A Minnesota District Court has ruled in favor of protecting the state’s wild rice.

The ruling backs Minnesota’s pollution standard, which limits the amount of sulfates that can be discharged into lakes and rivers to 10 milligrams per liter (or parts per million, ppm), the Star Tribune reported. The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, the plaintiff in the case, had argued that the rule was applied unfairly to copper mining projects, many of which would share the same watersheds as wild rice. The Chamber also called into question the scientific validity of the pollution rule, prompting the state legislature to order a study reviewing how sulfates impact the rice. Depending on the results of that study, the standard may change — but, for now, the court’s decision is a victory for conservationists.

Last summer, I had the opportunity to meet with biologists and tribal members at the Bad River Reservation in northern Wisconsin, who explained that wild rice is both ecologically and spiritually important. The Bad River rice beds also face the threat of mining pollution, like in the Minnesota case. To learn more about wild rice, check out the interactive infographic above, created by Circle of Blue’s summer of 2011 design interns Kelly Shea and Mark Townsend, and read my story on the Bad River rice beds.

Have any other stories about water pollution and its effect on ecosystems? Or stories about wild rice? Send me an e-mail at codi@circleofblue.org or comment below.

Codi Yeager-Kozacek is a reporter for Circle of Blue based out of Enterprise, Alabama. She studied journalism and biology as an undergraduate at West Virginia University and graduated summa cum laude from the university’s Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism. She has done research at the College of the Bahamas Gerace Research Center on San Salvador Island, Bahamas, and her study on coastal dune plants is currently pending publication in the Bahamas Natural History Proceedings. Her interests include food security and ecology. She co-writes The Stream, Circle of Blue’s daily digest of international water news trends. Email: Codi Yeager-Kozacek  :: Follow on Twitter :: More Articles