We Have A Creek To Our East - Now The County Needs To Do Some Maintenance

Last night, as soon as I unloaded my computer and other stuff from work into the house, DH and I headed over to our City Council building for a meeting with the District Watershed authority. They were holding a town council meeting for everyone affected by a ditch project that will be happening for the local watershed district. Since our property is directly at the watershed ditch, we obviously wanted to know what would happen that could affect our property, and what charges we will be assessed. 

The Rice Creek Watershed District is a huge area, and our 
little area of concern is in the Southwestern portion of this map. 
I was rather amazed by how much area they are really 
responsible for. It's massive. 

Fortunately, the watershed is a large area - from far South to the far North. Our section is one tiny little bit of it, so our assessment is all of $25 (estimated) and we can certainly afford that. The actual work won't be happening until next Fall, but preliminary surveys etc will be done starting in the early Summer. Larger properties will have much larger payments assessed - into the thousands of dollars for large shopping centers and the small private college across the street from my house. 

This particular project begins at Oasis Pond, an easy 1/2 
mile south of our house, and continues north through 
Little Lake Johanna and into the larger Lake Johanna to 
the north - perhaps 3-4 miles north of us. 

The meeting took until almost 8:15 pm, so I had a VERY late dinner and went to bed. I got absolutely NOTHING done with work I had brought home with me, so I ended up doing most of that first thing this morning instead. Thus, I'm more than an hour late getting my blog up today. But it's all good - LOL. At least this time dealing with government isn't leaving me with a bad taste in my mouth, and we may get some good from this project in the long term. 

What they're going to be doing is clearing away brush and 
trees from the waterway, and pulling trees from the bank 
up to the easement, then planting stabilizing grasses that will 
take root over next winter. We'll lose some of our tree cover 
between our backyard and the nursing home on the East bank. 
That doesn't thrill us. We might also lose some of the sugar 
maples we've been encouraging to grow on our bank. I do 
think a walk-through with them will be essential. 

They offered to do a walk-through with us next year, closer to the time when they'll actually be doing the work, and we'll take them up on it. I now have their business cards taped to the side of my refrigerator, so I don't lose the contact information. 

The other thing I had to do this morning was hang two strands of silk to stretch out for necklaces I want to have at the shop, and get a shipping label on my holiday gift for Sharon. Yo! Shar ... your holiday box is being sent to you via Priority Mail today. DON'T OPEN THE BOX. If I had wrapped it at all, it wouldn't have fit into a Priority Mail container, so it's unwrapped, just well packed to be secure and safe. 

This photo could easily be from our part of the creek, looking 
West onto our property. Our bank is that steep. And we have 
that many trees to deal with. It'll be interesting to see what 
they'll do with our particular situation. We're the last house 
before the water continues into Little Lake Johanna, just 
past the college. 

And ... unfortunately, ... the Wild (that's ice hockey, if you forgot), happened to lose their game last night against Vancouver. *sigh* We had been on such a nice streak since our Coach was fired and replaced with a new one. Hopefully we'll be back on a winning streak tonight while we're at Edmonton, Canada. Then the team can relax until Sunday at Seattle. So ... I'm wrapping this up and continuing a day that promises to be a busy one. I hope your Friday is awesome and I'll be back tomorrow. Slava Ukraini and חיים למען ישראל.