Park Rapids High School team places fifth in state Envirothon
This was their best showing in the event, which scored them on tests in several areas and an oral presentation. 2:00 pm, Apr. 29, 2021 ×
Park Rapids Area High School placed fifth out of 24 teams in the state Envirothon, earning the schools best-ever showing. Members of this year s team were, from left, Kelsey Berghuis, Cara Sunram, Allison Offerdahl, Emma Vrieze and team captain Maeve Bolton. (Robin Fish/Enterprise, April 28, 2021)
The Envirothon team at Park Rapids Area High School finished in fifth place at state this spring.
The school’s previous best showing, two years ago, was 16th place at state.
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For 50 years, a single company has extracted millions in profits from one of Minnesota’s most important and ecologically vulnerable regions, the Pineland Sands. The 770-square-mile area in northern Minnesota is home to globally threatened jack pine forests and abundant streams and wetlands. It is also underlain by a critical, shallow and highly vulnerable drinking water aquifer.
In its wake, the company has left poisoned rivers and drinking water and clear-cut forests. The company reaping all this devastation isn’t another corporate mining consortium or transnational oil pipeline, but a sprawling potato harvesting and processing empire run by the R.D. Offutt Company (RDO), based in Fargo, North Dakota.
MN Court of Appeals hears arguments in Pineland Sands case
A coalition is challenging the Minnesota DNR s decision to not prepare an environmental impact statement for the Tim Nolte Family Irrigation Project, east of Sebeka. 1:02 pm, Mar. 5, 2021 ×
Cattleman and farmer Tim Nolte shows one of the irrigation wells to a group of stakeholders who gathered at his Sebeka farm October 2019 for a tour. (Forum file photo)
A three-judge panel from the Minnesota Court of Appeals heard oral arguments Feb. 25 about the Tim Nolte Family Irrigation Project, east of Sebeka.
A coalition that includes Honor the Earth, Minnesota Well Owners Organization, Northern Water Alliance, Toxic Taters, Environmental Working Group, Pollinator Stewardship Council and others is challenging the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ (DNR) decision that the project does not require preparation of an environmental impact statement (EIS). They are also asking that irrigation permits b
The latest from EWG’s staff of experts
Minnesota Legislator Who Believes ‘Water Cleans Itself’ Defends Potato Giant’s Irrigation Expansion in Fragile Pineland Sands
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
From November 2019 to February 2020, Minnesota environmental regulators met several times behind closed doors to fabricate a rationale for not holding the nation’s largest potato grower accountable for decades of harm to the ecologically fragile Pineland Sands area. The regulators refused to hear community members’ arguments against allowing more pollution but welcomed the input of a state legislator, Rep. Steve Green (pictured), who believes “water cleans itself.”
The interagency meetings were held to prepare an environmental review worksheet for a recently permitted irrigation project linked to the agricultural conglomerate