Two Central Minnesota Lakes Off Impaired Waters List

(KNSI) – Two Central Minnesota lakes are getting removed from the state’s list of polluted waters. Lake Augusta and Union Lake near South Haven have been removed from the 2022 Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s list of impaired waters after years of pollution caused by fertilizer runoff from farm fields and yards.

“It means we’re on the right track. Everything we’ve done has been to do that, and if it’s happening we must be on the right track,” said Bob Schiefelbein, CRWD Board president and a Meeker Soil & Water Conservation District board member whose family beef farm borders the Clearwater River in Kingston Township.

Since 1981, the Clearwater River Watershed District has worked with landowners and local, state and federal partners to clean up Lake Augusta. The projects totaled around $7 million. The work focused on the headwaters of the lake. It included working with the City of Kimball on two stormwater management projects, building an infiltration basin to capture sediment and phosphorus.

According to a press release, in the case of Union Lake, the CRWD credits landowners’ actions as having the most direct effect on its improved clarity and reduced phosphorus. One landowner converted row crops to pasture.

Several other efforts throughout the watershed contributed to Lake Augusta and Union Lake being delisted, including area landowners using targeted fertilizer techniques, carp management on select lakes and improvements to field drainage.

One of nine in the Clearwater Chain of Lakes, Lake Augusta straddles the Stearns-Wright county line. Union Lake, one of 17 more throughout the three-county, 159-square-mile watershed, sits on the Wright-Meeker county line.

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