiful museum pieces, but we’ve still ended up with depleted soils and polluted water.”
Thinking it through further, he concluded that it was time for a different approach. Decades of regulations, hearings and battles haven’t stopped the river’s degradation. Millions of dollars hadn’t done it either.
“We’ve failed at the human dynamic,” Zentner explained. “We’ve failed to get people involved at the community level.”
A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE
There’s a famous line in the old movie “Cool Hand Luke” where the prison captain, after whipping the character played by Paul Newman, says “What we got here is failure to communicate.” And that, Zentner believes, is a big problem within the conservation movement. Without like-minded advocacy organizations, and even League chapters, communicating with each other to craft solutions to shared problems, real action has been hard to come by. It has also led to the failure of bringing coherent messages to the communities solutions will impact – municipalities and farmers.
“If we’re going to reduce non-point pollution to the river and its tributaries, then we need coordination between organizations, governments, and landowners, and we need to start thinking of grassroots initiatives, not top down dictates,” said Zentner. “To make the changes we need, we start with our neighbors. We don’t start with the U.N. We don’t start with U.S. Senate.”
Thus was laid the goal of the Upper Mississippi River Initiative (UMRI) – a community based approach working through 77 IWLA chapters in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois, as well as partner organizations and government agencies, to create custom solutions to local problems. To be successful, it must also involve entire communities, including farmers, and those who own the land being farmed, but are absentee owners. It’s small staff is located in St. Paul at the Minnesota Division’s headquarters.
One Chapter, One Task
The UMRI depends upon citizen scientists and activists. One good example is the Austin, Minnesota Chapters efforts to clean up the Cedar River Watershed District. In 2018, when its members went before the Mower County Board of Commissioners to request that they take steps to improve water quality in creeks and rivers, they were met with some resistance. But they were prepared. They produced the results of the 500 water samples taken at 50 sites by their 40 volunteers which showed that 70 percent contained E.coli that exceeded health standards. Their DNR analysis revealed the sources were human, swine, and cattle. At first, county officials did little more than make excuses.
When the Ikes pointed out that compliance to existing laws would largely fix the problem, the county board cited expense in performing monitoring and enforcing the laws, and that it would take time to gain compliance. When the Austin Chapter asked for a specific timeline, the board proposed a 20 year solution. That was unacceptable. Instead they’re pushed for a five year fix. But meeting that goal would would require everyone to work together.
Under the umbrella of the UMRI, the chapter now has a positive relationship with the county board, forming an ad hoc committee with the county. Some other steps the UMRI has taken has been to hire an intern to upgrade septic compliance records, having the county tie septic records to property tax records, seeking sources of funding to help rural homeowners pay for septic upgrades, and partnering with the local Soil and Water Conservation district to increase public awareness.
“The goal is to obtain fishing and swimmable water,” said Austin Ike, Larry Dolphin in an interview with his local newspaper. “We (Mower County) could be the model for clean water to the rest of Minnesota. We have to say ‘yes we can’ and we have to believe. Let this be the beginning of clean water.”
Local, Local, Local
The Upper Mississippi River Initiative is all about local solutions to local problems, working collaboratively with all involved. This is largely different from past efforts where those polluters were adversaries, and conservation groups were warriors running them to ground. The Austin chapters efforts is but one cog in a many toothed wheel of projects now underway.
UMRI hopes to prove that rural communities in the four states involved can find solutions to their contributions to the pollution of the Mississippi River watershed through the neighbor-to-neighbor approach of the Izaak Walton League.
Although it may seem a daunting undertaking, the failed septic systems and poorly managed fields and feedlots happened one at a time. And one at a time, using the local approach, the UMRI believes they can fix them.
“When people see a problem, they frequently say ‘someone should do something’” said Zentner. “Well, that someone needs to be all of us.”