Clean water efforts need to continue

by Dave DeMars

news@thenewsleaders.com

Minnesota is known as the”Land of 10,000 Lakes,” so it stands to reason the state has more than a little interest in the quality of that water. An open house was held concerning the Sartell Watershed District at the Rice Lions Club on April 27 with the focus of educating attendees about the watershed and water in general.

Departments in attendance included the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, Minnesota Department of Health, Minnesota Department of Agriculture, Stearns County Soil and Water Conservation District and agencies from other counties.

Milly Walsh and Margie Evans of Avon came looking for some information about lake health. Evans is the former mayor of Avon and currently heads the Linneman Lake Association. What can be done? Are there any answers? Any research? That’s why she and her friend Milly came all the way from Avon.

Linneman Lake has a problem because it is part of a group of lakes, and milfoil has been discovered in one of the lakes, the women explained.

“If you have milfoil in one lake, you’ve got it in all of them,” Evans said.

Aaron Janz of the Minnesota Department of Agriculture was there to explain a new idea in corn planting. He is part of a resource study dealing with planting corn in the traditional rows but also planting a cover crop of rye between the rows of corn. For a time, while the corn is only three feet or less in height, the rye protects the soil from erosion, cools the roots of the new corn plant and absorbs the excess nutrients that would normally leach out into nearby creeks in the water shed.

Once the corn is high, it shades the rye, and the rye goes dormant until the corn is harvested. Then it becomes active again and regenerates and can be used for pasture or tilled under for green manure.

“It’s a win-win for everyone,” Janz said.

A two-part presentation on the Sartell portion of the Mississippi watershed was presented by Phil Votruba and Anthony Dingmann, both of the MNPCA. The Sartell watershed is a part of the Mississippi watershed, which affects not only Minnesota, but the entire central part of the country.

If we don’t keep the river clean up here, it’s a problem all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, Votruba explained. A number of cities, including St. Cloud and Minneapolis, draw their drinking water directly from the river. Contaminants leaching into the runoff storm water in the Upper Mississippi create worse conditions downstream. Even though the water is treated before being pumped through the water mains to homes, it makes it more difficult and expensive to treat to make it safe for human consumption.

Votruba showed slides of the Mississippi in 1927. We often have nostalgic memories of pristine wilderness, but the picture Votruba showed dispelled any such romantic notion. It showed the sewer of Minneapolis discharging raw sewage into the Mississippi. “Over 1.5 million gallons of sewage and runoff and other waste per day going into the Mississippi River to ‘go away,’” the caption read.

“At one time, the only thing that could survive in the river was intestinal worms,” Votruba said. “It was that polluted.”

Since 1972 and the passage of the Clean Water Act steady progress has been made in cleaning up the Mississippi River and the entire watershed. But the river and the watershed are valuable natural resources, and the effort has to be continued, and even increased as more and more people use the natural resource. The goal in 1972 was to make the watershed “fishable and swimable by 1983.” While that goal has been achieved in parts of the watershed, pollution continues to make other parts unusable.

“We’ve got some work to do,” Votruba said.

Votruba briefly explained future plans call for increased monitoring of the watershed, and treatment of specific areas to attack specific issues and problems. Votruba called for citizen participation, not only here, but throughout the country.

“We want to apply best management practices strategically throughout the watershed, and do our part in restoring water resources,” Votruba said before turning the program over to Dingmann.

Dingmann explained the immediate goals for the upper area of the Sartell watershed and outlined the specific steps they would be taking in the coming year to monitor the lakes, rivers and streams in the watershed. Monitoring will be done once a month from May through September for the next two years to assess phosphorus levels, clarity of water and depth profiling. Some of the monitoring will rely on local volunteers to aid the MNPCA.