CRWD’s Board of Managers has members appointed by their county boards to serve a three-year term.
Based on land within the watershed district’s boundaries, Mower County has four managers; Dodge, Freeborn and Steele each have one. The board meets at 6 p.m. on the third Wednesday of each month at Mower SWCD’s office in Austin.
CRWD board (left-right): Mike Jones (Steele County); Jim Gebhardt (Mower); Mike Merten (Mower); Susan Olson (Mower); Jason Weis (Mower); Kevin Kiser (Dodge ); and Steve Kraushaar (Freeborn).
MN CREP active in upper Cedar
The signs have sliders with the project or practice type, including:
• Grassed waterway
• Sediment-control basin
2023 CEDAR PROJECTS IN MOWER
1,527 acres treated overall
2,750 feet of two upland-storage berms
2 miles of grassed waterways
0.6 miles of sediment-control basins
busiest in recent years, said Cody administrator and project manager.
Funding came from the federal Environmental Quality Incentives Program and the state’s “One Watershed, One Plan” initiative. One of the larger Cedar projects involved building a 2,595-
footwaterway in Lansing Township that leads to the Cedar River, just upstream from Ramsey Mill Pond on the eastern side. This project treats snowmelt and rainstorm runoff from 501 acres of mostly cropland.
Another major project (shown in photos at the bottom) addressed an eroded gully that was up to 15 feet deep on its way to the nearby Rose Creek in Marshall Township. The project built a 782-foot-long basin
to control water and sediment from runoff coming off 61 acres. That water will release into a new grassed waterway that is 1,062 feet long.
This workload also is expected to only increase with state and federal funding ramping up and the collaborative, watershed-based efforts of local agencies to get conservation projects built, especially in high-priority areas of the watershed.
All other photos were weekly winners.
Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has worked with CRWD’s James Fett to create a trout fishery at Todd Park. After agreeing to Fett’s proposal to stock trout, the DNR
Cedar River Watershed District
1408 21st Ave. NW
Austin, MN 55912
507-434-2603, ext. 5
has placed nearly 2,
Establishing native prairie can be a complicated and lengthy process but the results are worth it, Fett said. This vegetation will act as a filter to capture sediment and nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus before they reach Wolf Creek, he said.