The Pine River watershed was one of six watershed planning areas selected for a grant from the One Watershed, One Plan program.
Continuing statewide work to shift local water planning to a more holistic, coordinated approach, the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources approved the grants allocating up to $1.5 million to six planning projects, a news release stated. Using Clean Water Fund money, the projects will seek to address water quality and other water issues on a watershed basis.
The program aligns planning on major watershed boundaries through watershed plans developed and implemented locally. Local governments build on existing efforts, using current local water plans, state and local knowledge and a systematic, science-based approach to watershed management. The resulting plans identify actions that address the largest threats and provide the greatest environmental benefits to priority water resources. Planning efforts involve a broad range of stakeholders, including local governments, state agencies and community members as partners in the planning process.
Key to the process is bringing together counties, soil and water conservation districts and watershed districts to identify shared goals in a planning partnership.
"One Watershed, One Plan represents a big leap forward in water management in Minnesota," said John Jaschke, BWSR executive director, in the release. "The idea is to bring these groups together as upstream and downstream neighbors so they can address issues according to how water flows instead of being limited by jurisdictional boundaries."
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In all, BWSR divided Minnesota into 63 suggested planning boundaries, which are based on major watersheds. The Legislature set a participation goal of all planning boundaries by the year 2025. Thus far, four of five pilot plans were approved by the BWSR board and seven groups began the planning process over the past several months. These new planning grants bring the number of watersheds participating in the program to 18.
