Watershed Event: Exploring a New Water Ethic for Minnesota - April 11 at Mill City Museum

Watershed Event: Exploring a New Water Ethic for Minnesota

Fee: FREE

Join Mill City Museum, 704 South Second Street, on Friday, April 11, from 3 to 9:30 p.m. for "Watershed Event: Exploring a New Water Ethic for Minnesota," a public symposium on future scenarios and imagined solutions to clean, abundant water in Minnesota.

The free symposium is hosted by the University of Minnesota Students for Design Activism and includes a panel discussion and the premier screening of "Watershed: Exploring a New Water Ethic for the New West."

The schedule of events includes:

3:00 to 5:30pm: Building a Future for Water: Transforming Practice, Policy and Implementation.

In this panel session, keynote speaker Bill Wenk, landscape architect of the St. Paul Great River Passage, will speak about the past and future realities of living and working in an arid climate and open the conversation to panelists and the audience for envisioning the bridge between the small-scale strategies and the large-scale problems facing the future of Minnesota’s waters.

Panelists include: Brian Hicks, Agricultural Drainage Management Coalition; John Linc Stine, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency Commissioner; and moderator: Dave Peters, journalist for Minnesota Public Radio’s "Ground Level".

5:30 to 7:00pm: Food, drink and informal conversation.

7:00 to 8:00pm: "Watershed: Exploring a New Water Ethic for the New West."

"Watershed" examines the questions raised by the personal, economic and environmental use and value of water that is used and transported from the headwaters of the Colorado River to its outlets in the Southwest. The challenges faced by those in the West are similar to those faced here in Minnesota.

8:00 to 9:30pm: Steps Towards Change: Resources for a New Water Ethic in Minnesota.

Using the movie "Watershed" as a launching point, this panel session will address current changes in the landscape and the visible decline of quantity and quality of Minnesota's water.

Panelists include: Sharon Day, Executive Director of the Indigenous Peoples’ Task Force; Deborah Swackhamer, Co-Director of the U of M's Water Resources Center; and Matt Tucker, University of Minnesota Professor of Landscape Architecture.

For more information visit the Watershed Event website.

Watershed Event is co-curated by Floodplain Collective, University of Minnesota Department of Landscape Architecture, and Mill City Museum. It is hosted by the University of Minnesota Students for Design Activism. All programs are free and open to the public.