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Scare tactics on our water don’t hold water but they are a good fundraiser
What do you know? Another headline on water quality issues in the state of Minnesota. But guess where these lakes are located? In Metropolitan areas, not in northeast Minnesota and certainly not in Ely.
But how could that be? The water here is being poisoned by evil mining companies that pour acid into lakes in the dark of night, right? Sorry, that is a falsehood and not far from what groups like Save the Boundary Waters and the Friends of the Boundary Waters use to scare people and line their pockets with donations.
Line their pockets? Is that true? A quick search online on the IRS.gov website found the most recent Form 990 records were from 2022 when the Friends took in $2.2 million and had a profit of $278,290.
They spent over $1.1 million on salaries and yet at the end of the year they had $1,392,185 in the bank. In cash. Plus another $1.3 million in investments. Along with other assets, the organization has $3.6 million in assets and that was three years ago.
Clean water doesn’t raise money and pay salaries. Scaring people that there isn’t clean water does bring checks to the bank. That’s the part groups like the Friends don’t like to talk about. They profit from scare tactics, pure and simple.
Back to water. The Minnesota Department of Health sent out a news release titled, “Health officials update fish consumption guidance in some water bodies due to PFAS.”
Sounds like something to look into, so we did. Our first thought was over the PFAS found in the ground in the area past the seaplane base. These are believed to be caused by dry cleaning chemicals dumped there years ago.
But guess where this PFAS concern is focused? In the Twin Cities metropolitan area, specifically Hennepin County.
Apparently there are no Friends of the Twin Cities raising millions of dollars to save the lakes and rivers there, along with the folks who live there and are in need of being saved from afar.
We did look to see if there were any lakes in St. Louis County and there were...in Duluth. Specifically in Duluth, Hermantown and other townships. No lakes north of Duluth and no lakes in Lake, Cook or Koochiching counties.
Well, let’s keep that on the down low. We don’t want word getting out that the lakes up here are in much better shape that the southern part of the state and especially the Twin Cities area.
But that won’t generate millions of dollars for certain non-profits. The only local benefit might be scare tactics on the water quality up here could help Zup’s Food Markets sell more bottled water to unsuspecting tourists.
Years ago on these pages we used to advocate for starting a group to “Save the Twin Cities” that would be based in Ely, raise millions of dollars and create jobs for folks up here.
We’re not sure what would be worse, however, people finding out that the water in the metro area is in poor shape or that people would rather give money to save the Boundary Waters instead of saving the water where they live.
