Connecting with Our Community

Education Program

In 2024, Prior Lake-Spring Lake Watershed District (PLSLWD) premiered its first “Watershed Week,” a series of events that aim to create more opportunities for engagement within the community through activities beyond volunteer events and presentations. In 2024, this included:

• a guided walk at Spring Lake Regional Park
• a bike ride with Great Scott Cycling Club with stops at project sites
• a Paint and Sip at Rhino Wine Bar. This was led by artist Kimberly Boustead and used inks made with plants from within the watershed.
• 85 total attendees, many who learned about watersheds for the first time.

With help from out many partners, we held or contributed to 12 events in 2024, reaching over 1,400 people in person that live, work, or recreate in our watershed. Our presence on Facebook and Instagram helped us reach over 14,000 more people, with over 1,000 interactions with our content.

Volunteer Programs

Each year, dedicated volunteers give their time and energy to support our work in striving towards a healthier watershed. This year, four volunteers helped us monitor four of our smaller lakes through the Citizen-Assisted Monitoring Program (CAMP), which is hosted by the Met Council. These volunteers collect samples biweekly from April through October!

We also often rely on those who live and work near our lakes to help us track carp through the Carp Espionage program. Residents act as our eyes on the ground, alerting us to carp spawning and grouping. This year we received 14 reports from 10 reporters from early May through the end of June.

Our Citizen Advisory Committee is another critical group of volunteers. These are residents of the Watershed District who act as a voice of the community and provide insights and recommendations to the Board of Managers. This committee generally meets 6 times a year on the last Thursday of odd-numbered months.

We had an additional 18 volunteers participate in our volunteer events. If you are interested in volunteering with one of these programs or at one-off volunteer events, email us <@info.plslwd.org> or check out the volunteer page on our website!

Ensuring Water Quality

Monitoring Program

PLSLWD’s monitoring program is critical to making informed management decisions. We monitor a wide variety of water quality influences like nutrients in lakes and streams, chloride, vegetation, stream flow, lake elevation, precipitation, and ice-cover. In 2024, our staff, volunteers, and contractors collected 286 water quality samples across 24 lake and stream sites within the watershed.

Projects

In 2024, we made progress on many larger projects to bring us closer to our water quality goals, including:

• restoring 1,300 feet of stream to prevent large sediment loads to Buck Lake.
• achieving our carp population goal on Upper Prior Lake.
• securing funding to restore the Prior Lake Outlet Pipe.
• securing easements for a water quality practice for water entering County Ditch 13.
• completing construction plans to update PLSLWD’s water treatment facility.

We also secured over $1,500,000 in grant funding from BWSR, Spring Lake Township, MPCA, and Scott County!