Minnesota Starts New Mississippi River Cleanup Effort
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 10:00AMFrom the Star Tribune:
Project will offer farmers incentives to clean up runoff, but critics say voluntary efforts haven't worked.
Minnesota will be the nation's first test site for a federal program designed to stem the flow of agricultural pollution strangling some of the country's great bodies of water, including Chesapeake Bay, the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River.
Gov. Mark Dayton is expected to announce Minnesota's leading role in the project at the Capitol on Tuesday morning, with Tom Vilsack, U.S. secretary of agriculture, and Lisa Jackson, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, at his side.
They are promoting the pilot project as the start of an ambitious federal strategy that, in essence, would give farmers a green seal of approval if they voluntarily choose to put land conservation and water quality ahead of crop yields.
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