Matt Doll, Minnesota Environmental Partnership
On Tuesday, April 7, the Minnesota Senate Environment, Climate, and Legacy Committee held a well-attended and historic oversight hearing on an issue of critical importance to Minnesota’s environment: polluter capture of state agencies.
“Polluter capture” describes an unfortunate trend in which the industries of polluting industries – mining, Big Ag, and fossil fuels among them – receive lax oversight or enforcement by agencies like Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) or Pollution Control Agency (MPCA). Instead, these agencies too often treat these industries and companies as clients to be aided, not as sources of potential pollution to be reduced and monitored.
That’s not to say that any particular industry is inherently harmful or has no place in our state. But when companies operate here, we expect that they will abide by our laws. And we expect that state agencies will penalize them as needed and force them to modify or halt operations if those laws are violated. On numerous occasions, that has not happened. On some issues, the U.S. EPA has stepped in to side with communities over state agencies on pollution, but the EPA is no longer a reliable backstop.
That’s why environmental groups including MEP launched People Not Polluters, a campaign to identify ways that state agencies have failed Minnesotans and push them to do better. Our collaborative work has also included urging legislators to conduct their constitutional oversight role over agencies through hearings.
Last April, we shared petitions signed by Minnesotans with legislative leaders asking them for their support, and continued conversations throughout the summer and fall. This session, our work paid off. Senate Environment Committee Chair Foung Hawj gave polluter capture a hearing date, and People Not Polluters organizations worked to line up speakers to share information on this problem.
Speakers focused on three examples among many in which agencies have failed to protect Minnesota’s resources and people: the nitrogen crisis caused by intensification of row crop agriculture and the failure to limit fertilizer use, the mismanagement of Wildlife Management Areas to the benefit of the timber industry at the expense of wildlife, and the failure to protect Minnesotans in the Twin Cities from the air pollution of waste incineration.
Speakers included both subject-area experts and Minnesotans living with those issues in their day-to-day life. Agency representatives also testified to share their perspective on each story.
Not all Senators showed support for our call for stronger agency enforcement, of course. But the fact that this oversight hearing happened at all – with a committee chair of the same political party as the current gubernatorial administration – is significant.
MEP and allied organizations invited our supporters to turn up to show their support for this hearing and the press conference that preceded it, and Minnesotans answered the call. Not only did the hearing room at the Senate Building fill up almost immediately, but the overflow room where the live feed was being streamed had more than 75 attendees.
We’re proud of the tremendous support this campaign has received. The response to People Not Polluters is making it clear that Minnesotans want our government agencies to hold polluting industries accountable, and to be held accountable by the people and our elected representatives in turn. No company should be big enough or influential enough to be above the law.