Environment

Opportunities for citizen input on final recommendations for Rock-Tenn are coming up fast. The public comment period ends September 19 for written comments, with meetings held before then on Saturday, September 6 and Monda, September 15.

In addition to recommending biogas as the first choice for fuel, the Rock-Tenn Community Advisory Panel (RCAP) recommended a goal of zero waste for St. Paul, rejected any use of refused-derived fuel (RDF), and urged that the state change laws so that RDF cannot be classified as a renewable fuel. Copies of both the St. Paul Port Authority report (released August 25) and the RCAP summary and findings can be found at the RCAP Web site. MORE »

Imagination is a big part of gardening. One must look beyond the plain, weedy pedestrian vista taking up space in the now and envision something with decided grandeur — or at least a yard not quite so ho-hum. If that future-landscape bliss could be a verdant paradise that took care of itself, so much the better. MORE »

The earliest successful city on the Mississippi River was not St. Paul, or even Minneapolis. It was Prescott, Wisconsin, founded in 1840 where the Mississippi and St. Croix Rivers converge 30 miles southeast of the Twin Cities. MORE »

Sometimes it seems like the owner of the Café Wren has a better idea of what’s going on in John Adams’ vegetable plots than he does. “I think she has spies in the garden,” Adams joked on a recent August afternoon while showing me his produce operation near Luck, in western Wisconsin’s Polk County. “She knows when my stuff is ripening. She knows her stuff about food and promoting local food.” MORE »