Youth Art in Capitol Tells Subversive Message: “Clean Drinking Water Starts With Me”

Art by Claudia St. Germaine, New Prague ALC, hangs in the Capitol’s Public Business Center as part of an exhibit of student art on the importance of clean drinking water.

Capitol’s third floor Public Business Center.

Tucked away in room on the Capitol’s third floor hangs a student art exhibit with the unifying theme of “Clean Water Starts with Me.”

The theme just as well could have been: “Water is Life.”

I was particularly struck with by a piece by high school student Claudia St. Germaine (above) with lakes and pines. It creates a typical northern Minnesota scene, perhaps one of the areas where the giant Canadian corporation Enbridge is proposing to dig a large trench to bury a 36-inch pipeline carrying tar sands crude oil, the dirtiest fossil fuel in the world.

This pipeline is the kind of project that threatens our clean drinking water, something too many state officials have chosen to ignore.