January 17, 2012 Meeting Announcement

Join the Minnesota River Watershed Alliance (Watershed Alliance) for its quarterly meeting on January 17^th (Tuesday) from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at Ridgewater College in Hutchinson.  This is a great chance for the public to hear what is happening in the Minnesota River Basin.

Those attending the meeting will have a chance to choose a “Clean Up the Minnesota River” project to work on in 2012.  In the past years, the Watershed Alliance has strived to enroll critically sensitive land into permanent conservation easements, develop a friendship tour between citizens in the MN River Basin and Lake Pepin, and supported the effort to produce a film documentary on the Minnesota River. 

The January quarterly meeting is being sponsored by the Friends of the Minnesota Valley (Friends).  This nonprofit organization formed in 1982 to support the Minnesota River Valley National Wildlife Refuge through citizen action and advocacy.    

One of the Friends more successful outreach programs is their “Community Cleanups for Water Quality,” which helps individuals, organizations and local governments improve water quality and river aesthetics.  The clean-ups keep leaves, dirt and other junk from getting into storm water systems and reduce the amount of excessive phosphorus in the waterways.  For more information on Friends, http://www.friendsofmnvalley.org/

This quarterly meeting goes from 6 to 9 p.m. at Ridgewater College (room 141) in Hutchinson.  Ridgewater College is located at 2nd Century Avenue SE on the south end of Hutchinson.  The Watershed Alliance encourages landowners and recreational users to be part of this effort to improve and protect the Minnesota River Basin. 

We begin at 6 p.m. with a social hour and food to give participants time to interact with each other and share stories and concerns about what is happening in their part of the Minnesota River Watershed.  At 7 p.m. the formal part of the meeting starts, with the group striving to wrap up all discussion by 9 o’clock.

The Watershed Alliance is an organized network of citizens, public agencies and private organizations dedicated to communicating the benefits of an ecologically healthy Minnesota River Watershed to others and are actively working toward its improvement and protection. 

Our goal is to meet four times a year as we strive to communicate what is happening in the Minnesota River Watershed through many formats including the internet and print media. 

For more information on the meeting and Watershed Alliance please contact Scott Kudelka at 507-389-2304 or scott.kudelka@mnsu.edu.