After 15 years, Butler Lake restoration project in Meeker County nearing completion

Feb. 16—GROVE CITY

— Just a couple of miles south of the Atwater-Cosmos-Grove City Junior and High School in Grove City, a lesson in the challenges and importance of modern conservation is to be learned.

It's a lesson 15 years in the making, but one that will soon to come to fruition.

Workers with Diversified Excavating of Alexandria have been taking advantage of the lack of winter weather to excavate and install a new underground drainage tile as part of the Butler Lake Restoration Project in

Meeker County.

When their work is complete, part of the lake drained away a century ago will return, while neighboring farmlands should realize improved drainage.

"Cows don't like cattails and I don't like walking in mud, fixing fence," said Larry Rick, a landowner and livestock producer, when talking to the West Central Tribune about the project. It was Rick who first contacted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service about the possibility of restoring Butler Lake.

A concrete drainage tile installed by hand a century ago was no longer doing its job. Cattails and boot-sucking ground cover a part of the old lake bed and encroach on what had been pasture and cropland.

Rick said he was convinced there had to be some help from conservation entities to restore the wetland and improve the bordering land for agricultural use. He was hopeful of seeing the wetland restored so that it might attract swans to nest in it. He's been seeing the swans fly over in recent years.

Steve Erickson with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service office in Litchfield answered Rick's inquiry in 2009, and visited the site to see what could be done. Erickson told Rick it would not be possible to restore the entire approximately 200-acre lake.

One of the lessons here is that it is usually impossible to restore all that has been lost. A portion of Minnesota Highway 4 is built part of the drained lakebed, and restoring the entire lake would also flood land that is tilled for crops.

But Erickson said a portion of the lake could be restored as wetland, if all of the affected landowners approved it. Rick contacted the landowners, and learned one was not in support. That put the project on hold for a few years. Eventually, a change of ownership meant there was agreement among the five affected landowners.

When the lake was drained a century ago, the lakebed was carved up like a pie, and the land distributed accordingly to each of the bordering landowners, said Scott Glup, project leader for the Fish and Wildlife office in Litchfield. He and Erickson — who retired in 2016 — dug up all of the old records on Butler Lake, and learned the original project was challenging to say the least.

First petitioned for in 1919, the contractor who took the job walked away from it until a new agreement with the drainage authority could be reached. The lake bed was all peat, and he couldn't get the concrete tiles to set.

With a new contract, he succeeded and the lake was fully drained in 1923.

Workers dug much of the trench by hand, at hourly rates ranging from 40 cents to 65 cents an hour, according to records found by Glup. The 160-pound concrete segments were placed by hand on oak panels placed in the muck. There were days when the workers fled the clouds of mosquitoes.

For today's restoration, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service brought on partners — including Ducks Unlimited and Pheasants Forever — to engineer and help fund the project. North American Conservation Act money, raised through the sale of federal duck stamps, and Lessard Sams Outdoor Heritage Funds from the state of Minnesota also helped make it possible.

It was not without its challenges. It was discovered that the pie-shaped distribution of the original lake bed had never been adjudicated. As a result, that process, which required attorneys and court visits, had to be completed, according to Glup.

Another new problem soon confronted the project partners.

A woodland with prickly ash and cottonwoods so big you can't get your arms around them now stood above the failed tile line that needed replacing. Because the costs for removing the trees and replacing the line in its original path was prohibitive, said Glup, a new route for the line was designed. That meant getting easements and approval from a whole new set of landowners, along with the ditch authority as well.

Landowner support was critical in helping make it all happen, said Glup.

The funding support was critical of course. The Fish and Wildlife Service purchased easements for a total of 175 acres for the project, including upland acreage. Most of the easement lands will become grassland.

A control structure will allow the former lake to be restored to an approximate 65-acre wetland, roughly 3 to 4 feet in depth. Smaller wetlands surrounding the original lake will also return due to the project.

Importantly, the wetlands and surrounding grasslands will provide critical habitat for wildlife, waterfowl in particular.

The United States has lost more than 90% of its wetlands, and 99% of the native prairie grasslands around them, according to Ducks Unlimited. The combination provides important nesting habitat for waterfowl.

Glup said the wetlands will also help improve both water quality and agricultural drainage. Wetlands capture nutrients and slow erosion. The water storage helps reduce the pulse of high-volume flows during rain events that cause flooding.

The improvements to the drainage system made possible by the funding for habitat benefits the entire ditch system. Otherwise, the costs for replacing the century-old concrete line would have been assessed against the system.

Work at the site is underway right now.

It's interesting work to watch, but while looking it all over, Glup said he is especially looking forward to seeing what follows. The return of the wetlands and grasslands will be a glimpse back at the landscape that once made this part of the world the center of waterfowl production in North America.

Rick said he is looking forward to the day when he can watch swans glide into the restored wetland, and possibly, set up a nest. He is also optimistic for seeing a landscape where wetlands, grasslands and agriculture fit together well.

"Overall picture at the end, I think will be pretty nice," he said.