[Music] Lakeland Currents, your public affairs program for north central Minnesota.

Closed captioning is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airport, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport.

More information available at bemidjiairport.org Hello, again, everybody.

I'm Ray Gildow and you're watching Lakeland Currents.

Tonight we're going to talk about water, water quality, and an organization that's doing a lot of really good things to preserve the water quality that we have left.

It's pretty well recognized that from 94 south, most of that water, the lakes and the rivers, are impaired.

If you go from 94 north, most of it's still in good shape and we want to do our best to keep it that way.

I say we because I used to be on this board but I'm not anymore.

Annie Knight is the Executive Director and Annie that's a new job for you in the last year.

Congratulations.

But I know you've been in this field working on conservation issues for quite a little while.

And Tim Bremicker is.

Well tell us your background and you tell us your background, too.

Tim what's your background?

Well I'm kind of a, I've got feet in two areas I love.

I grew up in the Cities but I spent all my youth time in the Hackensack and Longville area around Woman Lake.

And my experiences on Woman Lake and time with my parents and grandparents and myths from my, and stories about my grandfather, brought me into my natural resource profession.

I went on to the university, got degrees in Wildlife and in Forestry and had a wonderful career with the DNR for 42 years, and when I retired in 2013 I was looking to contribute to what I consider the center of the earth, which is that Leech Lake area and so we kind of found each other, The Northern Waters Land Trust, then Leech Lake Area Watershed Foundation and I volunteered with them from 2014 to last year when I came off the board.

And Annie what's what's your background?

Yeah, so I grew up in St Cloud but we had a family cabin up near Walker and grew up coming to Walker all my life and it's always been my favorite place in the whole wide world and now I get to live there.

I never thought I'd get to live in the most beautiful, well obviously we're biased, the center of the world.

But living in Walker has been just a true joy.

So grew up coming to Walker and enjoying canoe trips with my family and my parents and that really instilled a love of nature similar to Tim's grandfather and so then I continued on that path, went to College of St Benedict and St John's University, got a degree in Environmental Studies, and took that, had an opportunity to guide some extended canoe trips in northern Canada, which just continued to build on my love of water.

And then the opportunity to be able to protect our natural resources and water specifically became available in Walker and so I have been working for Northern Waters Land Trust for the last three years.

Prior to my position as the executive director I managed our grants and had the opportunity to connect with landowners and talk to them about the various options that we have for protecting their land.

And now I get to oversee many other aspects of the organization but still get to talk with landowners on a regular basis and share their stories and hear their stories.

And as Tim mentioned, originally this was a Leech Lake Area Watershed Foundation and it changed to a land trust, and could one of you just briefly explain what a land trust does?

Yeah so a land trust is a community-based nonprofit organization that helps people, in our case private landowners, permanently protect their land forever.

We do that through two different avenues and we can go into details maybe a little bit, but we do that through land donations or land sales.

So we can purchase land and then ensure that that land stays protected, or we can help a landowner place a conservation easement on their land which allows them to continue owning their land privately but ensure that that land stays protected forever.

So kind of two tracks, but as a community- based organization it's nice to provide both options.

And what's the general geographic area that you're servicing?

Yeah so you think about the Mississippi River, it kind of makes that question mark.

We're kind of the inside of that question mark.

So our geographic, the farthest south we go is Brainerd area.

Currently we go up to Bemidji, but we're expanding our area a little bit more.

So, historically we've worked in that Cass County, Crow Wing County, Aitkin County, Hubbard County area, but we're starting to branch off into other counties because the need for land protection is vibrant up here in northern Minnesota and the demand is high.

So we're slowly expanding but still maintaining that solid work in our normal geographic area.

And your organization is accredited.

Could you just briefly explain what that means?

Yeah.

Tim do you want to talk about it?

In my mind, how I describe it to people often is that accreditation is the seal of excellence or the seal of performance and standards.

And it's a national organization, the Land Trust Alliance, through a commission that they establish certifies land trusts that we meet standards of performance: excellence, professionalism, vision, conservation, law, all of the necessary components in regards to our stewardship of land, meaning our mission, and governance, meaning we've got lots of policies that tell us how to conduct business, fundraising, financials, meaning we're accountable financially, and then also on education standards as well.

And it's a way of making sure that a conservation organization, private nonprofit is professional and accountable and they certify you or accredit you and then landowners and or other partners, government agencies, know that we meet certain standards, high standards of performance.

So our work and our work can be trusted.

You have a lot of organizations you work with.

What are some of them?

Yeah, so some of our direct partners that we work with, I talked about that fee title acquisition side, which is the land sale or land donation, so we're able to receive grant funding specifically from the Outdoor Heritage Fund, which is a part of the Clean Water Land and Legacy Amendment.

We've been able to receive grant funding from them since about 2014 and with that grant funding we can prioritize and do targeted outreach efforts to specific areas that are a priority for conservation.

And when we have a a property identified that the land owner is looking to sell their land or donate their land, we can purchase that land.

But currently Northern Waters Land Trust we don't hold on to that land, we don't manage it.

So what we do is we identify a landowner or an agency, in this case, or a local government unit to manage that land long term.

So, for instance, on Roosevelt Lake, up near Outing, we had a landowner a few years ago who was interested in selling about a 100 acres of land on Woods Bay on Roosevelt Lake.

We were able to then acquire that land with grant funding and then transfer that land to the Department of Natural Resources to manage as an Aquatic Management Area.

Really cool story is that just this past summer one of the neighbors who had learned about the acquisition and the protection work done a number of years ago said you know, I'm really interested in having our land be protected, too, we'd be open to donating our land to expand the Aquatic Management Area.

So now Woods Bay has 111 acres of land that's permanently protected forever and I got to go out there this past summer and with the landowner who had sold the land initially and go out in her pontoon boat and just hear the stories of the legacy of her parents and now when she comes up north that land is publicly accessible but it means she gets to enjoy it in the same way that that she always has, as do the other people.

So in that case the Department of Natural Resources was an excellent partner.

We also will transfer land to local counties so that it can be owned and managed by the local government units.

We've also worked alongside the US Forest Service.

Another partner that we work alongside is the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe.

So we have various partners that we work with.

We always make sure that when we're protecting land in that way that we have that agency or that land owner identified prior to purchasing that land.

Do you have minimum tracts of land that are eligible for this program?

That's a good question.

So with our land sale or land donation program we don't have a minimum acreage, but for the conservation easement program, which is that tract where a private landowner can still maintain that private ownership but ensure it's protected.

We have a 20 acre minimum for that program.

I was talking to some people just a little earlier here in the studio and talking about the impaired waters that are really if you go in southern Minnesota there's some really, really severely impaired waters and they were asking me what's causing this.

Could you just kind of address that one of you?

Sure.

The impaired waters is kind of a bureaucratic term that, you know, kind of originated probably within the agencies, but it's a way of identifying waters that are below standards in terms of water quality, water chemistry, fisheries, recreational use.

And if, you know, folks that are familiar with a lot of lakes in southern Minnesota, when they get the algae blooms and wintertime die offs of fisheries and everything else, they know those are impaired.

But typically they will think that those waters is impaired primarily linked with agriculture.

But as you move north and east, as you transition over Highway 94 and move towards the northeast, there are lakes that are quite sensitive to disruption and here, in this area, waters can be impaired by land use, adjacent land use, inappropriate harvest of, you know, timber, mowing, fertilizer and septic systems.

Another way that I think a lot of people just don't think about that can impair waters up here and hurt their natural resource values is some of the erosion issues that we deal with.

The soils that blow off the Red River Valley and areas west, say even as close as Park Rapids up in the the potato fields, and those soil depositions have got phosphorus in them.

Then of course there's mercury, that then affects the food chain, affects the fish, affects us, and those are what you call impaired.

So there's a standard to define what is good quality water for, you know, use: public use, public enjoyment, fishing, wildlife, and sometimes, you know drinking, you know, potable water.

And those standards define what's impaired or not impaired.

I know I looked at some studies with one of our former board members who was looking at the wind blown soils that get off the Red River Valley area and blow into northern Minnesota.

It is unbelievable.

You don't think of these clouds having soil in them, but now they're finding plastics in our clouds, so there's all kinds of ways that these lakes are becoming impaired.

Are there other organizations that you work with that have the priority of preserving the quality of our water?

One of the beautiful parts about working in Minnesota, and I know I'm biased, I haven't worked in other states and I'm sure that there are wonderful conservation communities in other states, but I've heard that Minnesota is unique because we're really collaborative in the work that we do.

So the partners that I listed before all have this ethic of let's conserve our land, let's conserve our waters while they're still relatively good.

We have a north central conservation roundtable meeting quarterly, which gathers all of the conservation professionals at least in our north central region, for us to all have a sit down conversation, you know, what projects are you working on, are there any gaps in the work that we're doing, any gaps in the protection work that we're doing.

I'll often receive emails from our partners of hey, this land owner is interested in protecting their land, they don't quite qualify for our program would they qualify for your program.

So that collaborative nature and not a competitive nature is really welcomed and I'm really grateful to be working in this environment up in northern Minnesota.

These lakes and rivers that become impaired can be restored if we had the money.

It's a huge cost, isn't it, to look at some of them.

I fish in a lake near Bay Lake, it's not Bay Lake but it's near Bay Lake, that last summer when I was on the lake it was so algae ridden that you could drop a camera down 20 ft and it looked the same all the way from up and down and I'm not sure in that particular lake where that's coming from because there's no agriculture right near it.

But the lakes like down in Austin, Minnesota, some of these places you drive through in the summer and you see these green lakes, they're really almost beyond repair now, aren't they, with the costs involved?

Well, I know that there has been under previous administrations, gubernatorial administrations, efforts to reduce that impairment.

CRP, Conservation Reserve Program, The Rim Program, Reinvest in Minnesota Program, the work of the Board of Water Soil and Resources in Minnesota, the U, Pheasants Forever, all those organizations are trying to minimize or reduce the impairment.

But, I mean, it's I think most people recognize that it doesn't take much to wreck something or destroy something.

And something that's unique, something that's really valuable like a lot of our lakes up here and then the cost to repair is just astronomical.

And I mean CRP has been trying to, the Conservation Reserve Program through the Department of Agriculture and our own agriculture programs here in Minnesota have been trying to make improvements down in that area since the early 90's, 1990's.

Now that's 20, 43 years and yet progress is either, not progress is slow I'll put it that way right, but it's millions and millions of dollars.

I was at a workshop once, and I won't mention this commissioner's name, but one of the DNR commissioners, this goes back a few years, was talking about water quality, the importance of water quality, and he had pictures of his cabin or his home.

It was his home and the lawn was mowed right to the water's edge and you could see other things.

He absolutely didn't know what he was talking about, he had good intentions but he didn't realize the importance of a buffer, you know, to the lakes.

It's really what we're doing, what you're doing in the northern part of the state, is protecting not only the water but the land and the woods around it.

Could you just talk a little bit about the importance of that?

Yeah and maybe just to bring it back, we talk about that cost benefit ratio of, you know, how much are we investing and are we able to restore, actually restore this water resource.

And when you're looking at restoring that, it's so expensive, but if you look at proactively protecting what we already have, what's already good, that cost is significantly less and the impact is much longer.

And so that's what our work is in northern Minnesota.

When I look at that impaired waters list in Minnesota, a map of Minnesota and all those impaired waters are red, I squint my eyes a little bit I can see in our north central region, there's just not as much red.

We're still in an area that is good.

We have solid, pristine waters, which is really special.

It's the reason why people hop in their car every weekend to come and enjoy the serenity of northern Minnesota, and the reason why I choose to live there.

And so often times, when we talk about an environmental problem, it can be so hard and disheartening going what can I do to have an effect.

Like there's, you know, I could recycle more or, you know, turn my faucet off when I'm brushing my teeth and turn it back on to rinse my toothbrush.

But something that's really concrete is protect what's already good, protect the land that we have, that's already natural, and we have that in northern Minnesota.

And so when we look to your question preserving the water quality, we know that if we can preserve the land around the water, then we have a say at what goes into the water.

So Northern Waters Land Trust we work on a watershed based approach.

And a watershed is an area around a lake that as the rain falls and the snow melts that water eventually comes into that lake.

It's almost like a funnel.

And one of our goals is to protect 75% of the land base within that lake's watershed.

So, just an example, we just reached this 75% water protection goal in one of our lakes, Kabekona Lake in Hubbard County, just west of Leech Lake, and we've been working at the 75% protection goal for the last 10 years, since 2013.

And we went from 61% to 75% watershed protection.

Just to give you an idea of the size of this watershed, it's about 97 square miles, which is just a little smaller than the size of St Paul and Minneapolis combined, which is 133 square miles.

So big watershed, to protect 75% of the land base within this watershed.

We're like, okay, is this an achievable goal?

But it was achievable because of the partners that we worked with.

Working with landowners who were passionate and interested in conserving their land with conservation easements, working with the DNR, the land that they already managed, and then working with Northern Waters Land Trust, Trust for Public Land, the Conservation Fund.

These organizations were able to purchase land, transfer to the DNR or the county, in this case Hubbard County, to manage these lands as public lands.

So reaching the 75% watershed protection goal means that we can better ensure that Kabekona Lake is going to remain pristine and resilient in the face of a changing climate, future development pressures, maybe agricultural.

We won't have to worry about those pressures in the future.

So it's just, it's a success story, it's possible.

We've also reached that 75% watershed protection goal around 10 Mile Lake, just south of Leech Lake.

So we're slowly ticking our way off on this list of priority lakes that we have in Minnesota, but it wouldn't be possible without the dedication of local landowners who are invested in seeing our waters preserved.

What about do you meet, where does your board meet, what's your board makeup now, and if someone were interested to be on the board what would that involve?

Yeah so we meet, currently we meet on a quarterly basis and we have nine board members.

They all come from a variety of backgrounds: we have natural resources background, private business background, we have people coming from an educational background.

We're really looking for anyone who has a real passion for the environment and we're actively recruiting board members, as well as committee members.

So Tim is our co-chair of our conservation committee.

We also have an outreach committee.

These committees, as boards go, the real work often gets done in those committees, and so we really, really value the people who volunteer their time to sit on the committees and our board of directors, of course.

And where do you meet now?

In the winter months we meet virtually and then we kind of hop around in our in person meetings.

Sometimes we'll meet down at Breezy Point and other times in Walker, but not a concrete place.

Okay.

Tim, you've been in the board, on the board, for about nine years, like you've seen like I was, but we've seen a lot of changes in those years, haven't we?

Oh my.

And I think to the positive.

Yes.

I mean there's so many new initiatives and the money that the state's getting to help put into some of these projects is huge, it makes a big difference.

What lake are you on?

Woman Lake.

Yes do you have anything going on Woman Lake special?

Not right now but thankfully I guess I'll say, in the early parts of the Leech Lake Watershed Foundation, which is now the Northern Waters Land Trust, there was some critical high biodiversity sites that were protected through acquisition and easements.

Now they're aquatic management areas now, but there's and they contribute of course to maintaining the water quality along the entire Boy River system, with you know Girl Lake and then down into Rice Lake and Inguadona and all the way up into Leech.

And I think we've had recent conversations with landowners on some high biodiversity sites that are, you know, loon, otter, you know, beaver habitat, high biodiversity aquatic areas for fishing fish and fish spawning and I would imagine in the near term there will be something that'll come up and hopefully the board will be able to make it happen with the partners.

If there were a fear or a misconception about what you're doing, what would that be and how could you alleviate that?

I think that sometimes the fear is that we are trying to take someone's land, which absolutely is not true.

All of our programs are voluntary and when we have a conversation with a land owner, maybe we'll go down the conservation easement route for a second.

The conservation easement, it's an agreement between a land owner and a land trust that says I am going to limit or prohibit my future development of the land, and so what we can do with a conservation easement is maybe a land owner already has a home on their land, we can cut out that area.

But everything else, let's say they have 40 acres of forested land, all of that forested land is then protected and then that conservation easement is a legal agreement, it's written into the title of the property, so then whoever owns that land later on has to abide by the restrictions of the conservation easement and that's where the land trust comes in.

As a land trust we take on the responsibility of ensuring that that conservation easement is upheld in perpetuity, so forever.

So every year we come and we monitor the conservation easement, make sure that the forest is healthy and and doing well, but also making sure that there's no development that's happening on that land.

But what is important to note is that we do allow, in that place where we cut out that home, that the land owner can live there can have their home.

So we're not an anti-development organization, more of a conscious development.

If we are going to develop the land and live here, how can we do so in a responsible and healthy way that also is respectful to the natural environment around us.

And so with a conservation easement, 100% voluntary, and we can also financially compensate a landowner for putting that land into a conservation easement.

It's really great because a land owner can get the equity out of their land, still own their land and not need to sell it, so it's nice to be able to compensate landowners for doing the right thing and conserving their land.

We're about out of time.

Did you want to say something?

Yeah when people sound fearful when I'm talking to them about it I say, your objective, you know, I tell them is your objective of protecting this area and all of the amenities all the values that you seek up here including protecting the economy?

It's a nature-based economy.

That's our goal, too.

How do people get in touch with you?

Feel free to visit our website, northernwaterslandtrust.org Give us a call directly 218-547-4510 or email us.

We're always happy to have a conversation and grateful for anyone who would like to reach out.

Thank you Tim and Annie, you're doing great and important work for our resources, much appreciated by a lot of people.

Thanks for being on the show.

Thank you, Ray.

Appreciate it.

Wonderful serving with you.

Thank you.

You've been watching Lakeland Currents.

I'm Ray Gildow.

So long until next time.