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Comment by superkuh | Hacker News Reader

That's fun. But Minnesotans might also be interested in the what happens to the road (and other) run-off water. Minnesota Pollution Control's 2021 impaired water bodies result just came out too: https://www.pca.state.mn.us/water/minnesotas-impaired-waters...

It turns out that the St. Croix river that makes up much of the eastern state border near the Twin Cities is so heavily polluted with perfluorooctane sulfonic acid only 1 fish meal per month is being recommended.

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/11/08/minn-lakes-with-for...

https://eastmetrowater.org/2021/11/11/pfas-contamination-wor...

https://www.stcroix360.com/2021/11/every-st-croix-river-fish...

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To be clear, the PFOS pollution in the St Croix is almost certainly from groundwater contamination from 3M manufacturing and dump sites near or in the lower St Croix watershed, not road water runoff.

The 3M-PFAS connection is clearly established. Run off is also a known problem and clear trade offs are being considered. (which is not a dismissal for the problems).

Yup. Minnesota's DNR is usually pretty well-informed and pretty proactive. De-icing around the Twin Cities metro has improved significantly over the past 5-10 years.

Now if we could just convince the property owners around the lakes not to dump so much fertilizer on their lawns...

I believe more specifically it is PFOS from the pre-70s. Interestingly, this was ww2 nation state technology that helped make missile components, then everyone wanted it to fight fires in ammo yards.

Wow and all they would have to do to fix it is not plow their roads? This sounds too good to be true!

I used to be an avid fisherman and thirty years ago I’d routinely eat every decent fish that I caught. Now days I’m strictly catch and release - I just get a bad feeling about water quality no matter what lake I’m fishing in. I don’t follow eco stuff as much as I should, but I think it’s sad we can’t trust our lakes anymore.

It’s worth looking into data if it’s available. There’s a waterway in my city that was very polluted a century ago and is locally considered to be disgusting. Recent data shows it’s one of the cleanest in the city, now. There are clean places still, but you often need to dig to find out.

In the 1980s and early 90s people didn't eat too many fish out the St. Croix because of the mercury (and other) levels. But in the 40 years since the river had seemingly cleared up really well and all the normal pollution indicators (like mercury) were low. I decided to start fishing it and eating fish from it again last year. Unfortunately they weren't testing for PFOS/PFAS till the end of last year. :|

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