I've been working on clean water access for communities that don't have it. Clean water isn't a side issue. It's what everything else depends on. Every family deserves that, including ours.

Our city has three federal Superfund sites, places where toxic contamination was bad enough that the federal government had to step in. Two of them, the old FMC plant and the Naval Industrial Reserve Ordnance Plant, sit at 4800 East River Road, right on the Mississippi. The contamination got so bad that Minneapolis had to move its drinking water intake further down the river. TCE, a probable human carcinogen, was found in the groundwater at the Navy site in 1981. The cleanup pumps at FMC have been running since 1987. Both sites are still on the federal list. A third, Kurt Manufacturing, sits on Main Street. The contamination isn't only in Ward 1, but the river runs past all of us, and what's in our groundwater eventually becomes someone's drinking water.

There's a Community Advisory Group that meets at City Hall to discuss these sites with the EPA. Almost nobody in Ward 1 has heard of it. Meetings are in English, with no outreach to the apartment buildings where most of our families live, no childcare, no translation. On the council, I'll push to fund community environmental health navigators, people trained on the Superfund sites and fluent in Somali, Spanish, and Hmong, to meet families where they are and help them understand what's in the ground, whether their home is in an affected zone, and what they can actually do about it. Forty years of cleanup is happening in our city, and the people who live closest to it know the least about it. That's the part a council member can change.

Ward 1 also lacks tree canopy and green space in areas that need it most. Trees are not just aesthetic — they reduce heat, improve air quality, and make neighborhoods more livable. Blocks along University Avenue and Mississippi Street that are heavy on concrete and light on shade feel it every summer. I will push for a tree planting program that prioritizes the parts of Ward 1 that have been overlooked, and make sure green space investments actually reach the neighborhoods where families live, not just the ones that already look good on paper.