How FMR's priorities for the Mississippi River fared — 2025
Despite the contentious nature of the legislative session, we achieved quite a bit for the Mississippi River this session. (Photo by FMR)
Update, June 16, 2025: Our hearts are broken. Read FMR Executive Director Whitney Clark's statement on the shootings of state lawmakers Rep. Melissa Hortman and Sen. John Hoffman, just days after the special session adjourned.
Despite the tightened state budget, challenging party politics and spillover into a special session, many of our legislative priorities for the river had a good outcome. Clean-water crops received more support than ever. Voter-approved community conservation funding will go forward as planned. The Clean Water Fund remains unsullied.
It wasn’t perfect. We’ll have more work to do next year, particularly around the increasingly important intersection of water quality and transportation fuel policy,
But for the most part, our focus on bipartisan legislation and advocacy of small, impactful investments paid off.
Keep reading and we'll walk you through how things turned out.
Clean-water crops research, development
Status: Funding passed in multiple bills.
The House and Senate passed funding for Forever Green in three separate bills. The Omnibus Agricultural Finance & Policy Bill and the Omnibus Legacy Finance Bill were approved prior to May 19 deadline. Additional funding from the Environment & Natural Resources Trust Fund was passed during the special session. Once again, this show of support was a bipartisan effort.
Here’s how the funding breaks down:
- Clean Water Fund: $5 million
- Agriculture budget: $1.604 million
- Environment & Natural Resources Trust Fund budget: $2.1 million
While these measures fall just short of Forever Green’s biennial request of $10 million, they represent a high-water mark in overall funding and help ensure scientists, researchers and other Forever Green staff can continue to develop clean-water crops and the markets to pull them onto the landscape.
Clean-water crops market development grants
Status: Funding passed in the Omnibus Environment and Natural Resources Appropriations Bill.
The Environment & Natural Resources Trust Fund package includes $450,000 for the MN Department of Agriculture’s “Developing Markets for CLC Crops” program. (SF 3 - Art. 2, Environmental & Natural Resources Trust Fund Appropriations.) These grants allow entrepreneurs to focus on developing new products made with clean-water crops, by covering the cost of prototype machines, equipment improvements, propagation and more.
Our work to establish another complementary program within the Department of Employment & Economic Development (DEED) received strong bipartisan support throughout the session, but ultimately will have to be pursued next year.
Sustainable aviation fuel guardrails, tax credits
Status: Most provisions excluded from Omnibus Taxes Bill (HF9)
During the session, FMR weighed in on House and Senate legislation to enhance and extend Minnesota’s existing SAF Tax Credit. That included support for new language that rewards the lowest-carbon fuels.
We also worked with stakeholders from industry, government, state agencies and environmental organizations to make several key adjustments to earlier language, which we think provide common-sense environmental guardrails for SAF such as preventing domestic land use change and preventing enhanced oil recovery. You can read more about those here.
While that language was included in the original Senate version of the Tax Bill, the final Omnibus Tax Bill looked quite different. Existing SAF tax credit funds were retained, but all new funding and environmental guardrails were removed from the agreement that ultimately passed.
Fortunately, we now have an agreed-upon framework for common-sense environmental guardrails to build on next session.
ENRTF and new community grants
Status: Passed as a part of the Omnibus Environment and Natural Resources Appropriations Bill
Last November, voters approved constitutionally rededicating a portion of state lottery proceeds into the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund (ENRTF). Importantly, voters also approved a new Community Grants Program, which was created to help new and smaller grantees access ENRTF funds in ways that are not feasible through the usual LCCMR process.
The ENRTF package was embedded in a larger Environment & Natural Resource Finance and Policy Bill (SF 3) that passed with bipartisan support (105-26 in the House, 38-29 in the Senate) on June 9.
Restoring natural lands
Status: Passed as part of the Omnibus Legacy Finance Bill
Lawmakers allocated $488k from the Outdoor Heritage Fund to the Metro Big River Partnership to support FMR’s restoration work on 109 acres across three conservation sites. Projects include invasive woody plant removal, seeding and planting native prairie and forest species, mowing, spot-spraying and prescribed burning. The three sites where these funds will be used are:
- Highlands of Riverpointe, City of Otsego
- Cottage Grove Ravine Regional Park, Washington County
- Riverside Park, St. Paul Park
Clean Transportation Standard
Status: Pursuing in 2026
Environmental champions in both the House and Senate authored bills that would move Minnesota toward cleaner transportation — and, as a direct result, cleaner water. Unfortunately, neither chamber heard this bill in committee and this legislation did not move forward this session. We will continue to work with partners, stakeholders and lawmakers to address emissions in both the transportation and agriculture sectors.
Protecting the Clean Water Fund
Status: Passed as a part of the Omnibus Legacy Finance Bill
FMR strongly supports the nonpartisan Clean Water Council’s recommendations for how to invest our Clean Water Fund dollars. We are very grateful to lawmakers of both parties for strictly adhering to those recommendations in this year’s Clean Water Fund legislation before the May 19 deadline.
Other legislative developments of note
Ag assistance and farm-to-school items
Status: Passed in Omnibus Agricultural Finance & Policy Bill
The Agriculture bill directs resources to several worthy programs, including funding for Farm-to-School meals; a small increase in the downpayment assistance program, which assists beginning and under-resourced farmers; and a new Local Food Purchase Assistance program, which helps connect many of those same farmers to food banks and food shelves.
Although not among FMR’s core legislative priorities, programs like these are essential to building a diverse community of small and midsized farms in Minnesota, which makes our work both easier and more equitable. We appreciate the work of our partner organizations who secured these victories, including Land Stewardship Project, IATP, Midwest Farmers of Color Collective and the MN Farmers Union.
Safeguarding drinking water in Southeast MN
Status: Pursuing in 2026
Led by our friends at the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy (MCEA), legislation to provide direct funding for private well mitigation in eight southeast Minnesota counties where many private wells are contaminated with excess nitrate fertilizer failed this session While FMR supports this work, it is not included in an already crowded agricultural budget. We are hopeful that future Legislatures will provide this funding — preferably in the much larger health and human services budget — next session.
Environmental protections for water-hungry data centers
Status: Passed through the data centers regulatory bill (HF 16)
Multiple environmental organizations and local communities have been grappling with how — or even whether — to accommodate the growing demand for hyperscale data centers. Due to the unique nature of state environmental reviews, no single entity is charged with assessing the entirety of a data center’s potential impacts on our communities (including water use and noise pollution).
Lawmakers included new environmental guidelines (paired with tax incentives) in a stand-alone data centers regulatory bill that passed with bipartisan support.
Water infrastructure investment
Status: Passed in the General Obligation Bonding Bill (HF 18)
Many of our wastewater and drinking water treatment systems were built 50-60 years ago, and are in dire need of improvements or replacement. The costs of such fixes are often far too large for individual communities to bear alone. The state has traditionally invested in fixes through the bonding bill. This year’s bonding bill provides $176 million in funds across four core programs:
- Wastewater Infrastructure Fund (WIF) - $87 million: Grants to municipalities to help supplement low-interest loans from the Clean Water Revolving Fund or match grant and loan funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development program.
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Point Source Implementation Grants (PSIG) - $32 million: These grants help local governments build wastewater, stormwater and drinking water treatment projects when the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency determines that higher levels of treatment are necessary to meet water quality goals. Funding is allocated on a competitive basis, with grants covering up to half of the eligible costs. A local match is required.
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State matching funds for state revolving loan programs - $39 million: The state’s Clean Water Revolving Fund and Drinking Water Revolving Fund help secure federal funds to provide low-interest loans to communities for clean water and drinking water infrastructure projects.
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Emerging Contaminants Grants - $18 million: These funds support a new grant program for local governments for up to 80% of the cost of drinking water infrastructure projects that address emerging contaminants in community drinking water.
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