May 8, 1998 - Some are calling this weekend's fishing opener in Minnesota the "opener of the decade." DNR fisheries experts say the early ice-out and warm spring temperatures have created ideal conditions for a strong opening season. That's good news for anglers, and great news for thousands of Minnesotans who depend on tourism for their livelihood. Minnesota Pubic Radio's Tom Robertson reports from Bemidji... (sound of motorboat)
May 8, 1998 - Minnesota has now become the fourth state to settle its tobacco suit. The industry is already paying out a total of thirty (B) billion dollars to settle cases in Mississippi, Florida and Texas. Mississippi Attorney General Michael Moore was the first to settle with the industry for 3-point-35 (BILLION) dollars. Florida got 11 (Billion) and Texas got just over fifteen. We asked Attorney General Moore how Minnesota's settlement affects Mississippi's:
May 8, 1998 - When tobacco companies agreed to settle 40 state lawsuits against them last June, it did so with astonishing enthusiasm considering it was going to cost them more than 368-billion dollars. Critics, who are naturally suspicious of anything the Companies find acceptable, had little to use in an argument against the settlement.....until the Minnesota tobacco trial started. When it did, momentum toward a national deal stopped and the settlement collapsed. Minnesota Public Radio's Bob Collins looks at how the Minnesota trial has changed the national debate on tobacco.
May 8, 1998 - Stanton Glantz is an anti-tobacco researcher who was thrust into the national spotlight in 1994 when he received an anonymous shipment of four-thousand internal tobacco company documents. Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, used the papers as a basis for a book called "The Cigarette Papers," a landmark work about the tobacco industry's deception of the American people. Glantz sees the Minnesota's case as a continuation of his work. You might say if "The Cigarette Papers" provided a keyhole glimpse of the tobacco industry, then the Minnesota trial knocked down the door. Glantz doesn't see a settlement as a defeat, he sees it as another important step in defanging the tobacco industry:
May 11, 1998 - It's an old argument with a new twist. Which is more important: economics or the environment? As new technologies have emerged, some people criticize the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency for favoring the economics of new ventures, and ignoring the serious environmental questions posed by emerging industries. All this week we will look at specific cases ... including animal feedlots, expanding potato farms and a new ethanol plant. In some cases, the concerns center around how a variety of state and federal agencies work together, or do not, to protect our environmental resources. We begin our series of reports, with an issue that's received a lot of attention recently. Opponents of large livestock feedlots say the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has ignored health problems created by those operations. They're especially concerned with air pollution. This spring for the first time the MPCA documented hydrogen sulfide emissions from a hog farm which violated state law. Opponents call it vindication, but wonder if the MPCA will take vigorous action to bring the feedlot into compliance. Mainstreet Radio's Mark Steil reports:
May 13, 1998 - It's an old argument with a new twist. Which is more important: economics or the environment? As new technologies have emerged, some people criticize the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency for favoring the economics of new ventures, and ignoring the serious environmental questions posed by evolving industries. Fishing enthusiasts with the state chapter of Trout Unlimited are monitoring construction of an ethanol plant in the southeast Minnesota town of Preston. In the second story of our weeklong series, Minnesota Public Radio's Art Hughes reports officials with the volunteer recreation group Trout Unlimited worry about possible damage to the nearby Root River--one of the state's premier trout streams. They charge the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency with lax permit enforcement and failure to recognize the Root as a valuable resource.
May 14, 1998 - MPR’s Perry Finelli looks at Minnesota cropland. While not an endangered commodity, some contend it's being lost too quickly in places where farming has been a way of life. The United States Agriculture Department says even though urban areas are growing, Minnesota's cropland has not been reduced. That's because the urban landscape is still only a tiny fraction of the state's total amount of land.
May 14, 1998 - It's an old argument with a new twist. Which is more important: economics or the environment? Residents in the rural parts of Minnesota continually face this question when it comes to feedlots. Livestock operators on small farms want to expand to keep their businesses afloat. But their neighbors don't want more odor or more pollution problems. All this week we've been looking at environmental issues around the state...some of which fall under the authority of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. In the fourth of our week-long series, Gretchen Lehmann reports on one Central Minnesota county where officials believe counties should handle feedlots, not the MPCA.
May 15, 1998 - The Minnesota History Center will be celebrating the life of one of Minnesota's most famous living artists this weekend--George Morrison. The Grand Portage native was born in a small Ojibwe community in 1919, and spent years living in New York, where he made a reputation for himself as an abstract expressionist and hung out with artists like Jackson Pollack and Willim DeKooning. Morrison moved back to Minnesota in the seventies and still lives and paints up on the North Shore of Lake Superior. His wood mosiacs and abstract totem poles are in galleries around the world and even in the White House sculpture garden. It was in Grand Marais that Morrison met St. Paul writer Margo Fortunato Galt. The two collaborated on a book just published by the Minnesota Historical Society called "Turning the Feather Around: My Life in Art." Galt says other books have been written ABOUT Morrison, but this one is in his own words:
May 15, 1998 - It's an old argument with a new twist. Which is more important: economics or the environment? Some people criticize the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency for favoring economic development, and ignoring the potential for environmental damage. In the final part of our series on problems at the MPCA, Minnesota Public Radio's Mary Losure looks at charges that long term changes in the agency's philosophy are responsible for the growing list of environmental problems on its watch. 51:12 train. Birds etc.