Poplar River kick-off held at Lutsen Resort

Cindy Gentz, (black coat facing camera) Water Plan Coordinator for the Cook County Soil & Water Conservation District, explains the “Ullr Tightline Project” to a group of people who attended the Poplar River Kick-off event that occurred on Saturday, Nov. 20. The goal of Gentz and several groups she works with is to reduce the sediment and improve the turbidity of the Poplar River.

A grant of $687,034 will allow further study of erosion on the Poplar River and will also help fund efforts to aid in reducing sediment from reaching Lake Superior from the Lutsen river, said Karen Evens of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA).

Evens was on hand at the Nov. 20 kickoff event for the grant, which was awarded by the Great Lakes Commission to the Cook County Soil and Water Conversation District (SWCD). TheSWCD will administer the funds.

About a dozen people attended the ceremony held at Lutsen Resort. Cindy Gentz, water plan coordinator for SWCD, hosted the event. She played a taped presentation from Minnesota U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar who lauded the efforts of all concerned groups and urged their continued work in restoring and protecting high water quality of the Great Lakes.

Key to this project has been the Poplar River Management Board (PRMB). This board works in conjunction with the SWCD and the MPCA. Of the approximately one million dollars spent so far, a good portion of it has come from individuals connected to the PRMB.

Karen Evens of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency was one of the speakers at the kick-off celebrating the recent grant monies awarded for cleaning up the lower portion of Poplar River. Evens has spent the last couple of years working with the Poplar River Management Board and the Cook County Soil and Water Conservation District to come up with a plan to clean up sediment in the river.

According to Tom Rider, president of PRMB, “Projects that SWCD and PRMB would like to see completed are construction of a ‘tightline’ that would collect storm water to dissipate its energy before it enters Poplar River; armoring of the ditches and constructing rock check dams on roads; construction of storm water controls on the ‘flow path’ near Caribou Highlands; and stream bank restoration.”

After a presentation highlighting the past several years of projects and studies, Gentz took the group on a tour to the Ullr tightline project. There she showed how engineering helps control some of the erosion of the Megaslump into the river.

Evens said further mapping of the Ullr area across the street and further up the ski hill was being conducted to see what impact that material might have on the river, especially in times of heavy rain.

“We are learning a lot as we go,” Evens said.

The Great Lakes Commission was established under state and federal law and is dedicated to promoting a strong economy, healthy environment and high quality of life for residents of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence region. The Poplar River project was the only site given a grant in the state this fall by the GLC. Only nine projects were given grants in the eight-state Great Lakes Basin.

So far, said Gentz, efforts to slow or halt the flow of rock and dirt into Poplar River have resulted in a reduction of 800 tons of sediment from going into the river, “just under half of what would have gone into the river without these efforts,” noted Gentz.

If all goes as planned, the projects that will be funded should reduce sediment delivery to the Poplar River by over 300 tons per year. Combine this reduction with work that has occurred in the past and Rider said that the efforts will “move us well onto the road to achieve water quality standards.”

Evens said the three-year study would give the MPCA much-needed data that will aid them in setting up other sediment and erosion control projects like this along the North Shore.