Voyageurs Park Association wins service award

The Voyageurs National Park Association was just given The President's Volunteer Service Award. a national award recognizing volunteer service by groups, families, and individuals in their communities across the country.

VNPA has been the leading nonprofit support group for Voyageurs National Park since 1965, working to protect and promote the Park’s resources, and is well deserving of this honor. More on the VNPA website.

Congratulations!

St. Paul does solar big!

Check out this blog entry on Fresh Energy by Michael Noble - turns out the new solar power plant on the roof of River Centre nearly doubles the solar capacity of the entire state, and is the "largest solar thermal system in the Upper Midwest."

Kudos to the City, St. Paul District Energy, and State Office of Energy Security and River Centre.

Minnesota's Greenhouse Gas Emissions

This chart was compiled by Minnesota Compass - for more info, visit their blog entry:

New Parks and Trails Plan submitted

It's a framework (not a plan) for spending the portion of the lottery that goes to parks and trails. I didn't see anything earthshaking in it, but it does set broad priorities for both maintaining existing "assets" and acquiring new lands. Acquisition is focused on the central regions (Twin Cities and burbs), naturally, since it will be a race against development.

The framework was developed by the UofM's Center for Changing Landscapes, which has the document in user-friendly form here: [CLICK]

You can download the Executive Summary here: [CLICK]