January 1, 2003 - Franklin Avenue in south Minneapolis has survived bouts with booze and drugs and appears to be on a path to recovery. The decades-long renewal picked up speed in 2002 with construction of a new housing project. And there are prospects several new businesses will open their doors this year. However, Franklin avenue's road to recovery is bumpy. A landmark business closed its doors yesterday, and future development is tied to the health of the economy. Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson reports.
January 3, 2003 - Youth, alcohol and mild winter weather are factors contributing to a sharply higher number of road deaths in Minnesota. State safety officials say there's an eighteen percent increase in the state's traffic crash fatalities in 2002 from the year before. A surprising finding is most of the fatalities are on Minnesota's rural roads during daytime hours. Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson reports.
January 8, 2003 - Nearly 300 workers at the Blandin paper mill in Grand Rapids lost their jobs today. That's more than a third of the workers at the plant. Blandin is owned by U-P-M Kymmene (KIH-muh-nee) of Finland. U-P-M announced this morning that it's shutting down two of the four production lines at the mill in Grand Rapids. Minnesota Public Radio's Chris Julin reports.
January 10, 2003 - Land may be forever but what grows on the land isn't. Thousands of acres of Minnesota farmland each year are being converted back to a natural state. Private land owners, non-profit groups and government are all part of the effort. Hunting organizations are especially active. One group, "Pheasants Forever", which started in Minnesota, has bought 85-thousand acres nationwide. Mainstreet Radio's Mark Steil reports. { Minnesota's best pheasant range is along its western flank. When settlers arrived more than a century ago this part of the state was treeless prairie. Most of the land now is farmed. But in Lincoln County on the South Dakota border one field is being returned to the wild.
January 10, 2003 - Pheasants Forever is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a meeting this weekend in the Twin Cities. Star Tribune outdoors writer Dennis Anderson launched the organization with a column he wrote in March, 1982 on the decline of the state's upland bird population. At the time, he was writing for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The organization now has over one hundred thousand members in 28 states and Canada. Anderson says it's difficult to assess the impact Pheasants Forever has had over the last two decades:
January 17, 2003 - Governor Tim Pawlenty today FRIDAY appointed former DFL senator Gene Merriam to lead the state Department of Natural Resources. Merriam is a vice-president for ECM publishers and served for 22 years in the state Senate. He was a key player in the Senate, heading the Finance committee and the Agriculture and Natural Resources committee. As DNR commissioner he will face a number of challenges, including a shrinking budget and a host of competing interests. Minnesota Public Radio's Michael Khoo has more.
January 17, 2003 - Governor Tim Pawlenty is expected to publicly reveal his choice for Department of Natural Resources commissioner later today. Gene Merriam is a former DFL state senator from Coon Rapids. His name rose to the top of the list after an intense 2-month search for the right person for the job. He met Pawlenty's requirement that the DNR commissioner be an outdoors enthusiast. Merriam is also a former chair of the Senate Finance and Environment and Natural Resources committee... and cosponsored a bill that created the state's environmental trust fund. Republican Dennis Ozment is chair of the House Environment and Natural Resources Finance Committee. He says he's pleased with the announcement.
January 24, 2003 - Talk about cold......windchill readings around Minnesota reached the -35 to -45 F mark on Thursday morning, the coldest readings since the new formula was initiated by the National Weather Service in November of 2001. But these pale in comparison to the values reported from the Mt. Washington Observatory elevation 6288 ft in New Hampshire on Wednesday this week.....they reported a 6 am EST temperature of -34 F with winds of 117 mph and gusts to 142 mph, giving a windchill of -93 degrees F.....not only far colder than us...but colder than any report from the South Pole as well
January 27, 2003 - Officials say it will probably take weeks to clean up 100-thousand gallons of crude oil that spilled from a pipeline Friday night in Superior, Wisconsin. Most of the oil was captured by the ditches and retention ponds at the Enbridge Energy Terminal, but 19,000 gallons made its way onto the frozen Nemadji River. Steve Lee supervises the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's Emergency Response Team. Lee says transporting oil by pipeline is much safer than moving it on trucks or barges. But, he says, when a pipeline has a problem, the repercussions are large. Lee says that, luckily, a two-foot sheet of ice over the river stopped the oil from getting into the water.
January 31, 2003 - This week we've heard about the struggles of people trying to work their way out of poverty. One of the obstacles people with low incomes often face, is isolation. There's a deep divide between the haves and the have-nots. Last month, people in Duluth tried to bridge that gap. Ten low-income families were paired with school board members, city councilors -- people who make policies that affect families. For a month, they "walked a mile in each others' shoes." Mainstreet Radio's Stephanie Hemphill came along. She has the final story in our series "Falling Behind."