Water Works

by Bob Luck
Regular readers of this column may be aware that I am a snowbird, spending a couple of months each year in Asia where the weather is warmer and the food is better, unless you are a fan of green Jello hot dish garnished with tater tots.
This year I thought I was pretty smart, getting out of town just ahead of a polar vortex that sent temperatures way below freezing and caused shelf ice to form on spring fed creeks.  It didn’t last long; I understand that temps have been climbing into the 40s and even the 50s.  I now get taunted just about every day  by friends who are letting me know how much fun they are having on area streams while I am sweating in the tropics.
There is no way I can hold a grudge against friends enjoying a day on the stream, but a 50-degree day in February is a guilty pleasure if there ever was one: more evidence of a changing climate that promises to bring more hot weather, more droughts and more intense summer rain events to put stress on our streams.  I have heard often that “these are the good old days” in the Driftless Area. Due to less intensive farming, better agricultural practices and legislation such as stream buffer laws, fish populations have never been higher, and the fishing has never been better since European settlers first showed up with their wheat seeds and steel plows.  That has been my experience, too.  I catch more fish now than I did growing up in Madison the 1970s, or when I first moved to the Twin Cities in the late ‘80s, and when I look at the DNR maps of trout streams, there are more blue and green highlighted streams than there were twenty or thirty years ago.

Just because the fishing is better now doesn’t mean it will stay that way.  Along with climate change, we are seeing more pressure on groundwater resources, high and increasing levels of Nitrates in our streams, and pervasive use of neonicotinoid insecticides that have led to a 48-fold increase in the toxicity load to insects between 1992 and 2014.  I don’t want to be a member of the generation that "lost the Driftless" and find myself talking to my grandchildren twenty years from now about the “good old days”.  There is a lot of depressing news out there and I have to admit to a couple of days in the past few weeks where I just felt like climbing back into bed—especially since I couldn’t go fishing.  But inaction is not going to improve things, and if you go fishing you are just going to make me jealous, so please consider getting involved! There are countless ways to make a difference, but here are my top 3 as of today:
Nitrates.  You  may have read in the January edition of MNTU’s Monthly Cast that the Minnesota Dept. of Agriculture has published a public comment opportunity in the State Register on the adequacy of the Groundwater Protection Rule, the state's framework for commercial fertilizer management. Take a minute to read the article and see how you can get involved.
S Branch Vermillion River.  If you attended our chapter meeting in December, you may remember hearing geologist Carrie Jennings talk about the threat to the South Branch of the Vermillion River by a proposed data center in the stream’s headwaters.  Click here to get involved in a grassroots effort to oppose this project.
Neonics.  It is official:  our coalition has a name:  Campaign for Cleaner Seed.  Join us for a day at the Capitol on March 9th.  Register here.