Fall 2012 Como Curb Cleanup results show record turnout in Como Park

October 13th through October 21st Como residents turned out in record numbers to take part in the Como Curb Cleanup. The results for Fall 2012’s effort: 1,290 bags! This is nearly double the record from Fall 2011 of 671 bags. Thank you, Como neighbors!

The Como Curb Cleanup is an annual, community-wide effort to clean up leaves and other organic debris from curbs and street gutters. In doing this, residents prevent phosphorus from leaching out of the leaves, as stormwater flows through them, and into storm sewers that drain to Como Lake and the Mississippi River. Como Lake is already degraded due to excessive phosphorus concentrations.

This year we determined, on average, a ‘bag’ contained 9 pounds of dry leaf litter. Multiply this by 1,290 and we come up with 11, 610 pounds of leaves removed from our street gutters.

The Como Lake Neighbor Network is now working with the University of Minnesota, Capitol Region Watershed District, and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to come up with a close approximation of how many pounds of phosphorus our one-week effort prevented from entering our local waters. We plan to share this number at CLNN.org sometime in early December.

These results are remarkable. They demonstrate how much Como neighbors value Como Lake. And they demonstrate the pollution prevention impact we can have as a community when we work collaboratively towards a shared goal. These results also demonstrate the willingness of Como citizens to work in partnership with local government in restoring Como Lake to a healthy, stable condition.

We are now gathering feedback about this year’s cleanup and ideas to make next year’s effort even better. If you are a Como resident who participated in the effort, please go to CLNN.org to complete an online survey. Or you can send an email to janna@watercircles.org or call 651-261-7416.

We also want to thank our many partners who provided critical collaboration and support for this project. We especially want to thank Capitol Region Watershed District for providing generous grant funding. Our list of partners grows every year.