Last month’s issue of the Hill & Lake Press highlighted one of the most important issues facing our city in the coming years: the impact of the Minneapolis 2040 Plan and its extensive up-zoning of our residential neighborhoods to promote indiscriminate, high-density development — with no consideration of the environmental impacts.
While most of us are sympathetic to the aesthetic, historic preservation and quality of life concerns addressed in the front page editorial in the February issue, those problems are part and parcel of the larger problem with the 2040 Plan: its damage to the environment and livability of our city.
The city failed the environment.
Throughout the 2040 planning process, the city of Minneapolis failed to perform any environmental impact study of the proposed plan. The result is a plan that will, among other problems (1) increase pollution of already impaired city lakes and streams, (2) cause more frequent and severe flooding, (3) increase air pollution, (4) decrease green space and wildlife habitat, (5) increase visual and noise pollution in what are now relatively quiet residential areas, (6) eliminate light and air to adjacent properties, (7) increase the regional urban heat island effect and (8) increase pressure on aging infrastructure, such as electricity, sewer and water. Much of this environmental damage is tied to widespread, indiscriminate high-density development that decreases green space, and to failure to account for the city’s realistic traffic management needs in the coming decades.
Based on these likely impacts, several environmentally minded organizations joined together in 2018 to sue the city for failing to comply with the Minnesota Environmental Rights Act (MERA), the state’s flagship environmental law. As of now, we’re winning.
In fact, the city has not even attempted to defend the 2040 Plan as being environmentally sound; its only argument has been that MERA doesn’t apply to comprehensive plans and the city can just ignore it. In 2021, the Minnesota Supreme Court rejected this argument, ruling that MERA gives environmental groups the right to sue Minneapolis for failing to complete an environmental review before approving the 2040 plan. Subsequently the district court ruled in our favor, issuing an injunction that barred implementation of the 2040 Plan. That injunction is now on hold, however, pending a further appeal by the city and more action by the district court. If we are successful — which we believe we will be — the injunction should be reinstated, and the city will be required to perform an environmental analysis and adjust the 2040 Plan accordingly.
All this progress threatens to be undone by a bill, HF2004/SF2159, recently introduced by Rep. Sydney Jordan (60A) and Sen. Omar Fateh (62), metropolitan-area Minnesota legislators who have obviously been influenced by city officials. The bill attempts to legislatively override the successful environmental suit by exempting Minnesota cities from complying with MERA, retroactive to 2018, when the 2040 Plan was unveiled.
The irony here is thick.
The 20h0 Plan was presented to the public as a strategy for mitigating the impacts of climate change, but rather than crafting a defensible plan to actually do so, the city has spent countless taxpayer dollars trying to exempt itself from the essential environmental accountability that MERA provides — all without offering any substantive defense for the 2040 plan itself. That strategy having failed in court, we now see the Plan’s defenders sneakily attempting to quash the lawsuit legislatively.
But on top of allowing Minneapolis to avoid environmental consideration of their plan, it would open the door to any municipality avoiding environmental review of plans that would do far worse things than Minneapolis is trying to achieve. Imagine cities being given the green light to avoid environmental consideration of actions far more insidious than up-zoning. This would open the door to things we probably cannot even imagine. Incinerators, landfills, mining, industrial activities, etc. exempted from citizen review if they are in zoning plans. We as a state do not want to go there.
2040 Plan Does Not Lead to More Affordiable Housing
While the 2040 plan was enacted by a City Council concerned with the lack of affordable housing, it is having an opposite effect on our community. By up-zoning most of the city but at the same time not providing any funding for or requirement of affordable housing, the plan has the perverse effect of removing the most affordable housing in the city and redeveloping it into market rate housing. Not only will we have a less environmentally sound community, but it will be less affordable than it is currently.
I hope you will join me in urging our legislators to reject HF2004/ SF2159. The criticisms leveled against the 2040 Plan in our lawsuit are common sense, grounded in fact and supported by scientific analysis. If the suit remains on its successful path, Minneapolis will be better off: we’ll still have a 2040 plan, but one that balances the very real need for growth with actual environmental accountability. The lawsuit doesn’t entail a “no growth” strategy, but a smart growth strategy, which happens to be the name of one of the plaintiffs: Smart Growth Minneapolis. Please call or write your legislators today and urge them to oppose HF2004/ SF2159.
Hill & Lake Press reached out to Rep. Frank Hornstein (61A) and Sen. Scott Dibble (61) at the time of publishing, but they were unavailable for comment. Please let State elected officials know how you feel about allowing the City of Minneapolis to evade longstanding environmental accountability and precedent.
