Wiger stresses commitment to river improvement

By KEVIN SWEENEY

Journal Editor

NEW ULM -- People who are interested in sustaining the rural lifestyle of southern Minnesota need to be concerned about their soil and water, legislative candidate Mark Wiger said Saturday.

Wiger, a DFLer who is seeking election in House District 21B, spent Saturday in meetings along the Cottonwood River, discussing the river's condition and possible solutions.

Each year thousands of tons of sediment and nearly a thousand tons of nitrates and phosphorous enter the Cottonwood River, said Wiger. More pollutants enter through inadequate sewer plants and septic systems, along with runoff from city storm sewers along the river.

There are a number of ways to reduce the amount of pollutants from the Cottonwood's watershed. The Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program provided money to set aside 100,000 acres along the Cottonwood and Minnesota rivers, but that has all been spoken for, said Wiger. There are programs to encourage farmers to use smaller amounts of chemicals on their fields, and to encourage conservation practices to stop erosion.

Preserving the rural lifestyle will require changing environmental habits, said Wiger, and that takes money.

The state is dealing with a deficit, said Wiger. He said his experience as a New Ulm school board member includes four years of reducing budgets and working to get needed services funded.

Wiger said the state also needs to develop and fund its priorities. During the years when the state was running $2 billion surpluses, legislators rushed to return the money to the taxpayers.

"Given our interest in environmental issues, were these excess or surplus dollars when we needed funding to replace inadequate sewer systems in small towns?"

Wiger said keeping the state's recent tax cuts in place is not necessarily the thing to do in light of the state's environmental needs. Perhaps, if the state's environmental needs are not being met, the state needs to make an investment in that area.

Later, Wiger said that the state's current budget deficit problems will require looking at many different tactics for balancing the budget. Rolling back some of the tax reforms in the last session should be on the table with everything else, he said.

But he added, "I don't believe in just throwing money at a problem. I believe in strategic spending. For instance, in Lamberton, someone from the Experiment Station there said it is possible, through satellite photography, to pinpoint the areas of the most severe erosion. If we can pinpoint those areas and spend money to control it, that's strategic spending."