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2002 Environmental Initiative
Awards
Environmental Education
Energy Efficiency and
Renewable Energy
Environmental Management
Environmental Policy
Land Use
Environmental Education
The Hennepin Conservation District initiated this program
in 1995 to provide hands-on
environmental education for students, promote river
stewardship and gather water-quality data. This effort
tackles the challenge of understanding, preventing and
reducing the impacts of nonpoint source pollution in
our watersheds. The program coordinates the collection
of macroinvertibrates and habitat-evaluation data, manages
and funds stewardship projects, offers training to participants
and disseminates results. An estimated 6,000 middle
school, high school and college students have participated.
River Watch now has 23 sites, representing all nine
of the major watersheds in the county. Partners include
18 junior and senior high schools, two community colleges,
Minnesota DNR, citizen groups and employees from area
cities.
The Wetland Health Evaluation Project is a partnership
of Hennepin and Dakota Counties, the Minnesota Pollution
Control Agency, Minnehaha Creek Watershed District and
14 cities. MCPA scientists provide training in sampling
protocol, identification of macroinvertibrates and vegetation,
and wetland health evaluation for city staff, team members
and citizen volunteers. Cities then identify wetlands
of special concern within their boundaries. Using professionally
developed protocol and metrics for bioassessment of
wetland health, volunteers sample, analyze and rate
the health of wetlands in their respective communities.
In 2001, the project had 13 teams monitoring 55 wetlands.
This represented 115 volunteers contributing an estimated
3,300 hours. Teams provide annual reports to local governments
to provide baseline data and information for decision
making. In 2002, another two teams will be added.
This program focuses on exposure to toxic chemicals
and its link to cancer and other illnesses. More specifically,
it promotes cancer awareness and prevention by educating
the community about harmful chemicals that exist in
common household products and what individuals can do
to reduce the amount of hazardous products in their
daily lives, emphasizing cleaning products. In 2001,
Take Charge of Your Health was presented to nearly 100
groups, reaching roughly 4,400 people, including students
at colleges and elementary schools as well as church
and neighborhood groups, local businesses, young parents
and senior citizens. Based on follow-up phone surveys,
75% of the respondents reported making changes in their
habits as a result of the presentation.
Energy
Efficiency and Renewable Energy
Dennis Haubenschild is a dairy farmer near Princeton,
Minnesota, who had a vision for his farm’s manure.
In order to ensure environmental compliance for manure
disposal he sought to install an anaerobic digester,
which would turn the manure into an enhanced fertilizer,
reduce odor and gas emissions and produce electricity
for farm operations. His efforts led to the project
that involved federal, state officials, the University
of Minnesota, the Minnesota Project, East Central Energy
electric co-op the Agricultural Utilization Research
Institute and others. The project is the first of its
kind in the state and is considered a complete success.
At its Chanhassen bakery, General Mills was looking
for a way to reduce chemical use in its treatment of
cooling water. GM installed a new mechanical water treatment
system, called Vortex technology, and installed other
energy savings measures that resulted in enough electricity
savings to power 150 homes and water savings for over
12,000 homes. It also eliminated the use of hazardous
chemicals. The project involved partnerships with the
state government, the University of Minnesota, the Met
Council, the Electric Power Research Institute and numerous
others.
This project works with participating businesses to
offer bus passes that save commuters over 50% of the
cost of bus transit through a variety of incentives.
The project currently claims more than 400 participating
employers with thousands of participating employees,
It has been credited for an average 30% increase in
bus ridership among employees at these businesses. The
program is also estimated to have reduced gasoline usage
by 1.6 million gallons per year. The project’s
partners include the Downtown Minneapolis Transportation
Management Operations, Metro Transit, Metro Commuter
Services and Minnesotans for an Energy-Efficient Economy.
Environmental
Management
The Minnesota-based maker of cardiac-care products partnered
with Materials Productivity, the Minnesota Office of
Environmental Assistance and consultants at Environmental
Resources Management to reduce waste and the use of
toxic materials in the manufacture of Medtronic’s
products. Through the program, Medtronic has established
protocols and methodologies that bring environmental
considerations squarely into the product design process.
Any medical product presents special, difficult challenges,
since manufacturing processes and materials used are
subject to approval by the Federal Food and Drug Administration.
Once FDA-approval has been given, there is little incentive
for a company to change a process, product or materials
used. Thus, one bad decision can mean decades of excessive
use of expensive and hazardous materials that easily
could have been avoided in the design stage. Medtronic
has already been able to find major environmental and
financial benefits from the program: a 75% - 85% reduction
in chemical use and wastewater-loading for a coating
process, representing about an annual cost savings of
$3.8 million. Down the road, the program promises to
realize a 30-35% reduction in material use and 90% reduction
in industrial solid waste generation in the company’s
battery-manufacturing process, representing annual savings
of $200,000.
We can all identify with the problem: a basement corner
piled up with obsolete computers, an old “beta”
VCR players, your old broken television. What to do
with all of these electronics? The Best Buy company
-- in conjunction with major manufacturers such as Panasonic,
Toshiba and Compaq, as well as local governments where
the retailer has stores -- has begun to address the
problem through a pilot onsite collection program. The
company organized 10 collection events to study customers’
interest in electronics recycling. Those events collected
128 tons of electronics from more than 2,800 customers
last year. Best Buy has plans to do more. The pilot
worked well enough that the retailer intends to replicate
the model at stores across the country.
Like other cities in Minnesota, the City of Hutchinson
is intent on reducing the amount of
organic material in the city’s municipal solid
waste stream. To that end, the city has embarked on
a one-of-a-kind project at its Creek Side Soil Facility.
The city’s facility and associated organics collection
program allows residents, businesses and
large institutions to separate all their organic material
from other garbage. The city then collects this food
and plant matter at the Creek Side facility and creates
a high value compost product through an “in-vessel”
composting bin. The composted material is available
for community residents and the city is considering
commercial distribution.
The Creek Side facility has been a success. The city
reports that an average of 60 tons of material a month
has been diverted from landfilling, saving taxpayers’
money and creating a high-value compost product from
waste.
Environmental
Policy
This project was nominated by the Audubon Minnesota
but represents the good work of not only Audubon but
more than 20 diverse stakeholders from government, conservation
and farm groups. The project is a successful 4-year-old
cooperative effort at reducing flood damage and improving
ecosystems in Minnesota’s Red River Valley. The
project sprouted from a 1998 mediation process that
discussed disputes over a proposed massive flood control
project in the basin.
This project removed more than 1,100 pounds of mercury
found on Minnesota’s diary farms. The Department
of Agriculture created a database of Minnesota’s
dairy farms, determined which ones used mercury manometers,
and replaced mercury manometers with equally effective
vacuum gauges. A manometer, by the way, is a device
that helps milking equipment maintain an consistent
vacuum pressure on the milking line. The mercury manometers
were sent to ar ecycling firm. Finally, the Department
of Agriculture worked with diary equipment suppliers
to switch over from mercury-bearing systems to nontoxic
vacuum-control equipment.
The Saving Wetlands with Technology project nominated
by the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District. Saving Wetlands
with Technology is streamlining planning in the Minnehaha
Creek watershed by digitizing data from the watershed’s
wetlands, linking this data to geographic information
systems software, and putting it in an easy-to-understand
format. With this software, the many communities within
the district can better assess the impact various development
projects may have on their wetlands. When the project
is complete, an estimated 4,500 wetlands will have been
assessed and analyzed
for a variety of important factors. In the end, the
program will provide better tools for
decisionmaking, planning for storm water management,
and most importantly, better protecting the watershed’s
wetlands.
Land
Use
The Jackson Meadow development in Marine on St. Croix
will eventually include 64 homes, but they will be clustered
on just 40 acres of the 300-acre site – providing
a sharp contrast from the endless suburban lawns found
elsewhere. The rest of the land will be conserved as
agricultural cropland, a tree farm, a city park and
a public natural and scenic area with a trail system.
An open space corridor – or greenbelt –
will be maintained, connecting the area to nearby William
O’Brien State Park. Native prairie and woodland
are being restored as part of the project, which will
benefit from the assistance of the city of Marine, the
Jackson Meadow Homeowners Association and the Department
of Natural Resources.
Sally Hausken, a master garden and Detroit Lakes resident,
spearheaded this inspiring effort to acquire and conserve
61 acres of maple-basswood forest within the city limits.
The area includes a ridge overlooking Big Detroit Lake
and a designated trout stream, as well as wet meadow
and swamp land. Plans call for a new interpretive center.
Sally pulled together expertise and resources from the
DNR and the nonprofit Trust for Public Land to purchase
the property. And the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
Becker County Soil & Water Resources, the North
Dakota State University Department of Landscape Design
and the Pelican River Watershed will all contribute
to the restoration effort at the property.
The land-use judges were impressed with the size and
scope of the brownfields cleanup
undertaken for the Upper Landing Redevelopment. More
than 100,000 tons of contaminated soil was removed from
the site, near downtown St. Paul along the Mississippi
River. Previously used by a scrap yard and grain-storage
facility, the property had been on the Minnesota State
Superfund list for 15 years prior to the cleanup. The
cleanup has been completed, and this year, construction
will begin on 23,000 square feet of retail space and
almost 600 rental and owneroccupied townhomes and apartments;
72 of those homes will be designated affordable housing.
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