Cerro Gordo County joins Winnebago River Watershed Management Coalition

MASON CITY — The Cerro Gordo County Board of Supervisors today approved the county’s participation in the Winnebago River Watershed Management Coalition.

County Conservation Director Josh Brandt says it will be similar to the Shell Rock River coalition that the county joined two years ago.  “Basically what it does is it gets us a seat at the table to be part of an ongoing discussion as far as helping to create some positive management within the watershed. There’s no financial cost associated with being a member of it, it’s just again puts us at the table with other stakeholders, people from different cities and counties within that watershed.”

Brandt says the Shell Rock coalition has been working over the last two years on implementing a plan on managing the river.   “There’s quarterly meetings that are set up, and I’m assuming this one will be organized in the same fashion. Quarterly meetings are regular, and then we had some additional planning meetings during the different phases of developing the comprehensive plan. We put out RFQs for different consulting firms to develop that plan, so we had an interview process with those consulting firms and hired a consulting firm to develop that plan. That’s about wrapped up and ready to be put out there and trying to implement some of those practices.”

The supervisors unanimously approved joining the Winnebago River coalition and appointing Brandt as their representative.