Event: Volunteer Phone Banks
Date: Sunday – Thursday starting August 16
Time: Sundays, 4:30 PM to 8:30 PM; Monday-Thursday 5:30 PM to 9:00 PM
Location: Clean Water Action office, Minneapolis, MN
Description: This election year presents a tremendous opportunity for us. We have to get our state on a sustainable path to protect our water, our health and our children’s futures. That is why Clean Water Action has endorsed Mark Dayton for Governor and a number of environmental champions for the State Legislature. We need these strong leaders in office to guarantee Minnesota’s environment is protected for future generations. Clean Water Action’s volunteers are critical to our success this election season. We need your help to make a difference! Volunteers are needed for volunteer phone banks beginning August 16 and running until Election Day. The time for change is now, and the power is in your hands to make that change!
For more info: Sign up here or contact Melissa Caldwell at mcaldwell@cleanwater.org or 612-627-1533

Support Candidates Who Support the Environment

Clean Water Action is proud to announce our initial list of endorsed candidates for the 2010 federal and state elections. Below is a list of candidates we feel will champion policies to defend our environment in Congress and at the State Capitol. Clean Water Action is in the process of finalizing our endorsement process for 2010 and a final list of candidates for the November 2 election will be posted in the coming weeks.

As part of Clean Water Action’s Ripple Effects Project, Minnesotans share their tips for living more sustainably.

Why fragrances really stink for us and the environment

Although it smells great, it really stinks!

Asia’s Tip: Buy fragrance-free products
Next time you go shopping for hand lotion, shampoo or other products, be sure to read the label. If one of the listed ingredients is “fragrance”, look for a fragrance free alternative.

Find an event in Florida, New Jersey, or where you live.

It's clear from the disaster in the Gulf that oil is risky, dirty, and dangerous.

Join Clean Water Action members and supporters in Florida on Saturday, June 26th for a national day of action to help clean up America's energy and to call on President Obama to move us off oil.

Find a Hand Across the Sand event in Florida, New Jersey, or in other parts of the U.S. or around the world.

For local organizing or attendance information in Florida, please contact Kathy Aterno.

Clean Water Action would like to announce the completion of its 2009-2010 Legislative Scorecard. Our scorecard grades state Senate and House members on their support of environmental issues based on their votes on important environmental legislation. The votes included in this scorecard took place during the 2009-2010 legislative biennium and focus heavily, although not exclusively, on votes that would seriously affect the issues of clean, renewable energy, water quality and toxins in our environment—the primary areas of focus for Clean Water Action.

Minnesota Clean Water Action Celebrates Legislative Victories in 2010

The 2010 legislative session came to a close early Monday morning after a brief special session was called to finish the budget bill. Although this was a tough year to pass meaningful environmental legislation, Clean Water Action celebrated several legislative victories including passing a law to keep toxins out of our environment and stopping attempts to move Minnesota towards dirty energy options.

As a member of the Healthy Legacy Coalition, we successfully passed a bill to help promote green chemistry manufacturing in Minnesota. Using cleaner manufacturing processes is a step towards keeping toxic substances out of our products and the environment from the beginning.

New report finds hormone-disrupting chemicals in popular fragrances

Find out what's in many popular fragrances that you may not know about.

A new study by our partners at the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics reveals that top-selling fragrance products contain a dozen or more secret chemicals not listed on labels, multiple chemicals that can trigger allergic reactions or disrupt hormones, and many substances that have not been assessed for safety by the beauty industry’s self-policing review panels.

Hormone disrupting chemicals found in the report, such as phthalates, are present in Minnesota’s water and can adversely affect human and environmental health.

Get the entire report on chemicals in fragraces.(pdf, 1.5 MB)

You will need to have the Adobe Acrobat Reader properly installed to view PDF documents. You can get it free from Adobe.

Find out about the real costs of nuclear power and what it does to our environment. Our factsheets will give you the information you need about why nuclear power is the wrong energy source for Minnesota.

Why we should uphold the nuclear moratorium (pdf, 997 kb).

The true costs of nuclear power. (pdf, 857 kb).

The continuing problem of nuclear waste. (pdf, 724 kb).

Adding nuclear plants will be bad for our water. (pdf, 635 kb).

You will need to have the Adobe Acrobat Reader properly installed to view PDF documents. You can get it free from Adobe.

From Minnesota Public Radio

A New York Times series on America's water supply is raising serious concerns about the amount of unregulated chemicals in the country's drinking water and the EPA's outdated monitoring system.

Guests

• Jane Houlihan: Vice president for research at the Environmental Working Group.
• Lynn Thorp: National campaign coordinator and senior policy specialist for Clean Water Action.

Minnesotans love their lakes. However, what do you do when the lake you live by is so weedy and smelly that you don’t want to be near it? This was the problem confronting Sherri Knuth and others living near Como Lake in St. Paul, MN. The shallow lake is largely fed by storm water runoff from the neighboring communities. Pollutants in the runoff coupled with a large duck and goose population contributed to the degraded water in the lake. Sherri and her neighbors in the Como area were concerned that if nothing were done to reverse this damage, their neighborhood lake would continue to get worse.