Environmental Initiative

Congratulations to Tannie Eshenaur and Steve Robertson of the Minnesota Department of Health on their retirement from state service on August 3! Tannie and Steve helped establish the Source Water Protection Collaborative and have been steadfast advocates and funders for our source water work. Thank you both for everything you've done to protect Minnesota's drinking water. We wish you a retirement full of rest and relaxation.

What do ranchers in your area actually care about? Before we designed any outreach, we dug into the data to understand who we were talking to. That understanding allowed us to design outreach just for them.

Learn how you can use data to meet ranchers where they’re at: https://buff.ly/RAKXeLJ

Want to apply this approach to your own outreach? Environmental Initiative offers workshops to help your team build that foundation. Contact Deborah Carter McCoy at [email protected] to learn more.

Transystems has been hauling sugar beets across North Dakota, Minnesota, and Idaho for more than 80 years, and their equipment runs hard through a demanding fall-to-spring season. A clean diesel upgrade through Project Green Fleet helped this family-owned business swap in cleaner, more efficient machines, phased in through multiple rounds of funding.

President Errol Rice shared how the upgrade cut emissions, reduced maintenance costs, and helped the company stay competitive during a tough stretch for commodity pricing. Read the full Q&A to see how it worked:

Modernizing the fleet without taking on all the risk: a Q&A with Errol Rice, President of Transystems For more than 80 years, Transystems has been loading and hauling sugar beets for Co-Op customers across North Dakota, Minnesota, and Idaho. When the opportunity came to modernize their fleet through a clean diesel upgrade program, they took it.

We wait all year for Minnesota summers, and lately, more of them are spent checking air quality alerts instead of heading outside. In a new op-ed, Clean Air Minnesota co-leads Alex Keilty and Eben Kowler look at how wildfire smoke and ground-level ozone affect our health and our plans, and how 20 years of voluntary, community-driven work is helping make Minnesota's air more resilient.

Read the full piece: https://buff.ly/9dISmwF

A strong producer outreach campaign requires a team that knows how to run one. Environmental Initiative offers training and professional development for organizations looking to build that capacity — covering the full process from goal-setting to impact assessment. Our approach is built on real campaigns, including one that influenced ranchers managing 272,374 acres in North and South Dakota to take action.

Does your grant proposal include a training or capacity-building component? Contact Deborah Carter McCoy at [email protected] to find out how we can help.

Join us as we celebrate the 1,000th free vehicle emissions repair through Project Clean Air Repair!

Thursday, Aug. 6, 5 to 7 p.m. at Arbeiter Brewing Company, with optional tours of The Lift Garage.

The first drink is on us, and D's Bahn Mi food truck will be on site.

Registration closes Thursday, July 30. Come celebrate with us!
https://buff.ly/takmSOr

Thank you to our Project CAR founding partners, Flint Hills Resources and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, for making this work possible.

Wildfire smoke affects more people than many realize.

According to experts from MDH and MPCA, children are always considered a sensitive group because their lungs and brains are still developing — and they breathe in more air relative to their body size.

Symptoms to watch for on smoky days include:
• Coughing
• Fatigue
• Headaches
• Dizziness
• Kids who seem unusually tired or “off”

“Even healthy adults can feel the effects for days after a single heavy exposure.”
— Jessie Carr, Epidemiologist Supervisor, MDH

Learn how to prepare your family and reduce exposure: https://buff.ly/df1sQhT

The first step to connecting ranchers with conservation practices is knowing exactly what success looks like. See how we approached goal-setting and download a free worksheet to try it yourself: https://buff.ly/TvrhC3g

Environmental Initiative offers workshops that take you through our process from goal-setting to evaluation. Contact Deborah Carter McCoy at [email protected] to find out if a workshop is right for your team.

Look at these fish go! These tiles are part of two larger mosaics that Mary Beth Magyar, the Source Water Protection Collaborative's artist-in-residence, is creating with the Chatfield community. The project is rooted in the region's karst geology and the water that filters through it.

Local high school students shaped the fish tiles, and community members brought them to life with glaze. Anyone can contribute to the project by cutting, shaping, and glazing tiles at the Chatfield Makers and Growers Market on Thursdays and Chatfield Center for the Arts on Wednesdays. Inspired by the town’s own trout, each fish comes out a little different.

Interested in supporting this work in 2027? Explore sponsorship opportunities: https://buff.ly/0FkCvkR

Thank you to the Minnesota Department of Health for their support through the Clean Water, Land, and Legacy Amendment. This activity is also made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Southeast Minnesota Arts Council thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and culture heritage fund.

Implementors continue to face barriers to enrolling producers in conservation agriculture programs, citing funding bottlenecks, shifting priorities, and inadequate staffing. In this blog, associate partnership director Jaycie Thomsen shares practical measures to address these challenges and advice on right-sizing philanthropic investments.

https://buff.ly/6O9VAZf