How does aquatic invasive species prevention vary in St. Cloud-area counties?

North of St. Rosa and south of Grey Eagle, an east-west line splits Big Birch Lake into two uneven portions. You can't see the line when you're out in the morning sun plumbing the depths of its waters (81 feet at their deepest) for black crappie, northern pike, walleye, yellow perch or bluegill.

And if the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has its say, you won't be able to detect it based on how inspections are handled at any of the lake's four public accesses. Because the zebra mussels that have made Big Birch Lake home since at least 2016 don't care whether they live in the Stearns County or the Todd County portion of the 2,108-acre lake.

For Big Birch Lake and many other Minnesota waters, preventing the spread of aquatic invasive species is all about teamwork. Counties and other local government units work together using state funding to fight starry stonewort, Eurasian watermilfoil and curlyleaf pondweed, among many others. What does that look like in the St. Cloud area?

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How does AIS prevention work in Minnesota?

The way the Minnesota Legislature has set up funding for aquatic invasive species control, practically anyone who wants to can be involved.

The Legislature passed a county tax bill in 2014 that provides money for aquatic invasive species (AIS) prevention, and every year after 2014, Minnesota counties get $10 million between them. The funds can be delegated again, should the county so choose, to local governments in that county.

Benton County and Stearns County both manage the programs at the county level, and both have task forces made of some county representatives and some community members. Sherburne County also has a task force, but the Sherburne Soil and Water Conservation District oversees AIS prevention programming.

Some counties have AIS work managed by lake associations, and some have local government entities drawing on funds to prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species. For example, North Fork Watershed District has a delegation agreement and runs its own inspection program using Stearns County funds for two lakes, Stearns County Environmental Specialist Cole Loewen said.

How much funding the county has to use on AIS programming depends on its water resources. The funding formula assigns an amount for each trailer launch in the county and an amount for each watercraft trailer parking space. In 2022, counties received $2,229 per watercraft launch and $230 per parking space. Locally, here's what that looked like:

Stearns County has more than eight times the boat launches, more than five times the parking spaces and more than seven times the funding than Benton County. It has more than three times the launches, parking spaces and budget than Sherburne County.

Doll said he's proud of the size and work of Minnesota's AIS prevention program and its unique ability to delegate authority to local governments.

"It allows us to have one of, if not the largest, program in the country," Doll said of the state's inspection program.

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In 2021, between DNR staff and local government partners, inspectors conducted more than half a million watercraft inspections, according to Doll.

"When I talk to other states ... about the DNR, Minnesota's watercraft inspection program, the ability to delegate our authority out to various local units of government is really instrumental in how our program can put out the number of inspectors that there are, the number of inspections that are done on a statewide basis," Doll said. "Most of the inspectors out there are employed via local units of government."

How does the DNR prioritize inspection sites?

Stearns County and Sherburne SWCD contract with companies that hire, train and manage inspectors. But watercraft inspection procedures are set by the DNR, and all inspectors are trained in those.

"If the system's working as intended, a watercraft inspector that works for Stearns County is following the same set of rules that a DNR inspector is doing in Wright County," Doll said.

The DNR aims to hire 92 watercraft inspectors who work in pairs. Half of them are college interns. And the last few years, meeting that goal has been a challenge.

"We suffer from labor issues much like many other areas of the country," Doll said.

For counties, as the price of labor continues to increase, their purchasing power drops as the funds provided by the Legislature stay at $10 million in statewide allocations, Loewen said.

The DNR has broken the state up into four regions, and the regional supervisor uses a tier system to set priorities. Typically, Doll said, criteria focus around high-use, zebra mussel-infested waters. High use is defined as one inspection per hour or more.

"It would be great if we could spend more time at accesses, but that's, again, why we're trying to target the highest use among them... and encounter as many boaters as we can," Doll said.

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Doll said the hope is that stationing inspectors at infested water bodies helps prevent invasive species from being moved into uninfested waters. These sites also give the DNR "more bang for our buck" in using its decontamination units, which use high-pressure hot water streams to decontaminate boats and equipment.

Supervisors also do exploratory hours, visiting other lake accesses that haven't had inspectors but do have zebra mussel infestations, to determine whether that site is particularly active. But Doll said many of the popular, high-use infested waters have been identified and have inspectors.

How do St. Cloud-area counties prioritize inspection sites?

While inspections should look alike statewide, local entities are making decisions about where inspections occur, and those criteria may be different than what the DNR uses to make determinations at a statewide scale.

Sherburne County's AIS task force set parameters for where inspectors should go based on previous lake traffic data as well as a model developed by the Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center that help identify which lakes are most at risk for AIS spread, SWCD senior water resource specialist Dan Cibulka said.

With its AIS funds, the SWCD contracts with a firm that hires and trains AIS inspectors. Sherburne County has six or seven inspectors each year, Cibulka said.

This year, Stearns County has 37 authorized inspectors headed out to 10 accesses on nine water bodies, Loewen said. The AIS task force made up of stakeholders (largely lake association representatives) sets aside 60% to 70% of its budget for inspection and decontamination work, Loewen said.

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In its efforts to empower local partners, groups can request money from Stearns County for inspections and encourages those local partners to check in with inspectors stationed at their sites to maintain active involvement in the process, Loewen said. Lake associations can also purchase hours of inspection outside of what may have been awarded. Five lake associations have added inspection hours to what they were awarded this year, Loewen said, and another lake association was not awarded inspection hours through a grant but did purchase hours.

Local partners can also request funds for other AIS prevention projects.

But he's begun initiating conversations with the board about the need to switch some of that inspection funding toward managing infestations, with the understanding that invasive species will continue to spread. Loewen is also seen more interest in increasing messaging and tools at boat accesses or changing access designs.

"Something else I've seen a lot more interest in helping boaters at accesses eliminate the barriers they have to undertake the actions that need to be done," Loewen said.

Those fighting their spread of invasive aquatic plants have more tools at their disposal than for aquatic invasive animals, Loewen said. The spiny waterflea is a prime example, he said. So far, there aren't any good population control mechanisms for this invasive creature in natural water bodies, according to the DNR.

"There's good stuff coming down the pipe for animals," Loewen said. "We just don't have it necessarily there yet. So that to me is frustrating. We've got good tools, pretty good tools for plants − it's expensive, but if we hit it early enough, we can kind of keep those under control. The animals are a much harder question."

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Doll said the DNR has 66 local government-run AIS programs with the legal capacity to run an inspection program. Sixty-five are actively running inspections. Local government units supported 232,270 hours at 770 access in 2021. There are almost 2,250 public accesses with a trailer launch in Minnesota and more than 750 carry-in public accesses, according to DNR data provided by Doll.

What else do counties use AIS prevention funding for?

Watercraft inspections only make up a portion of the way Sherburne and Stearns counties' task forces delegate AIS funds, and Benton County doesn't use its AIS funds for inspections at all.

"We have the Mississippi and we have Little Rock Lake, and that's about all we have," Benton County Land Services Director Roxanne Achman said. "We don't have a whole lot of water bodies."

Here are some ways local government units use their AIS funds:

• grant programs that fund proposals from lake associations and others for their own AIS prevention work (all three counties)
• a partnership with the sheriff's office's water patrol division to educate department employees on AIS laws and to provide education on high-use weekends (Sherburne County)
• early detection and rapid response programs to help find and treat invasive species earlier, when they're easier to manage (Stearns and Sherburne counties)
• education and outreach efforts (all three counties)

Some funding also goes to cover staff time for county or SWCD employees to oversee the program.

Achman said Benton County funds up to 90% of the cost of projects and programs pitched to its AIS grant program. They also fund the majority of requests that meet grant criteria. A big part of that is because not many people are asking.

"At this point, we're just funding whoever wants it because we're not getting applications," Achman said.

Therefore, Benton County is spending some of its AIS funds in an effort to get the word out there about this pot of money available for people to use for AIS work, she said.

AIS funding did recently get doled out to the Little Rock Lake Association to purchase a weed harvester, Achman said. According to the DNR, Little Rock Lake has zebra mussels but no invasive plant infestations.

Achman, Cibulka and Loewen all said it was important to the counties that citizens and stakeholders were heavily involved in their AIS task forces. Loewen said in Stearns County, the AIS task force members do a lot of the on-the-ground work themselves.

"Let's make sure we keep these folks, the ones that are actually doing the work, (let's) give them the tools as much as possible so they can do this," Loewen said. Because they know the problems the best of all out of everyone involved. They know what they're dealing with. The vast majority of them are the people on the lake that are dealing with the problems."

Stearns County has also recently launched its FiveStar Lake Service Provider Initiative aimed at companies that move docks in and out of lakes or operate marinas. Providers commit to implementing several safeguards against AIS, and in return the county lists these providers on its website, encouraging customers to solicit these providers or ask others why they haven't taken the steps to become one.

"That has been a gap in the programming in the past," Loewen said. "Not just us. It's been a recognized gap in the state. ... We can do a better job working with our lake service providers."

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What can you do?

There are many opportunities to pitch in to prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species:

• Join Starry Trek. The Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center runs this statewide event in which volunteers receive same-day training and visit various lakes in groups to look for starry stonewort, a new invasive algae first found in Lake Koronis in 2015. Sherburne and Stearns counties have had groups participating in past years and likely will again. "That's a full day of aquatic invasive species work that is entirely volunteer-driven," Cibulka said. Sherburne County participants have found early infestations this way, not just of starry stonewort but of other invasive species, too.
• Become an AIS Detector. The DNR offers an online course to introduce citizens to aquatic invasive species science, identification and surveillance. The program is open to anyone 18 years old and older. The course requires a one-time $150 fee, but scholarships and sponsorships are available. Detectors can then maintain their status by volunteering and continuing their education.
• Join the Benton County AIS task force. Benton County's task force has an opening for a Mississippi River representative for a resident with some connection to the Mississippi River, whether they live along the river, use it for recreation or have another connection. Contact Roxanne Achman with Benton County.
• Sample for zebra mussels. Cibulka said Sherburne County has dozens of volunteers each year who hang sampler plates off their docks to look for signs of zebra mussels. This system has successfully identified zebra mussel infestations in Sherburne County in the past, he said.
• Get connected with your local lake association. Loewen suggests asking what kind of help it might need.
• Pledge to prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species in Minnesota. In June, the DNR started an online pledge program. You can pledge to follow Minnesota's clean/drain/dispose laws and encourage others to do so as well.
• Clean and drain your boat and dispose of bait in the trash. "Take ownership of the problem," Loewen said. "We all have a role to play in it."

Sarah Kocher is the business reporter for the St. Cloud Times. Reach her at 320-255-8799 or skocher@stcloudtimes.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahAKocher.

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