Amity Restoration Assessment: Water quality, fish, bugs, people

Abstract

This project is also a new contribution from the Weber Stream Restoration Initiative (WSRI) that began in 2005 via private endowments to create a Partnership of university scientists and extension educators, and local, state and federal agency staff to restore and protect Lake Superior Basin trout streams (www.lakesuperiorstreams.org/weber/index.html). The WSRI features a demonstration project targeting the turbidity and sediment impaired Amity Creek watershed for multiple restoration activities. It was awarded an Environmental Stewardship Award from the Lake Superior Binational Forum in 2010 and was honored state-wide by the [Minnesota] Environmental Initiative in May 2013 by being awarded the “Partnership of the Year” for its activities, key elements being: (1) its website for local community education about watershed and water resource issues; (2) creation of interactive, on-line animations of real-time water quality with interpretive information from a site near Amity’s discharge into the Lester River just above its discharge into Lake Superior (within the St. Louis River AOC); (3) development of a multi-agency/organization partnership to pursue trout stream restoration and conservation activities throughout the western Lake Superior basin; (4) designing and carrying out two major Amity restoration projects in 2009 with the City of Duluth and South St. Louis SWCD; (5) mapping landscape stressors for highlighting areas of higher risk for environmental impacts as well as conducting a detailed reconnaissance of riparian zone sediment sources for priority remediation (SSL SWCD, 2009); and (6) developing a successful EPA Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) project to fund additional restoration related activities from 2010-2014 (MPCA, NRRI-UMD, SSL SWCD partnership, 2010, $843,616).