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Feb 21st, 2010


Helping Nurse an Impaired Water Back to Health

One person can make a difference


Nancy Carver of Rice, Minn., has led by example by restoring her shoreline on Little Rock Lake to native flowers and grasses during the past two years. She is helping educate her neighbors on how to develop restoration plans for their shorelines. (MPCA video)

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February 2010

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 making sure to have a properly working septic system and restoring a natural shoreline were two important things lake home owners could do on their own. My septic system checked out okay 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.

With help from her local Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD), Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR), MPCA, and American Meadows, Nancy learned about more affordable options for natural plantings. Nancy says, “A 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 American Meadows 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.”

Of course with any worthwhile project there are hurdles. Nancy says early on there was resistance among some of her neighbors because it appeared as though she was just ignoring her lawn and making their neighborhood look sloppy. By meeting with her neighbors and explaining her intentions were to create a natural shoreline and do her part to help restore the health of the lake, that resistance turned into acceptance and appreciation. Several of her neighbors are taking her lead and developing plans to restore their shorelines as well.

Nancy says that without the help from the SWCD, DNR, MPCA, “and the muscle and sweat from a wonderful young man named Keith, this project would not have become a reality for me and my lake.”

It is also important to note that without the brains and passion of a wonderful young woman named Nancy Carver, this project would not have become a reality for our environment.

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Related links

Minnesota Water Stories

Little Rock Lake Association

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Related content on this site

Meeting with Little Rock Lake resident Nancy Carver to discuss water quality issues on the lake, July 24, 2008.

Aubrey Immelman meets with Little Rock Lake resident Nancy Carver to discuss water quality issues at Little Rock Lake, July 24, 2008.

Paddy-fishing_LittleRock_09-01-2008
Patrick (2) fishing from a constituent’s dock during a campaign swing to Little Rock Lake in Benton County, September 1, 2008.

LittleRock-TMDL_07-29-08
Aubrey Immelman listens to Little Rock Lake residents at the Little Rock Lake TMDL Public Meeting and Open House at Sauk Rapids-Rice Middle School, July 29, 2008, to learn about water quality issues on Little Rock Lake in Benton County. The main focus of the TMDL project is to mitigate phosphorus, the water quality limiting nutrient responsible for the toxic blue-green algae blooms in the lake.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago — February 21, 2009

Minnesota private college students present their scholarly research in the Capitol rotunda.
Minnesota private college students present their scholarly research in the Capitol rotunda. (Photo: Melissa Kaelin)

Barack Obama’s Leadership Style

Capitol_Sarah-Moore_Angela-Rodgers_02-19-2009
Sarah Moore and Angela Rodgers in the Capitol rotunda.

One-year retrospective: One year ago today, I reported that two of my student research associates in the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics, Sarah Moore and Angela Rodgers, presented their research on “The Personality Profile of President Barack Obama: Leadership Implications” at the 6th annual Minnesota Private Colleges Scholars at the Capitol event, Feb. 19, 2009 in the State Capitol rotunda, St. Paul, Minn.





2 Responses to “Little Rock Lake Water Quality”
  1. Immelman for Congress » Blog Archive » CIA ‘Spy’ Jailed in Pakistan Says:

    […] Little Rock Lake Water Quality […]

  2. Immelman vs. Bachmann » Blog Archive » On the Campaign Trail: Day 23 Says:

    […] Elsewhere on this blog, I have given voice to the water quality concerns of Little Rock Lake residents and stakeholders. […]

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