Anoka County is rich in wetlands that provide countless benefits to the county's ecological and water resources. Wetlands capture and filter floodwater and runoff, provide habitat for aquatic and terrestrial species, and help recharge the groundwater supply. Anoka County has lost approximately half of its original wetlands since European settlement. Historically wetlands have been drained and filled to create more useable land for agriculture and rural development. Many regulations exist to protect wetlands today, but a history of impacts combined with present-day challenges such as invasive vegetation, increasing demands for housing and suburban development, and altered hydrology threaten what remains.

For these reasons, the Anoka Conservation District (ACD) has increased efforts to identify wetland protection and restoration opportunities. An inventory of restorable wetlands was recently completed for two priority watersheds in the county including the Ford Brook watershed and the Rum River direct drainage watershed. Altogether, approximately 70 potential wetland restoration sites were identified across both private and public lands. In the coming months, ACD will conduct outreach and explore these possible opportunities in more depth, with the goal of restoring hydrology and native vegetation at one or more sites in 2024.

ACD has enhanced wetland habitat via vegetation management for several years, but hydrologic restorations are a relatively new endeavor which require careful planning, holistic approaches, and multi-agency collaboration. In 2022, five acres' worth of wetlands on public land were successfully restored by plugging drainage ditches which restored previous hydrology conditions and managed current vegetation such as the invasive reed canary grass to improve habitat with a diversity of native species.

For more information contact Brenna Keith, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Street sweeping doesn't just improve the appearance and function of your neighborhood's roads; it's also one of the most cost-effective ways to reduce nutrients, sediment, and other pollutants entering our lakes, rivers, and wetlands. Common materials such as leaves, yard waste, sand, road salt, vehicle fluids, litter, and other debris accumulate in street gutters and have nowhere to go other than down the storm drain and, eventually into local waterways – flushed in by water during snowmelt and storm events.

Many cities complete street sweeping twice per year: once in the spring to remove solids from winter road treatment, and again in the fall to remove fallen leaves. However, gaps in sweeping schedules give these pollutants time to re-accumulate and flush into storm drains (and thus downstream waterbodies) before they can be removed. Increasing the frequency of street sweeping can greatly reduce pollutant loads in stormwater, which is why the Anoka Conservation District has added enhanced street sweeping considerations to its "water quality toolbox".

Enhanced street sweeping analyses combine area-specific information such as tree canopy cover and storm sewer networks with research-based pollutant recovery estimates to improve recommendations for the timing, frequency, and location of street sweeping. This approach has recently been applied in the direct drainage watersheds for Martin and Linwood lakes. 

Find more information about the benefits of street sweeping here: MN Stormwater Manual: Street Sweeping 

ACD Contact: Breanna Keith, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Rivers are essential resources and provide an immeasurable list of services that are critical for many ways of life throughout the world. Minnesota is home to many important river systems, such as the Mississippi River, that provide services which help sustain life and provide resources to help human economies thrive.

Minnesota's rivers endured decades of intensive impacts as the state industrialized, commonly used as a dumping grounds for untreated waste and modified extensively to make navigation easier. Our treatment of rivers has improved significantly in the years since, but human activity continues to impact them today. River systems are extremely complex in nature and many of the negative impacts caused by human activity go unrecognized or are misunderstood. Fortunately, there are many ways we can minimize our impacts and help restore our rivers to good health.

The Anoka Conservation District has proudly released a new animated video to help understand how rivers function and the role humans play in keeping them healthy. "Our River Connection" video brings you on a journey through a breadth of river topics, such as river formation, natural river behavior, current and historical human impacts, and actions we can take to protect them today. This video is suitable for a wide range of audiences, with narrative and visuals that are approachable and easy to digest. When you're done watching the video, you can take the companion quiz or explore the links in the video description to learn more. 

ACD Contact: Breanna Keith, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

 When projects are installed, ACD staff calculate and document the benefits produced by them. Measurable benefits for water resource improvement projects include metrics such as nutrient and sediment reductions to local waterbodies. For ecological projects, the total area restored or enhanced is quantified. Until recently, these numbers lived in project-specific documentation, but they can now be viewed altogether in ACD's new interactive projects dashboards.

With dashboards, you can explore the cumulative benefits produced through projects such as habitat restorations, streambank stabilizations, pollinator plantings, and stormwater best management practices. Many projects have multiple benefits; for example, rain gardens trap and filter polluted stormwater while also providing habitat for pollinators. Altogether, these tools provide a user-friendly way to track achievements within and across years.

You can apply filters based on location, date range, and project type. For example, selecting the "Last Year" option in the date range dropdown will give you a summary of all conservation benefits achieved in 2022. Pan throughout the map and click on the points to learn more about individual projects. The gauges will adjust to summarize the benefits produced by the projects you're viewing.

ACD Contact: Breanna Keith, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The Anoka Conservation District, in partnership with the Sunrise River Watershed Management Organization, are poised to receive a $78,500 State Clean Water Fund Grant. The application scored 4^th highest among 47 project applications statewide. The grant will fund shoreline stabilizations including native plant buffers. Target lakes are Martin, Linwood, and the Coon Lake Basins with work expected to begin in 2023 and 2024. 

ACD Contact: Jamie Schurbon, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

I have fond memories of chasing fireflies in the neighborhood's empty lot and watching them glow in jars. It was a joy to see their light show. After living in the west for 15 years, I was excited to move back to the Midwest to be closer to family AND to see those fireflies once again with my kids. Sadly, we rarely see them these days.

There has been a significant decline in pollinators worldwide due to pesticides and habitat loss. Pollinators including; fireflies, bees, butterflies, moths, beetles and native flies, play a key role in pollinating many commercial crops and are an essential part of natural environments. The loss of these species is getting noticed and many are trying to help.

Fortunately, there are technical and financial resources available to help enhance pollinator habitat. The MN Board of Water and Soil Resources (BWSR) received funding from the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund, to create cost-share programs for pollinator-friendly native plantings and habitats. The Anoka Conservation District (ACD) is a recipient of BWSR's Lawns to Legumes Demonstration Neighborhood grants. ACD collaborated with local Watershed Districts, Cities, church groups, libraries, volunteers and residents to complete 53 pollinator plantings. Those plantings together, create habitat corridors within Anoka County along the Mississippi and Rum River, Coon Creek and Rice Creek Chain of Lakes. ACD also received funding from BWSR's Habitat Enhancement Landscape Pilot Program and are collaborating with Anoka Parks and Cities to convert turf areas to native plantings and to enhance native prairies. These programs create opportunities for collaboration, education, engagement with residents and most importantly, improve pollinator habitat. 

There are still cost share opportunities to create pollinator habitat in your yard. Applications for INDIVIDUAL Lawns to Legumes grants with Metro Blooms will be accepted through January 18, 2023.Apply online at Blue Thumb – Planting for Clean Water's website.
My family has only seen fireflies in our yard once, but we've enjoyed frequent visits from all sorts of other pollinators including monarchs and bumble bees in our native plantings. Birds are also fun to watch on tree and shrub berries and wildflower seeds.
Learn more about what you can do to help:
Xerces Society
BWSR Lawns to Legumes
MN Department of Agriculture- Pollinators
MN Department of Natural Resources - Pollinators
Audubon Native Plants Database

ACD Contact: Carrie Taylor, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 This past year, ACD was again busy installing projects that benefit water quality in Anoka County! In total, 33 individual water quality projects were installed in 2022, including:

• 12 curb-cut rain gardens, treating 25.9 acres of urban area draining to the Rum River and Rice Creek.
• 9 streambank stabilization projects, and 2 streambank buffer plantings protecting and enhancing over 2,000 linear feet along the Rum and Mississippi Rivers.
• 10 Lakeshore stabilizations and buffer plantings along 824 feet of lakeshore on George, Martin, Linwood, and Fawn Lakes.

Collectively, these projects will reduce annual pollutant loading to the receiving waterbodies by 94.9 tons of total suspended solids, and 88.6 pounds of total phosphorus. To see all of our projects, watch for our new Water and Ecological Project Dashboards, coming soon to our website!

ACD Contact: Jared Wagner, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

In May of 2022, the Rum River reached its highest peak flow since 2001 following torrential rain events in Isanti and Mille Lacs Counties. The roadway to the boat ramp in Rum River Central Regional Park in Anoka County was inundated under feet of water. When the floodwaters receded, 90 linear feet of bank had completely washed out, threatening the roadway and boat ramp, and leaving and exposed eroding bank dumping sediment into the river. This section of washed out riverbank was stabilized using a Flexamat PLUS articulated concrete mat at the toe, and a regraded and native-seeded slope above. A rock barb installed at the downstream end will provide in-channel habitat for fish and invertebrates while also kicking flow out away from the boat ramp.

The Flexamat articulated concrete was chosen for this project because an immediately adjacent project installed in 2015 is still holding very successfully, even after the flooding. An advantage of Flexamat vs. rock is that the Flexamat has void spaces that allow vegetation to grow between the blocks, masking the concrete during low water conditions, and providing additional habitat benefit. Traditional riprap does not allow this vegetation growth, and can look like a rock wall during low water.

In the spring, we will add bare root seedlings of shoreland tree and shrub species to the project site. The native grasses and sedges seeded into the bank will begin to grow, and the whole bank will establish deep-rooted native vegetation which will keep the soil anchored for years to come. A video short of this project can be found on ACD's YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eUHBV5TSNi8. To see other streambank stabilization projects installed throughout Anoka County, please see the virtual project tour on ACD's website. 

The majority of the state is currently experiencing drought conditions, including Anoka County. The U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM) is a map that is updated each Thursday to show the location and intensity of drought across the country. Drought categories show experts' assessments of conditions related to dryness and drought, including observations of how much water is available in streams, lakes, and soils compared to usual for the same time of year.

Each week, drought experts consider how recent precipitation totals across the country compare to their long-term averages. They check variables including temperatures, soil moisture, water levels in streams and lakes, snow cover, and meltwater runoff. Experts also check whether areas are showing drought impacts such as water shortages and business interruptions. To learn more about current drought conditions in Anoka County and other areas of the country visit https://www.drought.gov/states/minnesota/county/anoka.