Vermillion River project enhances trout habitat, water quality

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Legacy Amendment project: Vermillion River project enhances trout habitat, water quality
(Released June 16, 2011)

You might call it Extreme Makeover: Trout Stream Edition.

 

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and Trout Unlimited (TU) are wrapping up a major project to improve aquatic habitat on nearly a mile of the Vermillion River, a trophy brown trout stream near Farmington.

 

The project involves excavating a new meandering stream channel to replace an old straightened channel used for drainage. A stream channel that zig-zags provides better habitat for fish and for the aquatic insects they eat, and it lessens erosion that pollutes downstream stretches with sediment.

 

On Saturday, June 18, several dozen volunteers will help DNR round up the fish in the old channel and move them to their new home before the old channel is filled in. DNR electrofishing surveys in nearby stretches of the Vermillion have turned up brown trout as big as 30 inches.

 

The effort highlights how new constitutionally dedicated funding is helping improve fish and wildlife habitat and recreational opportunities, said Josh Nelson, the Vermillion project coordinator for Trout Unlimited.

 

TU contributed $150,000 of Legacy Outdoor Heritage funding that was recommended by the Lessard-Sams Outdoor Heritage Council. Another $150,000 came from Environmental Trust Fund dollars from state lottery proceeds. The Vermillion River Watershed Joint Powers Organization has agreed to pick up any remaining expenses for the project, which is expected to cost a total of around $310,000.

 

“This project probably wouldn’t be happening without the Legacy money,” Nelson said. “TU used to do about a mile or two of stream improvements a year statewide. With Outdoor Heritage Funds, we’re doing five times that. It allowed the Twin Cities Chapter of TU to do more for its home waters.”

 

The home waters Nelson refers to were on the edge of not surviving as a trout stream as little as a dozen years ago. Trout need cold clean water, and changing land uses threatened to bring both warmer waters from runoff and more pollution. But joint efforts by DNR, Dakota County and other government units have allowed local communities to flourish while protecting the Vermillion’s unique features.

 

The city of Lakeville, for instance, near the headwaters of the Vermillion’s South Branch, has put in place proactive stormwater management rules to protect the stream. The Metropolitan Council diverted effluent from its Empire Wastewater Treatment Plant away from the Vermillion to avoid impacts. Dakota County voters approved a referendum to spend money protecting significant natural areas and farmlands, money that has been combined with DNR funds to purchase aquatic and wildlife management areas along the stream.

 

“This has been collaboration all the way,” said Joe Harris, the Dakota County commissioner who chairs the Vermillion River Joint Powers Organization board. “We’re happy to participate with DNR and other partners to bring this part of the Vermillion back to the state it was in many, many years ago, and to protect the river from further degradation.”

 

DNR fisheries section chief Dirk Peterson recalls attending a meeting 15 years ago where some local officials maintained that there were no trout in the Vermillion. Now communities throughout the river’s watershed have embraced the stream as a valuable local and regional amenity.

 

“These things take time,” Peterson said. “The Vermillion River has gone from being seen as an impediment to growth to being valued as an important community asset, something few major urban areas can claim: a trophy trout stream within half an hour of millions of people. When we all work together on both funding and policies, great things happen.”