While the 2017 Minnesota legislative session didn’t go as well as we hoped — we failed to make any meaningful progress on water quality — we can say for certain that the final bills were a great improvement over those originally vetoed by Gov. Mark Dayton. 

Thank you FMR River Guardians, Water Action Day participants and everyone who joined in our efforts to stand up for clean water this session! 

Learn more from our Legislative Updates blog and join us for happy hour, Tuesday, June 27 to recap the session with the FMR Capitol Crew and discuss what's next.

We're pretty sure that when Minnesotans passed the Legacy Amendment, this isn't what they — what we — had in mind. Just signed by Gov. Mark Dayton, the environment bill shifts voter-mandated conservation funds to administrative costs. Thank you to all the River Guardians who tried to prevent this, we look forward to inviting you to happy hour soon to recap the session.

Friday, May 12, Gov. Mark Dayton vetoed a historically bad omnibus environment bill. It sought to give polluters the right to write their own environmental impact statements, slashed funding for environmental agencies and even prevented cities from banning plastic bags. In short, it threatened to undermine Minnesota’s long tradition of protecting the water we drink and the air we breathe. 

Dennis Anderson, the longtime outdoors columnist for the Star Tribune: "Misinformation is rife about the state's buffer law, passed two years ago to clean up lakes and rivers, which requires farmers and other landowners to be in compliance with the statute by November."