A three-hour drive separates the rolling hills of Minnesota’s Douglas County from the front steps of the Bell Museum of Natural History. But a year after the controversy over Troubled Waters—the Bell’s Emmy award-winning film on farmland pollution in the Mississippi River basin—brought words like “dead zone,” hypoxia” and “nitrogen fertilizer” to the attention of… Read more »
Posts Tagged: Troubled Waters
Himle Resigns—Now What?
The announcement today that the U of M official who tried to pull the plug on Troubled Waters has resigned is an important step toward accountability at our land grant University. Karen Himle and U President Robert Bruininks can argue all they want that this has nothing to do with the controversy over the film,… Read more »
Cud-Chewing Contrarians
Did cattle evolve to eat grass, or is all that talk about rumens, abomasums and cuds just a bunch of baseless, elitist, tree-hugger new-age propaganda? Don’t ask that question at Iowa State University, where Corn is not only King, it’s Master of the Universe. As the Chronicle of Higher Education reports, Ricardo Salvador discovered that… Read more »
100’s of E-Mails: Tricks, Treats, Howlers
LSP staff members have spent the past two weeks sorting through over 2,000 University of Minnesota documents related to the Troubled Waters controversy. Now it’s your turn to do some reading. In the spirit of further shining a public light on that frightening black hole called institutional censorship, we’ve posted several hundred of the most… Read more »
Industrial Ag Pressure at the U—An Inside Job
Throughout the Troubled Waters brouhaha, U of M officials have maintained that there was “no outside pressure” to censor the film. E-mails and other documents obtained through an LSP Data Practices Act request show that no overt pressure was needed: deans, vice-presidents and communications staffers as far back as April bent over backwards to make… Read more »
Troubled Waters Documents Show Himle’s Bias (& Fascination with Propaganda)
A few LSP staffers spent Friday afternoon in a hot, stuffy room in the U of M’s Morrill Hall going through hundreds of e-mails that were generated by the controversy over the film Troubled Waters. Obtained through LSP’s Minnesota Data Practices Act request, the e-mails provide an inside look at how the vice-president of University… Read more »
Agronomic Arrogance
When a U professor took the microphone after last Sunday’s screening of Troubled Waters to accuse two southeast Minnesota dairy farmers of basically poisoning their own well, it was a rude reminder of the wide chasm that still separates the sustainable ag community and the U of M. That’s too bad: because if the film… Read more »
‘Troubled Waters’ on TPT Oct. 5
Well, if you weren’t one of the 600 people who got tickets to Sunday’s Bell screenings of Troubled Waters: A Mississippi River Story, don’t fret. After yet another week of confusion and rumors, it was announced today that Twin Cities Public Television will go ahead and broadcast the film Tuesday, Oct. 5, at 8 p.m.,… Read more »
Profits from Perennials
One bright spot in the dust-up over the showing of the film Troubled Waters is that it highlights an important water quality issue: we need more perennial plant cover on the land if we are to keep soil, chemicals and other contaminants out of our rivers and lakes. But how do we make those perennials… Read more »
The U’s Shifting Story Line on Troubled Waters
When the University of Minnesota announced late Thursday that the public showing of Troubled Waters was back on as scheduled, officials there were no doubt hoping this week-long PR nightmare would finally fade away. But now comes the hard part: explaining why the head of PR was allowed to declare a scientifically-balanced, professionally-produced documentary unfit… Read more »