MN COLA President Joe Shneider along with MLR Executive Director Jeff Forester and Marina owner Gabe Jabbour took several legislative leaders out on Lake Minnetonka in late August to see wakesurfing in action. From left to right are MN COLA President Joe Shneider, Environment and Natural Resources Committee Chair Rep. Rick Hansen, Rep. Larry Kraft, Sen. Kelly Morrison, MLRA’s Jeff Forester, and Marina owner Gabe Jabbour.
The Association of Cass County Lakes (ACCL) developed a low-cost AIS cleaning station and is deploying it with help from Cass County. Nick Bluhm from ACCL and Steve Henry from Cass County presented their best-practices solution at the September MN COLA meeting.
A summary of the solution and the program to deploy is linked below.
Lakeland PBS recently broadcasted a new segment covering the project. Watch it here.
Email Nick Bluhm at cleaningstations@acclakes.org for more information including how you can adapt the solution for your use.
The Fisheries Division of the Michigan DNR released a literature review and recommendations regarding the effects of wake boats on aquatic habitat. An earlier version sparked controversy and it was relabeled as a draft. This July, the final report was released.
Recommendations in the report were couched as “voluntary best operating practices in support of the continued use of wake boats while minimizing the effects on natural resources. Their recommendations are copied below:
Further, the Michigan report “recommended that awareness and voluntary adoption of these best operating practices be encouraged through outreach actions and materials to educate wake boat operators.”
This segment from PBS News Hour on September 21, 2023, does a nice job of framing the newest mining issue for Minnesota. The video is just under 9 minutes. It’s worth watching, even if you have to watch a PBS ad before you can watch the video.
Netting that was used for on Lake Koronis as part of a pilot project to control starry stonewort is available for free to a good home.
Each net is 300’ long, 6’ deep, and plastic coated. 4 nets are available: 2 nets have 3/8” holes, 2 nets have 3/16” holes. The nets have floats on the top and weights on the bottom. The nets were decontaminated and have been in storage since 2017. Other details are available.
Contact Kevin@Farnum.info if your lake association can use any of these nets for any purpose.
Our Annual Meeting in Little Falls last week was a great success with terrific speakers and insightful discussions! Over 30 people joined us for our first in-person meeting since late 2019.
As a follow-up to the meeting, we have attached two items for your use:
At the meeting we unanimously elected 7 new members to the MN COLA Board for 3-year terms, and we are excited to have a full complement of 15 Directors! Our Board Members and their term are listed here. Note that terms end in June of the noted year.
We noted we were doing a “last call” for the 2023 Communications Survey. If you haven’t yet taken the survey, it would be great if you could carve out a few minutes to do it.
We believe these benefits bring “real value” to MN COLA members and friends. And we can provide even more value when we grow of membership. We don’t say this because we are hungry for your money, although that’s always welcome. But we say this because MN COLA grows more relevant on important issues when we represent more people and more organizations.
So become a member! Join MN COLA today!
As a new part of the MN DNR’s Watershed Health Assessment Framework, the lakes section is now available online. It provides easy access to water quality and health information for thousands of Minnesota lakes.
In the new site, you can find detailed information about a lake’s water quality, biology, hydrology, and stewardship. You can drill down to an individual lake by major watershed, county, catchment, and more.
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Your MN COLA Board and Executive Committee worked very hard on your behalf in 2022 and we believe we moved the needle on delivering greater value to you, advocacy, and becoming a more professional organization. We feel proud of these accomplishments, and we hope that you do too.
Read on for a review of the past year.
MN COLA members should feel very good about our volunteer organization. We started the year with a very full plate and lots of expectations. Here’s a rundown of our intents and what we accomplished.
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