MANKATO — A bill that seeks to clarify the definition of public waters was among many water topics presented at the State of the River water town hall on Saturday.
Presenter Carly Griffith, the water program director at the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, said there’s currently a dispute between two public water definitions in the state.
“There are two key ways we define public waters in Minnesota. The first is a definition in state law where we very specifically outline the characteristics that define public water,” she said.
“Then we also have what’s called a public waters inventory, which is a county-by-county map and list that was created by the Department of Natural Resources in the 1980s to document public waters in the state.”
There are examples, Griffith said, of waters that meet the statutory definition in state law to be a public water but aren’t correctly identified in the inventory.
“Some of those were removed in 2017 by a commissioner’s order from the Department of Natural Resources, and the work to review and restore some of those waters back to the inventory has been a really slow process,” Griffith said.
The bill itself seeks to eliminate confusion and make clear that it’s the statutory definition that defines public waters whether or not a particular body of water has been identified in the inventory.
Other presenters took a deeper look at elements in groundwater that could be considered unhealthy, such as manganese and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
And presenters such as Peg Furshong, the director of programs at environmental group Cure, discussed potentially harmful impacts of a recently proposed carbon dioxide pipeline project.
The pipeline, proposed by Iowa-based Summit Carbon Solutions, would capture carbon dioxide from the fermentation process of biorefineries, such as ethanol plants, compress the captured carbon dioxide and channel it to North Dakota, where it would be permanently stored underground, according to the group’s website.
Their website argues that the five-state pipeline project would reduce the carbon footprint of ethanol production and create jobs.
Furshong said the pipeline would use a lot of water.
“It takes approximately three to three and a half gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol,” Furshong said.
“If we just do the math, that means they’re using 165 to 192 million gallons of water a year just to make ethanol.”
Furshong added that the carbon capture process would increase water usage.
“Pretty soon you’re going to be choosing: Do you want to give water to your rural communities for drinking water, or do you want to give your water away to industries that are paying very small amounts for these water appropriation permits?”