Through this grant, the Minnesota Land Trust protected 641 acres and 39,415 feet (7.46 miles) of critical shoreland and high-quality wildlife habitats in Minnesota’s Northeast region through permanent conservation easements. Landowners donated $2,100,500 in easement value through this grant, greatly leveraging by 131% the $1,609,000 in grant funding provided by the Outdoor Heritage Fund. The amount of shoreland protected exceeded that proposed for the grant by 299%.
The projects planned for the grant funds focus on essential updates and enhancements to our historic building, ensuring that we can continue to provide a safe, welcoming, and inclusive space for all who visit. The proposed improvements include upgrading our HVAC system, kitchen, and security infrastructure; rebuilding the handicap ramp for improved accessibility; sourcing new patio furniture; and resealing the venue's dance floor. Each of these initiatives is designed to maintain the integrity of our facility while enhancing the experience of our diverse audience.
To bring a variety of cultural entertainment to the Waseca County Free Fair, including yodeling, Bluegrass, Irish, Alpine, Czechoslovakian, gospel and Americana music, a vaudeville show, and genealogical information from the Minnesota Historical Society.
This project will support a civic engagement cohort that will be offered in southwest Minnesota to foster partnering and build capacity of local government, organizations, and residents for effective civic engagement in water protection and restoration. This project will also build networks and the skill set of local resource professionals to do effective civic engagement work for water restoration and protection. The cohort will be administered through the Minnesota River Board (MRB), established in 1995 with a goal of focusing water management efforts on the local level.
This project will develop an understanding for how sediment sources change over timescales of individual storm events as well as over the past two centuries. The results will be used by the larger Collaborative for Sediment Source Reduction (CISSR)-Blue Earth research group to establish a sediment budget for the Greater Blue Earth River Basin and understand the effectiveness of various potential mitigation strategies. In addition, these results can be used by MPCA and others to calibrate watershed sediment models.
This project will build network and the skill set of local resource professionals to do effective civic engagement work for water restoration and protection in Southeast Minnesota. The cohort will be administered through the Southeast Minnesota Water Resources Board (SE MN WRB) which is an area wide Joint Powers Board (JPB) established to help improve and protect the water resources of the area through coordinating local water planning efforts. This JPB has successfully administered water quality grants in the past that have positively impacted the water resources of this region.
This project will complete spatial and temporal revisions , recalibration and validation of 7 watershed HSPF models. These fully functioning calibrated validated executable models will simulate hydrology, sediment (sand, silt, and clay), temperature, phosphorus, nitrogen, dissolved oxygen, biochemical oxygen demand, and algae at the 12-digit HUC subbasin scale (or finer).
This project will construct, calibrate, a set of HSPF watershed models covering the entire area of the Lake of the Woods drainage, including the Rainy River watershed. The consultant will produce HSPF models that can readily be used to provide information to support conventional parameter TMDLs. The consultant will clearly demonstrate that these models generate predicted output timeseries for hydrology which are consistent with available sets of observed data.
This project determines ambient background per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) levels in urban and non-urban soils. This information will help Minnesota develop management strategies for PFAS contaminated soils.
