When out on my wildlife rides, I routinely stop at bridges to check water clarity and to see if northern pike can be seen getting ready to spawn.
Pike are about the first fish in our area to spawn and will often stage in the shallows under the ice when there is open water near shore. This happens even when the lake is still ice-covered.
This time of year, most of the water I see is usually pretty clear. Even if the water looks high quality, the tale of the microscope or a chemistry lab might very well tell a different story.
One of the No. 1 issues in the heavily row-cropped areas of southwest Minnesota is nitrates. This is a chemical that is very dangerous to children and expectant mothers.
Water treatment plants can treat this pollutant out of drinking water supplies, but it is very expensive to do so.
Another water quality issue is phosphorus, a chemical in fertilizers that is normally transported in eroded soils. When dirt is washing down a stream, it moves phosphorus with it. This chemical is the one credited for creating algae blooms in our lakes during late spring and into the summer.
Grass buffers and other undisturbed grasslands slow down this moving water and, in many cases, allow the soils suspended in the water to settle out on land before reaching a lake or stream.
Storm water or flood retention ponds also capture large rain events and hold that water for a predetermined amount of time. As the water is allowed to pause in these areas, much of the suspended solids that carry phosphorus are allowed to settle to the bottom of the temporary holding area.
It was a really big deal years ago when Gov. Mark Dayton created the buffer bill. This was a regulation that required landowners to leave a 16-foot strip of grass along drainage ditches and also required a 50-foot-wide buffer along natural streams, creeks, rivers and lakes.
In many cases this required setback had been in Minnesota law for decades but was never enforced. This regulation removed from production the acres that were right along water flows, some big and some small.
Some farm programs compensated producers for lost income from these buffer acres. Other buffers could be hayed or grazed. The buffer law is kind of old news today as it was implemented in 2015, and compliance is very high.
So, as we work to try to protect our water resources from all kinds of different threats — chemical pollution, erosion, manure and the like – I often wonder just how much difference we are making with these efforts.
Almost all the public and private surface waters in southwest Minnesota are not fit to drink or swim in. In many cases they cannot support the normal aquatic life that would live in them. The EPA did this study, and you can easily find it with a Google search.
Even as we implement different processes to protect water, the quality of our water is still very, very bad.
Almost all the lakes in the southwest region carry multiple warnings not to let your dog or your children swim in them after the first of August.
Lake property owners and other recreational users deal with the smell of rotting algae for two months a year. It would seem to me that this would have everyone up in arms, and it is just not the case.
When did we get to the point where we just accepted unsafe, stinky water as OK? This is now just the way it is? When will cleaning up our lakes and rivers become a high enough priority to actually prompt action on a scale big enough to make a difference? I have no idea. All I can say is that we should not accept undrinkable and unswimmable waters as the norm.
Conservation lands are very often acquired in some of the most sensitive water quality locations, like wellhead protection areas.
I will keep doing my part to champion clean water as a primary benefit to public conservation lands and do my very best to direct those who do this work to always make clean water an important part of any decision regarding their acquisition.
Scott Rall, Worthington, is a habitat conservationist, avid hunting and fishing enthusiast and is president of Nobles County Pheasants Forever. He can be reached at scottarall@gmail.com. or on Twitter @habitat champion.