No Lake is an Island

Biking to work yesterday, I happened upon a crew busying themselves at Spring Lake's shore. "What's this all about?" I asked a guy dressed in bib waders. Ted from BlueWing Environmental Solutions and Technologies, as he turned out to be, explained that he's part of a project to improve Spring Lake's water quality. Ted was working with people from Midwest Floating Island and members of the American Society of Landscape Architects to install seven "floating treatment wetlands." Once in place, these islands made of recycled plastics and foam are colonized by microbes and plants which do the work of extracting excess nutrients from the impaired wetland.

Today at 1 pm there's a public event to launch the islands.

Read more about who's involved in this management initiative and how the islands work at Josephine Marcotty's True North Star Tribune blog: http://www.startribune.com/local/blogs/127522343.html.