Jeff Broberg, tireless water champion who helped change Minnesota’s environmental policies, dies

A rock formation on a farm near Eau Claire, Wis., was responsible for Jeff Broberg’s passion for science. Little did he know those rocks would help change Minnesota’s environmental efforts over the past few decades.

Broberg, a longtime geologist and groundwater expert, rose to chair the influential Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR), which divvies up state funding for environment-related projects. He also led organizations concerned over trout health and private-well owners, and he was key in getting federal officials to press Minnesota to change its nitrate pollution standards.

The longtime, dogged advocate for better water quality died last month after a cancer diagnosis weeks before. He was 71.

“He really helped people not take their water for granted and think more concretely about where their water at the tap comes from,” said Carly Griffith, water program director with the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy.

Broberg’s journey began with that rock formation on his grandfather’s farm. According to his brother Steven Broberg, Jeff was fascinated by his grandfather’s explanation of how that rock came to be.

The Broberg boys found a 72-pound rock in 1965 that they thought might have been an agate. Jeff and his mother took it to the University of Minnesota, where geologists guessed the rock was about 2 million years old.

“Kind of the rest is history for Jeff in terms of his love of geology,” Steven Broberg said with a laugh.

Broberg began his activism early as well. Known — and sometimes feared — for his fiery delivery and no-nonsense arguments, Broberg became a DFL precinct caucus delegate as a 17-year-old Washburn High School student in Minneapolis.

As his brothers put it, Broberg didn’t like bullies, and he was quick to anger growing up. He later learned to harness that into passion.

“He realized you can’t get anywhere with that anger,” Brad Broberg said. “He was righteous, but not in a narcissistic way. He couldn’t tolerate malfeasance.”

He was also known for his good humor, his stories, his fondness for pranks and his ability to connect with strangers.

Broberg graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1977 with a geology degree, then went to work in Louisiana finding oil deposits for companies. He sold his shares and came back home before the mid-1980s oil crisis hit the South, though he was briefly sickened by exposure to DDT, Steve Broberg said.

In Minnesota, he started a farm east of Rochester in rural St. Charles. He began a long career in the area starting in 1990 as a geological and environmental consultant for corporate projects.

“When he was actively employed and working, we may find ourselves on the same side of a project or on the opposite side of a project,” said Martin Larsen, a soil conservation officer with Olmsted County’s soil and water conservation district. “(Sometimes) there were some feathers ruffled, and that isn’t always a bad thing.”

It was around the same time that Broberg began to get involved with the Minnesota Trout Association and advocate for cleaner water to protect fish.

He began traveling around the state, actively learning more about Minnesota’s waterways and the projects to improve the state’s water quality. He was appointed to the LCCMR in the 2010s and at one point chaired the commission.

After he left the commission, he advocated for tighter control of Legacy funding. In March, he told the Minnesota Star Tribune he was concerned lawmakers were creeping closer toward interfering with the commission’s independent authority to allocate clean-water funding, calling it “usurpation through what I term legislative mischief.”

“Why not go to the governor and say … ‘You talk conservation, we want to see you walk the talk.’”

After he retired, Broberg became an ardent groundwater advocate. He founded the Minnesota Well Owners Organization (MNWOO) and received a master’s degree in nonprofit administration from St. Mary’s University.

Broberg was instrumental in helping to organize the effort by several environmental groups to push the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to look into nitrate pollution in Minnesota.

MNWOO was one of 11 state and national organizations that wrote to the EPA in April 2023 urging it to declare a public health emergency in southeast Minnesota due to the increasing number of nitrate readings in the region’s groundwater.

EPA officials urged the state in November that year to change its environmental standards and pledge to clean up southeast Minnesota’s waterways. The state promised that it would act quickly to help residents with dangerous levels of nitrate in their wells.

Broberg kept up his advocacy into his dying days, joining the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy in a lawsuit this year to ensure that state officials continue to make good on their promise even as federal environmental standards change in the Trump administration.

Broberg announced toward the end of March he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He died about two weeks later. His wife, Erica, survives him.

A memorial event for Broberg is set for May 18 at the Hook and Ladder Lounge in Minneapolis, while his family plans a smaller public gathering in Rochester later this summer. His brothers hope people bring their stories of Broberg, in good times and bad, to help celebrate his life.

“When you met him, it doesn’t take long to know that he was a good man, worthy of everyone’s respect,” Steven Broberg said.