Readers Write: Disaster management, Bloomington water park, mining, giant beavers

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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Agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency are insurance — an umbrella policy with a nationwide risk pool that helps to partially cover catastrophes that are more than local resources can handle. This is what governments should do — help at times of crisis. Sure, FEMA isn’t perfect, but we can improve it, not eliminate it.

Of course, you can argue whether people should build houses in flood plains or on eroding coasts or in fire-prone areas; those are legitimate questions. Meanwhile, people need help, even if it is to move to safer areas. State and local governments will need extra help to rebuild infrastructure.

President Donald Trump’s idea of abolishing FEMA makes no sense when the costs and responsibilities are just passed down to the states. We’ll need to add 50 duplicative bureaucracies to handle statewide natural disasters and 50 separate storehouses of emergency supplies, with each state hoping they can accurately guess whether they should budget for earthquakes, hurricanes or blizzards in the next year. Plus, each state has a smaller risk pool to balance out those costs, so states would have to raise taxes a lot more to offer basic FEMA-type protections.

So sure, eliminate FEMA to justify Trump’s budget cuts, while we’ll all have to pay more in state and local taxes. Are we great yet?

Rochelle Eastman, Savage

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I just saw Trump state he was going to get rid of FEMA after the hurricane season. He says he is going to give damage responsibility back to the states. My question is, will our federal taxes go down? What are the chances the money that has been earmarked for FEMA will now be returned to the states? Does this also mean states will have raise taxes to cover these costs? If a federal building is damaged in a storm, who pays for that? I would hope our Congress is thinking this through rather than blindly accepting this plan.

Megan Grande, Edina

I’ve been a Bloomington resident and taxpayer for 44 years. By and large, our mayor and City Council use sound judgment in setting priorities. Not this time, though. Of the many things we need, a giant, fake water experience isn’t one of them. But now, they convinced the Legislature to chip in: Sure, let’s use $160 million in public money for this fake water experience in the Land of 10,000 Lakes (“Legislature clears the way for MOA water park subsidy,” June 11).

Shouldn’t the irony make us all sad? We’re going to build a monstrosity of an artificial structure — on the banks of our iconic Minnesota River and on the doorstep of the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge. And use unthinkable daily amounts of water to operate it by adding chemicals to make it “safe” for humans to play in it.

All this while our real water resource — the Minnesota River — continues to be one of our most degraded and impaired water bodies in the state. Nope, don’t have the money to fix that. Gosh, what fun.

Paige Winebarger, Bloomington

The writer is a retired board member of the Minnesota Environmental Quality Board, Minnesota Forest Resources Council, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and Minnesota Board of Soil and Water Resources.

Over the past week I have been reading many online news articles and blogs about how U.S. automakers — especially electric-vehicle makers — are getting very worried about running out of the metals needed in vehicle manufacturing. Many of those metals are located in mass quantity in the U.S., especially in Minnesota. Now, in Thursday’s Star Tribune I read that our very own Sen. Tina Smith removed the section pertaining to opening several mining sites in Minnesota that was in the “Big Beautiful Bill” that is moving through Congress (“Mining project in forest dies in Congress,” June 12).

China controls nearly all of the special metals used in electric vehicle batteries. It’s the Chinese government that can cut off our supply anytime it sees fit. It would halt nearly 80% of all EVs from being built. Smith is capitulating to the few ultra-environmentalists who loudly scream about worst-case scenarios without looking at the bigger picture of Minnesota jobs, independence from China and a vast U.S. supply of much-needed metals for not only the auto industry but for solar as well.

Chuck Bever, Milaca, Minn.

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Congratulations to Smith for getting my congressman Pete Stauber’s pet mining project removed from Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” There is no documented case, anywhere on Earth, of a copper-nickel sulfide mine that hasn’t polluted surface water and/or groundwater, even with modern technology. To push for a foreign mining company (which refuses to comply with environmental regulations in its own country) to be granted carte blanche to operate such a mine within the watershed of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is unconscionable.

Craig Laughlin, Longville, Minn.

Minnesota has officially joined 46 other states in naming a state fossil — Castoroides ohioensis, the giant beaver — adding a fitting new emblem to our rich natural history.

This achievement is the result of a yearslong collaborative statewide effort led by students, educators, scientists and community members. We wish to recognize the broad bipartisan coalition of legislators who worked to bring this idea to fruition. This includes state Sen. Steve Cwodzinski of Eden Prairie, who authored the bill in the Senate and has been a long-standing proponent of the fossil project, starting with his decadeslong career as an educator.

Further, we extend special appreciation to state Rep. Andrew Myers of Tonka Bay, who authored the bill in the House and championed the legislation at the Capitol this year. His energy and leadership were crucial to the bill clearing its final hurdle.

The Science Museum of Minnesota is proud to have played an instrumental role in this journey. In 2021, the museum launched a crowdsourced campaign to select a state fossil candidate from a list of ancient organisms that had cultural and scientific significance for Minnesota. The giant beaver was the overwhelming choice.

The enthusiasm from Minnesotans of all ages — in advocacy campaigns, public engagement events, online discourse and community collaborations — highlights the power of science education and civic engagement. This effort not only spotlighted our prehistoric past but also demonstrated the importance of inviting the public into scientific decisionmaking.

Support for the bill from the museum’s Indigenous Round Table and the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council was crucial. The bill has the unique distinction of including Indigenous language translations: Ċapa in Dakota and Amik in Ojibwe, an homage to the diverse cultures that inhabited Minnesota ages ago — that may have seen an actual giant beaver in their travels!

We invite everyone to visit the museum to learn more about Castoroides and explore the deep history beneath our feet — and to thank Myers, Cwodzinski and our legislative champions for helping bring this effort across the finish line.

Alison Brown, St. Paul

The writer is president and CEO of the Science Museum of Minnesota.