Stormwater Pond Rehabilitation Assessment

The City has contracted with Barr Engineering to help the city develop a prioritization of stormwater ponds in need to dredging and other rehabilitation work to improve management of surface runoff.

Six ponds have been designated as the initial priority based on the presence of significant sediment plumes, vegetation growth, or deteriorating storm pipes: John North Park, Grant Park, Hidden Valley Park, Sibley View ponds (north of Jefferson Pkwy to the east and west of Washington St S), and the small pond to the west of Heywood Rd. between Sunset and Creek Lane.

The week of June 28 survey crews from Barr will be mapping the bathymetry of the ponds and determining the elevation of inlets and outlets to the ponds. State regulations require testing of sediment samples from the pond in order to determine whether special treatment is required of dredged materials. Barr Engineering will conduct the core sampling and testing in coming weeks. Once the pond assessments are complete a rehabilitation plan and schedule will be developed for each pond.

Funding for the pond assessments and rehabilitation comes from the city’s stormwater utility fund. The city will continually work through the inventory of stormwater ponds to ensure proper functionality of the ponds as part of the citywide stormwater infrastructure.

It should be noted that treatment of stormwater is the priority function of these ponds.

Metro storm-water ponds are chemical soups

By TOM MEERSMAN, Star Tribune
Last update: April 27, 2010 – 12:30 PM

White Bear Lake’s proposed ban on some driveway sealants is a first step in keeping contaminants out of storm-water ponds.  The local neighborhood pond fringed with spring green looks attractive, but its muddy bottom is loaded with contaminants.

Friday, April 30, 3-6p.m. AND

Saturday, May 1, 10am-1pm (or until they run out of trees)

in the front of the store, 516 Water St S.

Cost: FREE

To encourage the planting of native hardwood trees in our community, the Northfield Tree Advisory Group of the Environmental Quality Commission (in collaboration with the Rice County Forestry Board, the DNR and Just Food) will distribute 1000 native tree saplings to Northfield residents who agree to plant and care for the trees on private properties in Northfield. The tree saplings will be distributed on a first come first serve basis at Just Food Co-op (516 Water Street South) on Saturday, May 1, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. at Just Food.  Experienced tree handlers will be on hand with advice on tree selection, planting and ongoing care. The tree saplings are bare root stock, native tree species cultivated from Minnesota seeds by the MN Department of Natural Resources for Spring planting, and measure approximately 8- 12”. Choose from Red, White or Burr Oak, Sugar Maple, and Norway or White Pine saplings (limit four per household).

Similar trees will also be given away by another group at Just Food Co-op on Friday, April 30 from 3-6 p.m.

We also have one or now we think more than one raccoon that loves grape jelly.  He has been raiding my Oriole feeder every night and is quite messy.  Sticky grape paw prints everywhere!  Well we celebrated his capture and subsequent release many miles away…  he/she was not a happy camper.  We had put a rug down so that it didn’t tear up my outdoor rug on the deck.  That worked but it took half an hour to get it out of the bars on the cage…  it had pulled it through every little hole on the bottom of the cage.

Lawn Care (this blue copy is a link,  just click on it and another page will open with the permanent information listed on this site in the Pages)

Agenda for June 9th, 2009 VPTA Meeting

Old Business:

1. Nomination and election of officers
2. Review of committee members
3. Review of audit committee report
4. Insurance quote
5. Flowers for Jean Leese – Sherry

New Business:

1. Fire in bldg. 2
2. Driveway sealcoating
3. Lawn Care information on blog
4. Board rep. guidelines

Please call or email Gary Freking, 645-6128, gafrek@gmail.com if you have additional items to be discussed.

The meeting will be at  1900 Lincoln St. S…  on the Freking’s Deck at 7:00 pm.

I also added this as a page on the right side bar so it would be a constant on the blog site…  but thought it would be a nice thing to point out.  Maybe others have old documents that would be appropriate to add to the documents.  Email or call me if you have something that you would like to share, I can scan is for you.

Last year we became concerned that even when we were gone the paper was delivered.  We saw this as an indication that there was no one home.  As we looked around we saw that there were many places that the paper just piled up at the front door, in the bushes and in the driveway, even when people were home.  This was  especially evident in the winter when the garage is so frequently used to enter the home.  Griff contacted the Northfield news and discovered that we could indeed cancel the Shopper.  Here is a link to the original post on Locally Grown.  Visit this link to read the story.  So far it has been successful most of the time.  The delivery person needs a reminder every now and then.