- Well, last year I was visiting some family in the Twin Cities.

I was taking Tiny for a walk when I noticed a sticker near a storm drain.

Well, after passing a few of these markers, I decided to go down the drain to see where they went and to learn what this was all about.

(mellow music) Twin cities residents are no strangers to summer thunderstorms.

Well placed downspouts and gutters help direct heavy rains from homes and developments all across the metro.

Water's directed into the streets and then funneled into storm sewers.

But what happens after that?

- Not many people know this, but actually our storm drains don't get filtered.

All that water goes directly into our closest body of water.

- Well, one location in Woodbury has been working hard to clean up that runoff before it gets into the lakes.

In this case, Powers Lake.

(gentle music) - Generally speaking, once the storm runoff goes down a drain, it could either go right to lake, river, wetland.

Sometimes it'll go through a series of ponds, stormwater ponds or other constructed stormwater best management practices like infiltration or filtration basins.

- Now, what happens when it rains and water goes into those storm drains along the side of the road?

Well, it ends up in a pond like this.

This lake was essentially created when this development was built.

It controls flooding and collects all that storm water runoff.

But where does the water go when this lake gets too high?

Well, it eventually drains into another wetland, which is nearby Powers Lake, one of the cleanest lakes in the area.

To keep that lake from being contaminated by pollutants that have drained into this lake, they've installed a new water treatment facility.

(upbeat music) - Right now we're standing atop the overlook at Hasenbank Park.

The unofficial new highest point in Woodbury.

We're intercepting water, storm water runoff that leaves Fish Lake, which is a large wetland, highly enriched with nutrients like phosphorus that impact water quality, lead to algae blooms.

- What happens is when Fish Lake gets too high, it goes into this outlet through a lift station that pumps the water through a pipe up into the new water treatment facility that uses nature with a little helping hand from us to clean that water naturally.

(water pattering) Now, how does Mother Nature clean up this water?

Well, once it goes through that pipe and comes up into this water treatment facility, it goes into one of three ponds, and then once the water gets into those ponds, it naturally drains into the soil.

If this first pond gets too full, it spills over into the next one.

If that one gets too full, there's a third one to catch all the water.

- And all the while that's happening, water's soaking into the ground.

We've got plants that are more, I'd say wetland, wetland pallet of plants that are planted in these basins.

And so they're up taking nutrients and doing their whole process.

And that water then soaks into the ground, gets into our kind of superficial groundwater layers where eventually, it will just travel to Powers Lake.

But when it gets there, it's cooler, it's cleaner, you know, it's contributing to all kinds of other biological processes.

- And it's not just the water that's being cleaned up here, a lot of work has been put in to restoring native grasses and pollinators, as well as planting oak trees to bring back that oak savanna landscape that was once here.

- It was just an old fallow brome field before the project.

We've, you know, the whole grounds here are in the process of being restored into native prairie, all native plants.

So seeing the insects come and birds that come after those insects, so really it's a whole kind of food chain thing that we're seeing here.

And also paired with Hasenbank Woods that's right next to us as well.

We've been working for many years to improve the quality of that woodland.

It was overgrown with buckthorn and we've got a lot of dead ash trees in there.

We've been doing some canopy thinning, clearing out some space for the mature oaks that are there, getting some new oak regeneration in the woods.

- [Bret] You've used some goats.

- We have had goats out here, absolutely.

None this year, but in the past couple years and probably in the future we'll get 'em back out.

Residents love to see the goats.

- [Bret] While there's three different aspects to this project, the process is simple.

They're letting Mother Nature do most of the work.

But how did this whole thing get started?

- This project specifically, the watershed district approached us about a regional best management practice for Powers Lake, specifically because it is such a clean water body.

Previously, this land was open field, owned by the city, along with some wooded areas and a trail running through it.

- [Bret] Today, the park has numerous trails and during my time there I saw dog walkers, hikers, bikers, joggers, and more.

- Even before the stormwater park, like we like to call it internally, was here, there was a high use already because of the Hasenbank Woods where we were doing some native vegetation restoration there.

- And we do see, you know, ducks using the ponds.

There's a family of mallards here that have been here all summer with babies, so that's kind of fun.

- [Bret] b While seeing wildlife like this gives you an immediate look into the benefits of Hasenbank Park, the overall goal may not be as noticeable right away.

- It was a large investment for the watershed district in terms of capital dollars.

But the, again, the estimates that our engineers have come up with about the amount of phosphorus this project can remove from runoff to Powers Lake is quite significant.

And we do hope to see some notable improvements, hopefully, in the first couple years of operation.

Our project funding specifically comes from the stormwater utility fee, so that's localized in this district that we're in.

It's largely, you know, Woodbury and parts of Cottage Grove, little bits of some cities we have on the fringes of the watershed, Oakdale and Lake Elmo, et cetera.

- [Bret] When did this project get completed and has there been any way to maybe track some results?

- Started, I think back in maybe 2021 or '22 with planning, construction was kinda late '23 all the way through this spring in 2025.

And the lift station that we have that does all that pumping, it tracks how much water is pumped through the system.

So we know how many gallons of water, how many millions of gallons of water really is what it is.

- [Bret] Seeing a project like this where you can track the results, see the progress and use it for recreation, it's just gonna be better for everybody.

- And this project paired perfectly with that because it further immerses folks into something that you don't always see, which is storm water.

- [Bret] And that brings us right back to where we started.

Where's this water coming from and where's it going and how can you help keep it clean?

- So here's a storm drain.

They can look many different ways, but in Minnesota this is pretty common.

As you can see, we got grass here.

We would definitely wanna keep those grass clippings out of the drain if you're mowing your lawn.

Just sweep 'em into your yard instead of into the street.

This is just water that's going straight into the storm drain.

It's not being filtered or anything, it's just going right into the local waterway.

So the Adopt a Drain program is designed for residents who have storm drains near them out on their street.

- Another thing that residents could do, in addition to adopting a drain is having, making sure that their lawn is properly maintained.

So not over applying fertilizers, not blowing your leaves or your grass clippings into the street.

A lot of benefit for our surface waters.

- Things that we aim to keep out of the storm drains are trash, brown leaves, green leaves, grass clippings, dog poop, fertilizers, salt in the winter, and other things like that.

Those are our main polluters.

- [Bret] When you adopt a drain, how is it a, like a year long commitment?

Is it forever?

What's the commitment for those that maybe have a fear of it out there?

- Yeah, we try to keep it pretty low responsibility, but once you adopt a drain, it is yours until you decide to un-adopt it.

But it's really easy to un-adopt if you move or if your circumstances change.

Some people adopt many drains, but you can just adopt one too and that's.

We ask people to estimate the amount of debris that they cleaned and then we're able to see how much our participants have removed from what would otherwise be going into our local waterways, which is pretty powerful.

- [Bret] So far in Minnesota, there's been over 28,000 drains adopted by over 16,000 people who've collected nearly a million pounds of debris.

- Adopt a Drain ended up in Woodbury, it started off as a pilot project with Hamline University and East Metro Water Resources educational partners.

It's a way to get outside and give back to your community.

I feel like that's a lot of the reasons why we're seeing folks come in, whether it be girl or boy scout troops, company outings, just a family wanting to get outside and bond over a common goal of clean water.

A lot of people care about their clean water.

And not only just Woodbury, but we are in the land of 10,000 Lakes.

- Really, the purpose of these projects, trying to improve water quality is to help improve the clarity of the lakes as well, reduce the algae blooms.

That helps not only with biological processes in the lake, when we have a lot of algae blooms, sunlight doesn't reach as far into lake as we'd like it to see.

That can limit the growth of native aquatic plants, rooted aquatic plants in the lake.

And also for folks who are on the lakes, right, canoeing, kayaking, you know, their enjoyment of these water bodies is gonna be improved by having that cleaner, clearer water.

So it's really twofold, you know, human enjoyment, wildlife enjoyment and functionality.

- [Bret] Now, getting people excited about cleaning up their grass clippings or learning more about stormwater runoff, it's not easy.

So to draw more attention to the Hasenbank Park project, they enlisted the help of some artists.

- Aaron Dysart and Christopher E. Harrison, they're both outta Minneapolis, local artists.

We've got one installation from Chris Harrison.

It's a set of concrete gears that kind of move through the first basin.

It allows for an interactive approach when water levels are a little lower in the basin than they are today.

You know, tried to tell the story about some of the active processes, right, the mechanical processes that are involved with this.

And Aaron Dysart has two sculptures here.

One is a kind of a representation of a large oak tree.

The other, a representation of, kind of a root system and a large purple cone flower all made out of steel pipes that kind of tell the story of how water moves through the ground, through trees, through evapotranspiration and through plants as well, putting water back into the ground through their root systems as would happen in a natural prairie.

(gentle music) - [Bret] What's the future of this site look like?

- I think yet, to be told, we've got a lot of trees planted here.

We're gonna see them grow, we're gonna see the prairie plantings mature.

You know, that's only just gonna add to the beauty and you know, environmental usefulness of this site.

- [Bret] Clean water is good for everybody.

Finding a site like this in the heart of a metropolitan area is just gonna increase those long-term benefits for humans, for wildlife, and for the environment in general.

- One of the most unique things that we did during our planning phases for this project was rather than having a civil engineer design a project, the lead for our engineering team was a landscape architect.

And so I think with that, we got a whole lot more organic structures and shapes into the park design.

- Well, here's what you can do.

If you feel like you're stuck in a concrete jungle, go to a park like this, get outside and immerse yourself in nature.

And if you wanna help clean up the water in your area, consider adopting a drain in your neighborhood.