We all love our nearest natural area Lake Hiawatha, but did you know that most of our neighborhood streets flow directly into Lake Hiawatha untreated?
Corcoran GROWS and the Friends of Lake Hiawatha invite you to take our Clean Water Pledge this fall to help us reduce the flow of of trash, leaves and pet waste from our boulevards, yards and alleys into Lake Hiawatha.
Through our actions together over the next few years, with others who live upstream along Minnehaha Creek, we can restore Lake Hiawatha to a swimmable lake, with beautiful wild life habitat. Lake Hiawatha was originally named Rice Lake. Wouldn’t it be great if we could grow wild rice there again?
We are looking for 10 block captains to each reach 6 neighbors to meet our goal to engage Corcoran 60 neighbors to take action for water quality.
Take our Clean Water Pledge today (and get our yard sign) online at www.afors.org/cleanwaterpledge to take one or more of these fun actions
- Adopt your storm drain – regularly clean out sticks, leaves and trash from your nearest Storm Drain (in partnership with 
Minneapolis Public Works)
- Adopt your Curb/Street – rake & bag or compost leaves this fall (before it rains or snows)
- Clean Water Lawn Care – mow at 3”, keep grass clippings out of the street, no pesticides, etc.
- Installing a rain garden or rain barrel, and direct down spouts away from hard surfaces.
You can also sign up to help at our Corcoran GROWS Water Quality Display at the Midtown Farmers Market in mid-September.
Corcoran GROWS and the Alliance for Sustainability have received a Hennepin County Green Partners grant to support our efforts to clean up Lake Hiawatha, enabling us to provide free supplies for our cleanup efforts, discounts for rain barrels, and rain garden materials. Through this project our neighbor Sandy Spieler will also offer a puppet show and arts workshop for Corcoran neighbors on the theme of clean water.
A small victory! The Friends of Lake Hiawatha supported Council Member Andrew Johnson to get approval for a trash capturing net installed on the large culvert on the north end of Lake Hiawatha. However the current trash net is still letting a lot of trash flow into the lake. Join us in coming up with new solutions with City staff at the next meeting of the Friends of Lake Hiawatha on Thurs, Sept 29 at 6pm at the SENA office 1830 East 42nd Street Minneapolis, MN 55407. Details at www.friendsoflakehiawatha.org
To get involved with our Water Quality Campaign with Corcoran GROWS please contact Corcoran GROWS volunteers: Sean Gosiewski at 612-250-0389 or [email protected] and Paula Holden at [email protected]
