Clean Water:

Blueprints for Water Management: Minnesota's Water Plan

Topic: Clean Water

Blueprints for Water Management: an Interview with Deborah Swackhamer, Co-Director, University of Minnesota Water Resources Center

Minnesotans voted in 2008 for an amendment to the Minnesota Constitution – The Clean Water, Land, and Legacy Amendment. The Amendment, among other things, allocates funds to invest in a clean and sustainable future for Minnesota’s waters. With all of that money going to support water quality and quantity, lawmakers believed some sort of plan was needed to spend it wisely. As such, the legislature appropriated $750,000 to the University of Minnesota to create a “25-year Framework” for the state’s water management.

Our summer intern Kaye LaFond looked into the plan's process and purpose. She interviewed Deborah Swackhamer, a Professor at U of M and co-director of the U of M Water Resources Center, which is officially in charge of creating this plan for clean and plentiful water.

What would the “25-year Framework” look like?

Deborah stated that the University is going to “work with state technical experts, policy makers, citizens and other stakeholders to design a framework for managing Minnesota’s water resources in a way that’s sustainable and comprehensive.”
Swackhamer says that currently, drinking water, industrial water, and the overall issue of water quality are all managed separately and that Minnesota needs something more holistic. She also pointed out that water in Minnesota is not necessarily being managed sustainably.

“We don’t have a good understanding of how much we’re using of the water relative to how much is being replenished.”

What steps have already been taken/how is the plan progressing?

“The money is now in our bank. We’ve just started plans to constitute some of the committee teams and advisory teams.” The first meeting will be on Friday.

How does this fit in with the fact that the state Environmental Quality Board (EQB) is already under a mandate to issue a water plan every 10 years?

“That’s a very broad brush kind of plan, ours is much more detailed, and part of that is resources. There are two of them [in the EQB] and we plan on using hundreds of people..

Swackhamer says that the plans are complementary and the EQB will be highly involved in crafting the 25-year framework. “[The legislature] is looking for advice and guidance on how to use this money in a way that is synergistic.”

Who exactly is involved in working on this plan?

“We will probably have – well for instance our kickoff meeting this Friday involves people from the state agencies, the NGOs and the university. It’s a wide variety of people. We’ll probably have about 4 to 5 work teams [with] co-chairs, one from the university and one from outside of the university.”

She stressed the fact that it was also important to have one member of each team who is solely dedicated to keeping the public involved.

“Water policy is not just science, it also very much involves people’s values.”

Swackhamer says that the University IS involving students in the plan – graduate as well as undergraduate. “I’ve hired one student, and I’ll be hiring [more].”

Here's what the Legislature called for in approving funding for the plan:

“$750,000 in fiscal year 2010 is appropriated from the clean water fund to the University of Minnesota for the development of a comprehensive statewide sustainable water resources detailed framework to protect, conserve, and enhance the quantity and quality of the state's ground and surface waters.”

Blueprints for Water Management: Minnesota's Water Plan

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