Watershed District Reviews Path Forward on Fountain Lake Restoration

Watershed District Reviews Path forward on Fountain Lake Restoration

                   

For Immediate Release:                                                                                For More Information Contact:

May 24, 2016                                                                                                 Andy Henschel 507-391-2795

 Albert Lea, MN – The Shell Rock River Watershed District held a board workshop on May 24th, 2016 to establish a firm path forward for the Fountain Lake Restoration project. In March 2016, the District formalized a process to hire Natural Resource Technology (“NRT”) for separate tracks in the design of the Confined Disposal Facility (“CDF”); and the Fountain Lake Restoration dredging component. This workshop provided the District an opportunity to receive a progress update and discuss timelines for these two processes.

 According to District Board Chair, Gary Pestorious, “This is a critical time in the Fountain Lake Restoration Project process. We are seeing tremendous work product coming from our consultants and there are a series of important decisions that will be made this summer. We plan to schedule extra board meetings and will continue our public outreach on these design components.”

 The Board received an update on the recent acquisition of the primary location of the CDF. According to District Attorney, Matt Benda, the District finalized the acquisition of a 101 acre parcel north of I-90 parcel across from the City Airport. Benda added, “The final closing on the Stadheim parcel occurred on May 20th, 2016.

 The Board heard from NRT representatives on the timeline for the submission of the final design and permitting on the CDF. According to Andrew Millspaugh from NRT, “We are expecting to wrap up the CDF design shortly and will hope to submit the CDF permit application in early June. The CDF permitting will have a separate independent track from the actual dredging process.”

 The Board will continue to receive progress updates from NRT through the summer.   According to District Administrator Brett Behnke, “The District continues to solicit feedback from the public on the Fountain Lake Restoration project. We have now engaged the services of Good Steward Consulting to assist with this continued public outreach initiative. This will be an exciting summer in Albert Lea as we move forward on efforts to clean-up Fountain Lake.”

 The ultimate sediment removal process is the culmination of a multiple year approach. For years, projects were implemented at the top of the watershed to minimize the sedimentation that will occur after the project is completed and to maximize the water clarity throughout the watershed.

  The Mission of the Shell Rock River Watershed District is to implement reasonable and necessary improvements to the water-related and other natural resources of the district. For more information on this project and other work of the district go to: http://www.shellrock.org/