A Shell Rock River watershed management plan has to balance recreational and ecological concerns, and hold everyone responsible for their share of damage to the county’s water, according to advisory board recommendations.

Sunday, June 17, 2001

A Shell Rock River watershed management plan has to balance recreational and ecological concerns, and hold everyone responsible for their share of damage to the county’s water, according to advisory board recommendations.

Education, monitoring and conservation are the core elements presented in the lengthy document, developed by a county committee charged with finding ways to clean up the watershed. Their work was part of the county’s response to a state agency’s mandate last year: Clean up your water or the state will step in.

Under that pressure, the committee delivered a plan described as ambitious, recommending everything from wholesale changes to wastewater disposal practices to a summer water festival to remind residents of water’s importance in the county.

Under the plan, incorporated city governments would have to take more responsibility for their contributions to the county’s water problems. Albert Lea would have to find an alternative to routine emergency waste-water discharges into the lakes through the storm water system.. Smaller towns may need to update their municipal sewage systems. The amount of street and lot debris washing into the water system would be reduced by installing sediment traps on storm sewers and storm water detention ponds.

An education campaign would encourage urban residents to use best-management practices for chemical applications and yard waste removal, the plan says.

Rural residents will have to update their substandard sewage systems as well, and control the soil running into ditches, resulting in excessive siltation of streams and lakes. Farmers will be encouraged to use best-management practices and take advantage of federal and state conservation incentives.

Volunteers will monitor water quality, soil erosion, conservation practices, fish, fowl, and dams throughout the watershed, according to the plan. Massive wetland replacement and indigenous plantings will control erosion on lake shores.

A community-wide summer water festival, with participation of civic, social, conservation, sporting and business associations, will celebrate the central importance of water in the community, the plan said.

The plan does not recommend dredging Albert Lea Lake — the issue that motivated local residents last year to petition the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources (BWSR) for a watershed district board independent of county government.

&uot;The big contentious issue is management of Albert Lea Lake, and I’m afraid the opposing sides are really not all that much closer together than they were in the first place,&uot; said advisory board member Bill Bryson, representing the Lakes Coalition. &uot;That has been left unresolved.&uot;

But the plan appears to meet the criteria of the abeyance agreement between BWSR and Freeborn County, which gave the county a year to jump start the water planning process before BWSR decides on instituting a watershed board, said said Dave Peterson, Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources representative.

The Freeborn County water planning committee will present the Shell Rock River watershed advisory board’s proposed amendment to the Freeborn County water plan and its recommendations to the board of commissioners at its regular meeting on June 26. If the board approves the plan, BWSR will review the county’s work and vote on the success of the abeyance agreement no earlier than July, Peterson said.

County water experts called the advisory board’s recommendation ambitious. Most projects are recommended to start this summer, and the county can’t handle the workload, they say.

&uot;What came out of the advisory committee was quite comprehensive in a lot of areas over the whole watershed,&uot; said water planning committee Chairman Dick Hoffman. &uot;There are a lot of items in there that can be done; the problem is volume.&uot;

&uot;The staff is going to implement everything possible, but some of these are going to be literally impossible to do right now,&uot; Hoffman said.