Chisago County will coordinate up to three community dialogue meetings to inform its water planning decisions. The goal of the meetings will be to provide safe, productive and effective venues for citizens to become authentically engaged in the water planning process. The outcome of this Civic engagement work with Chisago County and their county water planning process will be a more engaged public in the County Water Planning Process.
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 support the necessary activities for improving the water quality and biological community by reducing nutrients, sediment levels and managing in-stream habitat within the Goose Creek 10-digit HUC Watershed. This restoration and protection plan will identify pollutant load reduction estimates and management strategies that will be used to obtain the TMDL goals outlined in the plan.
Implementation activities proposed as a part of this project include water quality monitoring, biotic surveys, sediment core sampling, mechanical treatment of curly-leaf pondweed (in accordance with regulations and permitting), an iron-enhanced sand filter, with a high capacity multi-stage outlet weir and 40,000 pounds of iron filings and stakeholder involvement in the design process and educational presentations.
The Discovery Farms program is a farmer-led effort to gather field-scale water quality information on different types of farms across Minnesota. The three pillars of the program are farmer leadership, credible research, and communicating results.
