MANKATO — By Linda Meschke’s estimates, the Blue Earth River Basin Initiative has reduced sediment getting into rivers by about 75,000 tons per year and reduced phosphorus by 72,000 pounds annually.

After 13 years of operation, BERBI is shutting down. The group had been created by the Soil and Water Conservation Districts in seven counties in the greater Blue Earth River watershed.

The decision to end BERBI was made three years ago when a new, larger coalition of SWCDs and counties received federal funding and joined together to create a new alliance to work on projects in the river basin.

Ron Harnack, director of the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources, said BERBI broke new ground. “You set an early standard of how to go about watershed management,” Harnack said during a ceremony Friday in Sibley Park, near the confluence of the Blue Earth and Minnesota rivers.

Speakers from several counties said BERBI was unique in setting priorities based on the entire watershed rather than trying to make sure each county received pieces of grants and programs.

Meschke, the coordinator of BERBI, said the group had many successes. “The pollution load to the Minnesota (River) from the Blue Earth system has been reduced by 9 percent since 1993 from projects BERBI has done.”

Over the years, BERBI used grant money to provide cost-sharing money to farmers and landowners for conservation projects.

“We did cost share for terraces, for ag waste improvements, sediment control structures, putting buffers around open tile intakes, we did stream bank stabilization and septic and community wastewater projects,” Meschke said.

BERBI, she said, focused on implementing projects. “Some groups just talk about things. We had changes on the ground.”

In its 13 years, BERBI garnered nearly $5 million in grants, which were used for projects that were often matched by other dollars. “When you look at the list of grants they received, it’s impressive,” said state Sen. Dennis Frederickson, R-New Ulm.

“They have 13 years of accomplishments in a watershed that needs work,” he said.

The Blue Earth River has long been identified as putting a heavy load of sediment and pollutants into the Minnesota River and eventually Mississippi River.

Even with a significant 9 percent reduction of pollution loads, Meschke said the Blue Earth watershed needs to do more. Federal clean water requirements call for reducing pollution loads from the watershed by 40 percent.

“We don’t have 40 years to get there. We need to get to a higher level more quickly than we have,” Meschke said.

To do that, Meschke has helped start a new non-profit called Rural Advantage to continue doing work in the watershed. Particularly, the new group will focus on so-called “Third Crop” work, something BERBI had been involved in in recent years.

The idea is to add a third crop beyond corn and soybeans in environmentally sensitive areas.

“The point isn’t to eliminate corn and soybeans. The point is to take the most environmentally sensitive 5 or 10 percent of the land in the basin and get it into something other than row crops.”

Some of the alternative crops include alfalfa and native grasses from which seeds are harvested and sold. There is also growing interest in growing grasses or other crops that can be used for bioenergy, such as to make ethanol. Those types of crops hold soil in place better than row crops and they filter out fertilizers that carry phosphorus into streams.

“We have a lot of interest in alternative crops. Economically, there are opportunities out there to have crops that are competitive with corn and soybeans,” Meschke said.

Rural Advantage, which has a board of directors, already has received grants of more than $1 million, from groups like Excel, McKnight Foundation, the Legislative Commission on Minnesota Resources, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service.