Yearly Archives: 2016

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources will host an open house and listening session about a Waukesha, Wisconsin, proposal to divert water from Lake Michigan. The proposed diversion would be done to address declining groundwater levels and water quality concerns.

U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, along with Representatives Collin Peterson and Tim Walz, today urged the Administration to provide crucial funding for the Lewis and Clark Regional Water System (LCRWS). Congress recently approved an additional $47 million for work on authorized Bureau of Reclamation water projects. In a bipartisan letter to the Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, the lawmakers pressed for strong funding to advance construction on the Lewis and Clark project.

U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan applauded today’s voice vote on the House floor to send the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2015, as amended by the Senate, to the President’s desk to be signed into law. The bill authorizes funding for construction of a unique, new fresh water ice- breaking vessel for use on the Great Lakes. This state of the art ship will be specially designed for fresh water ice, which is much harder to break up than sea water ice.

In a speech delivered today on the Senate floor, U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), a member of the Senate Energy Committee, urged his colleagues to back his measure to adopt a national energy efficiency standard. The measure will be voted on later today

“After meeting yesterday afternoon with House Republican leaders, I have, with great reluctance, instructed the Department of Natural Resources to stop its mapping of so-called ‘private ditches’ under last year’s buffer legislation. The Republican legislators insisted that they did not intend those ditches to be included in the scope of the legislation, even though its buffering requirements would not take effect until November 2018

Senator Amy Klobuchar is welcoming home Mardoche, a nine-year-old boy adopted from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) by a Rochester family who finally came home to Minnesota over the weekend. Many adoptions from the DRC have been held up for years since adoptions from the DRC were halted in 2013. Klobuchar, a co-chair of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption, has been a strong advocate for adoptive families and children and has worked closely with adoptive Minnesota families to help them bring their children home from the DRC and other counties abroad.

Governor Mark Dayton today introduced a Jobs Bill that would invest $1.4 billion in infrastructure projects statewide, creating an estimated 39,900 Minnesota jobs*. This new Jobs Bill would help address many of the state’s critical infrastructure needs, including essential water infrastructure, while strengthening Minnesota’s economy and putting thousands of people to work

Registration is now open for the Governor’s Water Summit, which will take place on Saturday, February 27, 2016. The summit will focus public attention on the serious challenges facing Minnesota’s water supplies – in both rural and urban areas of the state – and continue statewide dialogue around steps that must be taken to address those challenges. The summit will bring together water quality experts, farmers, legislators, regulators, the business community, members of the public, local leaders, and a wide variety of other stakeholders.

Governor’s Jobs Bill will include $167 million to improve water quality and ease water and sewer bills for Minnesotans living in communities that need costly improvements. Plan would provide an additional $30 million for communities working on water quality buffer strip projects, streambank stabilization initiatives, and purchasing conservation easements