Want cleaner lakes? Start in your own back yard
Maria Elena Baca, Star Tribune
Good gardening practices can help a yard thrive and keep nearby waters clean, as illustrated by efforts in the Rice Creek Watershed District.
BLUE THUMB PLANTING FOR CLEAN WATER
For more information, go to www.bluethumb.org. Grants are administered by county conservation districts.
Other watershed districts may offer clean-water gardening grants. For help finding a district, go to www.cleanwatermn.org or www.mnwatershed.org.
By MARIA ELENA BACA , Star Tribune Last update: June 18, 2008 - 12:59 AM Dawn Gustafson spotted a Monarch butterfly in her back garden one morning last week. It darted from the golden alexander to the blue flag iris and woodland phlox.
When Gustafson and her family moved into their home on the banks of Lake Josephine in Arden Hills in 2003, the back lawn was but a green slope down to the shore, inviting no butterflies but attracting an abundance of messy geese.
Nowadays, a lush 20-foot-deep swath of prairie smoke, black-eyed susan and native grasses stretches across Gustafson's shoreline. It blocks out geese, attracts song birds, and more importantly, helps to filter out the potentially harmful runoff of grass clippings, sediment, fertilizer and other substances that are polluting metro-area lakes, resulting in huge algae blooms, murky water and threatened aquatic life.
Gustafson is the "poster child" of planting for clean water, said Dawn Pape, environmental education coordinator for the Rice Creek Watershed District, which gave Gustafson the funding and guidance she needed to install the garden in 2005.
Rice Creek cuts a winding 28-mile path through the north metro area, from Columbus through Lino Lakes, Centerville, Circle Pines, Shoreview, Arden Hills, Mounds View and New Brighton, before emptying into the Mississippi River in Fridley. But the area feeding the creek extends across 200 square miles of shoreline, tributaries and runoff sewers in 28 cities and four counties.
"Everybody has lakeshore property now, because your street is connected to the nearest lake, river and stream somewhere," Pape said. "The whole metro area is connected to the Mississippi."
Lake pollution often is measured in levels of phosphorous, long used to fertilize lawns. A ban on the chemical for lawns went into effect in 2004, but it still is legal for other types of gardens.
Posted: June 18, 2008