Words mean something, even in watersheds.

According to the US Geological Survey,

A watershed is an area of land that drains all the streams and rainfall to a common outlet such as the outflow of a reservoir, mouth of a bay, or any point along a stream channel. The word watershed is sometimes used interchangeably with drainage basin or catchment. Ridges and hills that separate two watersheds are called the drainage divide. The watershed consists of surface water--lakes, streams, reservoirs, and wetlands--and all the underlying ground water. Larger watersheds contain many smaller watersheds. It all depends on the outflow point; all of the land that drains water to the outflow point is the watershed for that outflow location. Watersheds are important because the streamflow and the water quality of a river are affected by things, human-induced or not, happening in the land area "above" the river-outflow point.

Minnesota's Board of Water and Soil Resources (BWSR) can now "adopt methods to allow comprehensive plans, local water management plans, or watershed management plans to serve as substitutes for one another; or to be replaced with one comprehensive watershed management plan." There's a process underway for the Lower St. Croix "watershed" that seems to violate the One Watershed One Plan concept in a number of different ways. That troubles us.

First, and perhaps most importantly, the self-defined "watershed" is promptly split in two, the Northern and Southern Lower St. Croix. But wait, there's less! None of the local governmental units involved, in fact, none of the partners or participants we could find, include any part of Wisconsin. The last time we took a peek, there were two banks to the St. Croix River, one in Minnesota, the other in our neighboring state to the East. So we now have "one watershed" that ignores half the watershed and splits the remaining "half" in two.

Source: St. Croix River Association

But wait, there's even less. The entire St. Croix River watershed encompasses much more than the Lower St. Croix. BWSR's "one watershed, one plan" for the Lower St. Croix covers what appears to be less than one fourth of the entire watershed. How is this supposed to work and how is this process supposed to have any credibility if it starts in such a distorted fashion? Is this more of an "old boys club" of local government officials promising more than they can ever deliver?

We have long been believers that Minnesota has entirely too many units of government with too divided responsibilities for land use and water management. The process being followed by units of local government doesn't appear to offer anything like an effective response to the recommendations offered by the 2009 Minnesota Water Sustainability Framework. Personally, we think it could be very beneficial if the incoming administration, the one that campaigned on the "One Minnesota" theme, actually did something to more effectively follow through on the recommendation to

Create watershed-scale Watershed and Soil Conservation

Authorities (WSCAs) throughout the state with

the responsibility of implementing the goals of 

 the Minnesota Water Sustainability Act. The 

creation of WSCAs would arise through a process

of transition from water planning within the

political boundaries of a county to water planning

at roughly the watershed level (8-digit HUC or

81-watershed scale) but the boundaries would be

determined locally. The transition would occur

over a 10-year period to allow existing water

planning entities within a watershed (SWCDs,

WMOs, and WDs) to negotiate a process of

transition to a single WSCA. BWSR would be

empowered to work with local water planning

entities to establish watershed boundaries and

plan for transition.

Perhaps what we're seeing is a variation on the approach recommended, but it's hard to tell from where we're sitting right now.

THE BROOK

by: Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)

I COME from haunts of coot and hern,

I make a sudden sally,

And sparkle out among the fern,

To bicker down a valley.

 

By thirty hills I hurry down,

Or slip between the ridges,

By twenty thorps, a little town,

And half a hundred bridges.

 

Till last by Philip's farm I flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

 

I chatter over stony ways,

In little sharps and trebles,

I bubble into eddying bays,

I babble on the pebbles.

 

With many a curve my banks I fret

by many a field and fallow,

And many a fairy foreland set

With willow-weed and mallow.

 

I chatter, chatter, as I flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may comeand men may go,

But I go on forever.

 

I wind about, and in and out,

with here a blossom sailing,

And here and there a lusty trout,

And here and there a grayling,

 

And here and there a foamy flake

Upon me, as I travel

With many a silver water-break

Above the golden gravel,

 

And draw them all along, and flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

 

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,

I slide by hazel covers;

I move the sweet forget-me-nots

That grow for happy lovers.

 

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,

Among my skimming swallows;

I make the netted sunbeam dance

Against my sandy shallows.

 

I murmur under moon and stars

In brambly wildernesses;

I linger by my shingly bars;

I loiter round my cresses;

 

And out again I curve and flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

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