Are you looking for volunteer work while also staying safe during the pandemic? Join Minnesota’s Adopt a Drain program and help keep your neighborhood clean!

Adopt-A-Storm-Drain is a metro wide program that seeks to keep debris from entering our rivers and lakes. Every year, leaves and grass fall into our city storm drains and flow into the nearest lake or river. Algae is fed by this organic matter and makes our water bodies thick and green. Fighting this problem is important work that keeps our lakes clean and biodiverse.

So far in Minnesota, 13,653 drains have been adopted and volunteers have prevented 251,422 lbs. of debris from entering our waters! But, there are more than 300,000 storm drains in the metro area. Imagine all the debris that we are missing which in a natural landscape would never reach our lakes. Help improve these numbers and adopt a nearby drain today!

Sign up Here: adopt-a-drain.org

Keep them out of the street

In addition, don’t sweep leaves into the street or the creek. Monitor your lawn care companies to make sure they are illegally dumping leaves or grass clippings into a water body or into your backyard forest. This can harm soil health, and may also harm the creek or lake. It’s better to mulch them into your lawn or garden, or compost them instead.

Adopt a drain

Check out this video from MN Water Steward Michelle Spangler!

View Video Transcript

Hi, I’m Michelle Spangler, Minnesota Water Steward here in Northeast Minneapolis, and I’m asking you to join me in adopting a storm drain. Since our storm drains flow right into our local waterways, keeping them clear of debris is really important.

Adopting a drain is really easy. It takes about 15 minutes twice a month in order to keep your drain clean. If you’re on a busy street corner, you might want to set up some cones or put on a reflective vest to make sure that you stay visible to people in cars. Some of the tools that I find helpful in cleaning a storm drain are a rake, a broom, and a dust pan.

To clean the storm drain, make sure you’ve got your gloves on. If there’s any trash or recycling, you’ll want to sort that and keep that separate. For leaves and sediment, sticks and things like that, you’ll just sweep those off. It’s important to clean the area on the surface of the grate as well as the area around it, because anything that’s on that pavement can be swept into the storm drain during a rain event.

Working together we can keep our neighborhoods clean and also protect our most important natural resource: our local lakes and rivers. Learn more or sign up to adopt a drain at adopt-a-drain.org.