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The following article was written by Stephen Mikkelson, Information Officer, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, Brainerd Office and Nancy Carver, Little Rock Lake resident.
(posted 10-7-09)
Helping Nurse an Impaired Water back to health:
One person can make a difference
What do you do when you find out your lake has been placed on the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s (MPCA) Impaired Waters list? If you were Nancy Carver of Little Rock Lake near Rice, Minn., you would start attending workshops and reading everything you could about restoring your shoreline and helping to make a lake healthy again.
“What I learned was that making sure to have a properly working septic system, not using fertilizer or weed killer near the lakeshore and restoring a natural shoreline were three important things lake home owners could do on their own. My septic system checked out ok so the next step was to make the shoreline environmentally friendly to the lake,” says Nancy. The first things she did were to stop mowing all the way to the shore and plant some new native grasses to develop a buffer to the lake. She's planting native grasses a few at a time per year to stay within her small budget.
With help from her local Soil and Water Conservation District, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, MPCA, and AmericanMeadows.com, Nancy learned about more affordable options for natural plantings. Nancy says, “An SWCD manager and a DNR staff person came to my home and found some native flowers and bur reed already starting to grow along my shore. And AmericanMeadows.com helped me choose more plants native to Central Minnesota and develop a planting plan.
“It was so exciting to see plantings bloom in all the colors and variety of native flowers earlier this summer. And now the bold colors of the fall blooms are beginning to show. I will continue to work on this project until nature takes control.”
Nancy began her project in August 2008. She’s told that by next spring nature will take over and she will just need to maintain the area in coming years.
The project drew a lot of attention from Nancy’s neighbors. People came to her wondering what all the changes to her shoreline were all about. By meeting with her neighbors and explaining to them that her intentions were to create a natural shoreline and do her part to help restore the health of the lake, it prompted several of them to follow her lead and develop shoreline restoration plans for their yards too.
Nancy says that without the help from the SWCD, DNR, MPCA, “and the muscle and sweat from a wonderful young man named Keith Mockros, this project would not have become a reality for me and my lake.”
At Right:
Keith Mockros and
Nancy Carver
After realizing that her lake was in trouble, Nancy became a leader by example. In just one year she proved that one person acting in the best interest of her neighborhood can make a difference in helping improve our environment.
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Note from the webmaster:
For more information on Shoreline Restoration, please see the Shoreline Restoration page of this website.
