The Minnesota Clean Water Challenge (MCWC) will promote water stewardship by prompting voluntary commitment and action among a diverse population of fair goers at the Minnesota State Fair; when fair-goers follow through on their promises, nonpoint source pollution levels in the project’s target locations will decrease.

Building on past Metro WaterShed Partners’ successes in raising awareness of water-related problems in Minnesota, the Minnesota Clean Water Challenge will use community-based social marketing strategies to encourage Minnesotans to adopt water friendly practices to conserve, protect and improve local water resources.

This campaign will combines up-to-date research on the impact of best practices in water use and management, with cutting-edge thinking on the use of social marketing, social media and grass roots organizing to create behavior change in Minnesota citizens. Research on the psychology of behavior change posits that people tend to adopt sustainable behaviors in response to social pressure and the perception of social norms – not in response to receiving information about water issues.

By placing a compelling, interactive story on touch tablets at the State Fair building, alongside an opportunity to pledge to join with other Minnesotans and take action to protect our water resources, then tracking those pledges through an on-line tool, we will create a virtual community of people interested in fostering and sustaining water-friendly behaviors through personal and collective action.

Minnesotans who sign up for the challenge will receive a bio-degradable lawn bags with the message: Minnesota Water - Lets Keep it Clean! that reinforce the connection between lawn care and clean water in Minnesota.

When Minnesotans return to the challenge website, they will be able to see the cumulative impact of Minnesotans taking the challenge and the importance of citizens working together to protect water in Minnesota.

A community is a group of people connected by shared interests. Minnesotans are affirmed their commitment to water resources in 2008 when they voted to raise taxes to support the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment and create a Clean Water Fund. Though this demonstrates that Minnesotans value our water resources, most do not understand the intimate connection between their every day actions and water quality, nor do they understand the link between human health and the health of our ecosystems.

Water pollution is not a new problem in Minnesota. In the 1880's, settlers along the Mississippi built outhouses and industry along the shore, and the waters became polluted. History books include accounts of sewage-laden water, bloated and dying fish, and the subsequent search further afield for sources of clean water. The typhoid epidemic of the 1910's sounded the wake-up call that this way of using the river -- this belief that we could put anything into the water and it would be carried "away" -- was not sustainable. Improving water quality by mitigating human impacts has been an on-going project since the 1870's, when the population of European settlers along the river began to explode. It is ongoing issue and is by no means resolved.

Currently, 40 percent of Minnesota's lakes and rivers are listed as impaired water bodies. "The biggest threats to water quality in the state are the continuing concentrations of nitrates from agriculture and other unregulated non-point sources; mercury that starts as an air pollutant and accumulates in fish; and hundreds of non-regulated chemicals from household product and pharmaceutical disposal that are found in surface and drinking water."( Deb Swackhammer, "Water Sustainability Framework" p.17.)

A broad-based community effort will be required to ensure an ample supply of clean water is available for the future. This will necessitate a shift in cultural norms, and the way we think about and impact water in Minnesota.