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The Brown’s Creek Watershed District: Improving Water Body Health in an Urbanizing Area
Staff from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources carry out a fish survey in Brown’s Creek.
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he Brown’s Creek Watershed District (BCWD), located near Stillwater, Minnesota, was recently recognized by the Water Environment Federation with its Water Quality Improvement Award for reducing runoff and pollution to the trout stream it works to protect. Despite being located in a quickly urbanizing area, the BCWD has managed to improve the biological health of local water bodies with the result that native species are returning in a sustainable manner. In this interview, BCWD Administrator Karen Kill tells Municipal Water Leader about the agency’s activities and the successes it is seeing. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.
34 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | February 2021
engineering services; contract with Smith Partners for legal services; and coordinate with the Washington Conservation District for a lot of technical services. In the Land of 10,000 Lakes, there is definitely a lot of water, including rivers and a lot of surface water. In our denser, more urban area, the state requires there to be a watershed management organization of some kind. We are a watershed district; entities of this kind have a board that is appointed by the county commissioners who represent our area. Our board is authorized to levy an ad valorem tax through property tax levies to raise money for projects that improve and protect the quality of surface water and groundwater and protect against flooding. Watershed districts come in a lot of different sizes. Some cover 1,000 square miles or more. Our watershed is small: only about 30 square miles. The thing that we all have in common is that our boundaries follow watershed boundaries, not political boundaries. Water doesn’t follow political boundaries, so it is useful to have an entity that can municipalwaterleader.com
PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE BCWD.
Karen Kill: Since 2002, I have been the administrator of the Brown’s Creek Watershed District, which has been in existence since 1997. I work with the five-member management board that oversees the BCWD’s activities. I am one of the only staff, but we contract with Emmons & Olivier Resources, Inc., for
A trout reach on the lower creek.
