The Rice Creek Watershed District (RCWD) is proposing to improve the water quality of stormwater runoff to Bald Eagle Lake through installation of a new wet pond and iron-enhanced sand filter (IESF) on Ramsey County Ditch #11. In partnership with White Bear Township, this project will remove approximately 43 pounds of phosphorus from runoff annually and builds upon the extensive work undertaken by the RCWD to improve water quality in Bald Eagle Lake.
This project will support updates to the Draft Bald Eagle Lake TMDL. The updates will address comments received during the public comment period. The comments resulted in the development of individual Wasteload Allocations for stormwater sources in the Bald Eagle Lake watershed.
During Phase 1, further engagement led to refocusing this project to build a destination playground. This phase will complete construction. The new playground includes traditional play equipment for toddlers and youth, plus other features, including a nature play area with water feature. Work will include site prep, infrastructure, grading, trail relocation, signage, landscaping, picnic tables, installation of play area pods, safety surfacing, and part of play equipment purchase
Perform aesthetic upgrades to the Phalen Beach House focused on improved bathroom and changing rooms, concessions, staff space, storage, and seating areas.
Composing and recording traditional Hmong song poetry now that I'm in the third phase of my life, focused on my responsibilities as an old man, a grandfather. I want to do an album of song poetry about the things I am leaving behind. My voice is not as young or as handsome as it once was, scarred by time and circumstances, I now sing with an older man's tones. But even this is valuable for the human experience.
The Berger Fountain, known as the dandelion fountain to most, was installed in 1975 by Benjamin Berger and has been a beloved neighborhood landmark in Loring Park and a favorite location for wedding photographers and children ever since. Ben Berger was a park board commissioner and, after seeing a dandelion fountain in Australia, fundraised to build a sister fountain right here in Minnesota.
This project will support a co-creative engagement program with Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe children, families, and educators, highlighting the art, culture, and heritage of North Central Minnesota from the perspectives of Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe children.
Move for America will engage youth ages 14-18 in interactive groups to increase participants' relationships across differences; interest in and understanding of civic engagement; media fluency and source evaluation. Through this project, youth will build the skills, knowledge, and relationships they need to be active, connected, and informed citizens.
This study will leverage our current bioacoustics monitoring framework to assess avian diversity at the statewide scale through a citizen science acoustic monitoring program, with a focus on private lands.
The Council on Black Minnesotans and the Humanities Center will coordinate a Cultural Relations Summit for Minnesotans of Africans descent. The summit will celebrate culture traditions through instructional demonstrations, guided tours, and visual arts; plan for cultural institutions’ sustainability; and strengthen cultural connections through DNA technology. A web-based cultural portal and a video documentary on the contributions of Minnesotans of African will discover and preserve cultural traditions and enhance relations in Minnesota.
Humanities Center support will enable More Than A Single Story to respond to multiple requests for support in dealing with personal and cultural trauma with the conference Black Writers Healing Black Writers(working title). In times of great stress, such as the COVID experience and the murder of George Floyd, artists go to their creativity to heal. This project brings that opportunity to Black writers who are reeling from continuing violence that impacts that communities.
Mizna, the journal of Arab/Southwest Asian & North African (SWANA) literature and visual art, is doing a special Black Takeover issue, to be published in Winter 2022. As an ongoing commitment we have made to examine our representation of our Black community, we are approaching this issue in a completely different way by giving over our journal space to a Black team to take the journal through the full production process, led by guest editor Safia Elhillo, the acclaimed Sudanese American poet.
This Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) project will develop a TMDL Report and Implementation Plan defining the sources contributing to the impairments and outlining the steps necessary to bring Bluff Creek back to meeting water quality standards.
This full-scale pilot will evaluate supercritical water oxidation (SCWO) for managing PFAS in biosolids and water treatment residuals. SCWO can destroy PFAS in a variety of wastes and recover energy.
The Equity Alliance MN will bring to life absent narratives of Latino, Hmong, Native, Asian, African American, and women of the Civil Rights Era in a collaboration among youth, social studies teachers, Full Circle Theater (FCT), and St. Paul Neighborhood Network. The narratives, researched by youth, will be transformed by FCT into a six person play that will be presented, video recorded, and distributed with accompanying curriculum written by social studies teachers for teachers across the Equity Alliance MN and the state.
St. Paul Civic Symphony will help to develop a multidisciplinary arts project for its free 2025 Children's Concert inspired by a recent publication, The Rhythm of Somalia: A Collection of Songs, Stories, and Traditions by Qorsho Hassan, Minnesota Teacher of the Year (2020), and music specialist Becca Buck, both educators at Gideon Pond Elementary, Burnsville.
Supplemental design of the regional trail segment from Highway 96 to County Road J, including a master plan amendment and alternative trail corridor search
The ESNDC developed a 39-minute audio/video tour of the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary, a distinctive natural landscape on the Mississippi River floodplain on St. Paul's East Side. Experts were asked to advise on the project and then narrate a specific tour stop using their expertise to comment on aspects of its ecological history and/or cultural value.
The tour was publicized on the Lower Phalen Creek Project website, on the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary Facebook page and in the local nespaper.
With our emerging initiative, Buffalo Weavers: Connecting Land and People through Dakota Thought for Climate Rescue, we plan to engage in a range of programming activities aimed at healing climate grief and working toward climate justice. We are creating a movement through art to awaken the world to climate change and its impact.
The Chicano Latino Affairs Council and the Humanities Center will build on the grant received last year, which was intended to identify the elements of success in programs for Latino high school students and ways to replicate them. Applying the findings of CLAC's and HACER's research, CLAC will integrate its biennium goal of improving levels of educational achievement for Latino youth with the Legacy goal of enriching Minnesota’s cultural legacy by piloting the program in two Minnesota schools.
We will partner with urban municipalities and school districts to support planting of climate-resilient tree species. Activities include planting trees, gravel bed nursery creation, tree assessment and mapping, and community.
Move for America is a new initiative designed to preserve and celebrate the diverse cultural heritage of Minnesota by fostering intercultural exchange and education. It will consist of a direct exchange program involving students from community and technical colleges in Minneapolis and Saint Paul (urban centers) and two rural counties: Otter Tail County and Lyon County. This project includes two full exchanges, each with 30-40 participants over two weekends.
