Beltrami County Awarded Grant to Fight Aquatic Invasive Species in Lakes

Beltrami County Environmental Services appears in the Minnesota DNR grants table as the recipient of three 2023 AIS Control Grant offers, each for $3,000 and each targeting starry stonewort. The DNR rows list Beltrami (04-0135-00) SSW $3,000, Bemidji (04-0130-02) SSW $3,000, and Turtle River (04-0111-00) SSW $3,000, a combined $9,000 in grant offers aimed at delineation and treatment work.

The DNR program that produced those offers allocated $400,000 statewide in 2023, received 173 applications, and offered 102 grants. The DNR describes the program this way: "The Minnesota DNR’s Aquatic Invasive Species (AIS) Control Grant Program provides support to local entities (e.g., lake associations, local units of government and tribes) for the delineation and treatment of curly-leaf pondweed (CLP), Eurasian water milfoil (EWM), flowering rush (FR), and starry stonewort (SSW)." The grant application window ran from midnight November 10, 2022 through 9:00 a.m. December 12, 2022, and the DNR scheduled grant work for spring 2023 through June 30, 2024.

Those DNR offers arrive against a county AIS funding backdrop documented in Beltrami County’s 2022 AIS Program Report. The county recorded $205,576.00 in AIS State AID for 2022 and total AIS funding in 2022 of $224,044.70, which includes donor contributions. The report also notes a rapid response and management fund balance built in prior years of $32,522.79. Staffing is tied to that aid: "The pay for my position as the AIS Lake Technician comes out of the AIS AID money and 100% of my time is spent working on AIS prevention, monitoring, and [...]" — the line appears truncated in the county excerpt.

Beltrami County is actively participating in the Stop Starry Project as the county document states: "Beltrami County is part of the Stop Starry Project, a program sponsored by Minnesota Lakes and Rivers Advocates and Wildlife Forever funded by Fish and Waters Conservation Fund to get the tools out to boaters to help prevent the spread of starry stonewort (SSW)." The county report describes deployment of a "Clean, Drain, Dry, Dispose" (CD3) machine at public water accesses on lakes infested with SSW. The CD3 unit "will have flood lights, a 'shop vac' for removing excess water, and an air hose for blowing out water lines. The other tools are a grabber, boat plug wrench, and long-handled brush. The unit is internet-connected and, if activated, people can use it as a Wi‑Fi hotspot."

The county report lists seven waterbodies with SSW infestations and supplies recent public water access installation records in the excerpted table, shown here as provided: Turtle Lake State Water Access Site 04015900 3/28/2022 5/3/2022 Moose Lake State Water Access Site 04001100 2/14/2022 Wolf Lake State Water Access Site 04007900 3/24/2022 Beltrami Lake State Water Access Site 04013500 3/24/2022 5/3/2022 Cass Lake (E) USFS Water Access Site This is the Knutson dam campground site 4003000 2/14/2022 5/4/2022 Pimushe USFS water access site 4003200 2/3/2022 11/30/2022 West Wind Upper

Local partners listed in the county report include Northern Township, City of Bemidji, Grace Lake Association, Turtle River Watershed Association, and Farden Township - Hubbard County; the county report does not attach amounts to those entries in the supplied excerpt.

The DNR offers for Beltrami, Bemidji and Turtle River align with the statewide program’s focus on SSW as an eligible target for delineation and treatment. The county’s own reporting underscores urgency: "Beltrami County has seven waterbodies with infestations of SSW. We (all of us) need to act now to prevent the spread of this invasive algae." County financial reserves from 2022 and the DNR grant offers together create a narrow pool of funds intended to support delineation, treatment and prevention work on lakes identified in the DNR table; county officials and the DNR can confirm acceptance of the offers and the specific treatment schedules and contractors that will be used.