The Minnesota Senate Finance Committee on March 20 recommended passage of Senate File 1346, sponsored by Senator Bolden, to require scuba certification and specified safety equipment for workers who perform aquatic plant removal and other scuba work classified as "making improvements to land." The bill was prompted by the deaths of two young men, Brady Oney and Joseph Anderson, who drowned while performing aquatic lake-weed removal.

Senator Bolden, the bill sponsor, said the measure responds to an absence of clear state requirements for training and equipment. "This bill would create new worker safety requirements," she told the committee. "It will require those who are doing this work and using scuba gear to be trained, to, to get certification in scuba." Bolden said the bill also would add equipment requirements and require the Department of Natural Resources to include worker-safety terms in its permits and to provide information to companies doing this work.

A fiscal summary presented to the committee said the new obligations carry only modest costs. A fiscal analyst noted that the Department of Natural Resources has identified about $2,000 in general-fund programming and permitting costs in fiscal 2026 and the Department of Labor and Industry would face a one-time equipment/training cost of about $5,000, falling to roughly $2,000 annually thereafter. "So all in all, there is no scorable cost, beyond the cost that the agency have, absorbed," the analyst said.

Josiah Moore, legislative director at the Department of Labor and Industry, told the committee federal OSHA regulations cover many commercial diving operations but do not, in federal text, require scuba-certification for the kinds of seasonal aquatic-plant work at issue. "There are existing federal regulations that OSHA looks for when they go to sites that involve scuba diving," Moore said, adding that the bill's language limits its application to scuba diving that is part of "making improvements to land," a determination that could exclude some salvage or public-safety diving depending on the facts of each job.

Committee members questioned the bill's scope. Several asked whether other occupations that use scuba—pile driving, underwater construction, commercial salvage, and public-safety rescue—would already be covered by federal rules or by the bill. Moore and other agency representatives said federal regulations normally apply to commercial diving and that the bill aims to fill a gap specifically for aquatic-plant removal work tied to land-improvement permits.

Senator Dames moved that Senate File 1346 be recommended to pass; the committee took a voice vote and the motion prevailed. The committee did not record a roll-call tally in the hearing transcript. Senator Bolden said she is coordinating with Representative Brett Baker in the House, where companion language has been heard in committee, and she indicated the authors are working to align amendments to avoid a conference committee and to move the measure ahead before the spring season when the work resumes.

The bill would also allow the DNR to deny or revoke permits for companies with one or more willful violations of the new provisions, a high bar that Bolden said was included to prevent repeat noncompliance. The transcript includes no amendment text or statutory citations beyond the bill number and sponsor; agencies indicated they have been involved in drafting the provisions and can absorb the modest costs described.

Next steps: committee recommendation sends the bill forward in the Senate process; the sponsor said she expects continued negotiations with the House author to reach identical language before final floor consideration.