This project will decrease peak flows and associated water quality issues such as sediment and phosphorus on County Ditch 68, Mud Lake, and Fountain Lake. Practices include a 40-acre storage and treatment wetland, two cropped and altered wetland restorations of an acre each, converting 32 acres of cropland to perennial cover, and two grade stabilization structures.
Provides grants to Soil and Water Conservation Districts that focuses on increasing capacity to address four resource concern areas?Soil Erosion, Riparian Zone Management, Water Storage and Treatment, and Excess Nutrients.
The goal of this project is to facilitate strategic networking, relationships, and learning in targeted groups to assess, build, and leverage community capacity (i.e. community resources and values) to increase knowledge of the Blue Earth River watershed’s water resources and increase best management practice (BMP) adoption to restore and protect water quality in the Blue Earth River watershed. Additional goals include providing information that is readily available to the general public for updates on Watershed Approach work in the Blue Earth River watershed.
We restored and enhanced a total of 15,577 grassland acres with 239 projects on Wildlife Management Areas, Scientific and Natural Areas, and Native Prairie Bank easements.
This program enhanced 10,583 and restored 198 acres for a total impact of 10,781 acres by restoring wetlands, removing invasive trees, seeding prairies, prescribed burning, and installing infrastructure for conservation grazing. These practices took place on Waterfowl Production Areas (WPA's), and Wildlife Management Areas (WMA's) in the prairie, metro and the forest/prairie transition regions of Minnesota. We exceeded our acre goals in every category, brought $45,768.51 in match funds, and are returning $833.50 in funds.
