Your Input Needed to Guide Future of Vermillion River Corridor
FMR and volunteers work to count fish along the Vermillion River Corridor in 2005. Photo: Katie Galloway / FMR
Published June 17, 2009. If you'd like to help restore the Vermillion River, learn more about joining the Vermillion River Stewards.
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The Vermillion River corridor means many things to many people. Farmers have benefited from the fertile lands through the corridor. Anglers look to the River itself as a designated trout fishery. An interconnected web of plant and animal life calls the corridor home. The corridor serves several current and potential future recreational uses. And increasingly, rapid change is coming in the form of suburban development.
To plan the many issues and challenges facing the Vermillion River Corridor, Friends of the Mississippi River is teaming with Dakota County and Hoisington Koegler Group to conduct a series of outreach events this summer. Together, stakeholders will create a plan that reinforces the site's natural support functions to protect water quality, enhance wildlife habitat, provide appropriate recreational opportunities, and lay the foundation for future growth.
"We're trying to protect water quality, we're trying to protect wildlife habitat, and to provide compatible recreational opportunities," Dakota County Conservation Manager Al Singer recently told the Star Tribune. "But also, we're trying to guide and enhance future development."
The first of three sets of workshops will discuss what makes the Vermillion River unique, review examples of other protected corridors, and help develop corridor concepts for the Vermillion.
Anyone is welcome to attend any of the following workshops. They follow a similar agenda, though each workshop focuses on a separate segment of the river. The first two workshops (Empire Focus Area and Hastings Focus Area) have already occurred. We invite you to attend the following three upcoming workshops:
Lakeville/Farmington District
Thursday, June 18, 2009
6:30 8:30 pm
University of Minnesota Dakota County Extension Office
4100 220th St W, Farmington, MN
Headwaters District
Monday, June 22, 2009
6:30 8:30 pmm
Farmington Library
508 Third St, Farmington, MN
Castle Rock/Marshan/Vermillion District
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
6:30 8:30 pmpm
University of Minnesota Dakota County Extension Office
4100 220th St W, Farmington
Follow-up workshops to be held later this summer will seek input to refine Corridor plan concepts and review strategies and projects to bring those concepts to fruition. A final workshop scheduled for this fall will review a draft plan that defines the corridor, outlines how everyone can collaborate on Corridor improvements, and recommends priority improvements.
As the planning progresses, FMR will provide updates on the planning process on this website and in Mississippi Messages. Otherwise, for additional questions, call FMR's Watershed Program Director, Trevor Russell, at 651-222-2193 x18.