Future of Southern Minnesota Lakes Conference addresses water quality, watersheds

MANKATO, Minn. (KEYC) - For the past four years, conservation leaders and landowners have come together to discuss the area’s lakes and how to conserve them.

This year’s conference is focusing on things like lake management, water quality and the strong connection between lake ecosystems and neighboring farms.

Those issues aren’t solved overnight, so conservationists are preaching the importance of patience in the year-to-year work.

“Trends in water quality have probably varied in some lakes and we have this bigger watershed issue of the agricultural landscape and disturbance here, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t overcome those and do small steps to make improvements,” Heather Baird with the Minnesota DNR said.

Julie Blackburn is a floodplain manager with ISG and a board member of the America Watershed Initiative.

She’s been a driving voice of the conference since its inception.

She says her goal with the conference is to bring private and public leaders together to make real changes to preserve ecosystems that are so important to so many Minnesotans.

“When you talk with anybody that has either grown up in Minnesota, has visited Minnesota, almost all of those conversations come back to, ‘when I was out fishing with my grandpa’, or ‘when I was out at Girl Scout camp at such-and-such lake’. We are culturally and historically and economically so tied to this resource,” Blackburn said.

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