Imagine if every community in Minnesota had a "watershed neighbor network". That is, an organized base of neighbors who:

*Learn together about the condition of their local lake or river;

*Help each other implement lake or river-friendly home projects or practices;

*Organize citizen-led, neighborhood-wide events in which residents work as a community to prevent pollutants from the watershed from entering local waters;

*Work in partnership with government, nonprofits, educational institutions, and businesses in protecting and restoring local waters.

Now imagine all those watershed neighbor networks linked, forming a statewide web of watershed literate, collaborating communities capable of dramatically reducing “non-point” runoff, the greatest water quality challenge of our generation. The results would be phenomenal.

My neighbors and I are inspired by this vision and have taken the first step by forming the Como Lake Neighbor Network (CLNN) in Saint Paul. We have the beginnings of a good idea we think. And feel the methods we have used so far to organize ourselves and engage other neighbors are effective and could have wide-spread impact.

We want to use $15,000 to create a large neighbor network “demonstration project” – to fully flesh out an effective organizing model, show the impact an organized base of neighbors can have on local water issues, and demonstrate the public CAN be a valuable partner with government in managing our water resources and in tackling the conundrum of non-point source pollution.

We think if we tripled the number of households in our network from 18 to 60 this would give us a solid base. We then could test our organizing model with sister communities, distill it to uncover the essential elements, and share the framework with other communities, which they could adapt to their own circumstances. We then could seek future funding to build our vision of a statewide web of linked watershed neighbor networks!

We are neighbors living in the Como neighborhood of Saint Paul, so our community and the water body we are concerned about is place-based.

Our community's most resonating water challenge is the poor condition of our neighborhood lake, Como Lake. Like many of the urban lakes and rivers across Minnesota, Como Lake is impaired due to excessive concentrations of phosphorus. This is fueling an explosion of plant growth – noxious algae being the most harmful – that's unnatural, even for a shallow lake. This imbalance harms not only the wildlife, it also disrupts our lake’s ability to “stabilize.” In time beautiful Como Lake could become a swamp.

To prevent this travesty, we need to “turn off the faucet” of phosphorus that’s washing into our lake every year via our neighborhood storm sewers – a dramatic reduction of 60%, our watershed district tells us. Primarily the phosphorus comes from leaves, grass clippings, fertilizer and sediment that's carried from our neighborhood yards and streets into our stormwater drains by wind and rain.

Our watershed district and the cities that own the storm sewers that empty to Como Lake have installed several structures that help “settle out” or filter some organics. But these alone are not enough to restore our lake. To get beyond the tipping point, a critical mass of residents are needed to prevent phosphorus at the source. Examples include cleaning up organics from curbs and storm drains; installing rain gardens, diverting downspouts from hard surfaces, improving an impacted lawn.

We think this challenge is really an opportunity in disguise - to demonstrate the critical role the public can and must play in addressing "non-point source" pollution, our state's most vexing water quality dilemma. Supportive structures at the neighborhood level - such as a neighbor network - allow us to learn, to problem-solve, and take action collaboratively.