Hero Clams Keep Minnesota’s Drinking Water Safe

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories. 

Shoutout to the State’s Shellfish Employees

Did you know that the Minneapolis Public Works’ water treatment plant has had a clam-run pollution detection program in use since 2008? Reporter Claire Carlson explores this super-cool system, which she calls a “unique human-mollusk partnership,” for MinnPost.

“Mussels have served as a little-known first line of defense for detecting pollution at the facility, which supplies water to nearly half a million people throughout the metro area,” she writes.

It works a lot like the canary in a coal mine model, though less tragic. Clam participants are monitored via magnets attached to their shells. When the mussels close up, an alert is sent to humans at the Mississippi River processing plant in Fridley, warning them that there could be pollutants in the water.  

George Kraynick, the city’s water quality manager, has big hopes for the clams to go viral. “We want to have a clam cam that’s available 24/7 where you can just watch them move around,” he tells Carlson. “We’ll also have a social media campaign where you can submit your name for the mussels and we’ll pick the top 15.” 

John Deere Farm-to-Table Kids Cookbook Now Banned

At least at North Woods Elementary, that is. Last year, the Iron Range grade school banned 80 books from its library. It was the only school in the state to ban any books. Only four states—we're talking entire states—banned more books last year, and that total is close on the heels of fourth place Utah's 108 banned books.

Classic, award-winning reads like Charlotte’s Web and A Wrinkle in Time were removed from shelves, as well as books from Indigenous, queer, and Holocaust-surviving authors. The books had been ordered at the recommendation of the school's new library assistant, Quinn Krebsbach. They were pulled from shelves after parents complained about a banned book display Krebsbach had set up in celebration of Banned Books Week. 

“Krebsbach also talked to students, catering to their age groups, about what book banning means,” Jana Hollingsworth and Jennifer Brooks write for the Star Tribune. “According to the lesson plans he shared, one of the banned books he planned to use as an example for grades 4-6 was Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets.” Krebsbach says he’s now out of a job.

St. Louis County Schools Superintendent Brian Masterson claims that the books were not actually banned; they’re just not on shelves right now. “The American Library Association defines a book ban as the removal of a book from the shelves in response to a complaint from a person or a group,” the Strib helpfully clarifies.

Will Netflix Chop Up Children’s Book Hatchet?

Speaking of banned books, Variety announced on Tuesday that Minnesota author Gary Paulsen’s 1987 young adult novel Hatchet is being made into a movie. The story follows Brian Robeson, a 13-year-old boy who must fight to make it alone (yes, with a hatchet) in the Canadian wilderness after surviving a plane crash. In the past, the Newbury Award-winning novel has faced controversy at school libraries for its gory depiction of plane-crash aftermath (I read Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot around the same time I read Hatchet for school; the gore was barely noticeable).

Hatchet is set to be adapted by Derek Cianfrance, who also wrote and directed Blue Valentine—a very different movie! While Paulsen died in 2021, his estate approved Cianfrance for the gig.

Franklin Avenue Fire Update

On Sunday, a three-alarm fire broke out at the Dollar Plus store at 1300 East Franklin Avenue. The flames spread to a facility next door, owned by the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, that provides necessities to Native Americans and also houses historical archives and language materials. Though the tribal office space suffered smoke and water damage, maintenance tells Melissa Olson at MPR News that thankfully the archives are safe.

Firefighters say they haven’t determined the cause of the fire. Abdullahi Omar, Dollar Plus’s owner, says his business’s future is uncertain as he’s uninsured. Employees and volunteers at the tribal offices say they will need to clear out the bison, walleye, and venison stored at the building; they tell MPR they’re planning a community cookout in the parking lot this Thursday.