Beltrami Co. Board Updated on Stormwater Project, Community Health Assessments

The Beltrami County Board held a special work session yesterday to discuss a wide variety of topics, one of which was an update regarding the stormwater infiltration project at Bemidji State University.

Beltrami County Director of Environmental Services Brent Rud explained to the board that the project as a whole is set to finish only one day after planned, and should be done around June 21st. Rud went on to explain that although this project can stop many pollutants from entering Lake Bemidji, more projects may be considered.

“We budgeted a significant amount of money for urban stormwater projects over the next 10 years,” explained Rud. “We’re partnering with the City of Bemidji. We don’t have any identified right now. With this, we did a project on the southeast side of Lake Irving, and this one is another big one that we’ve done. And then now we’re going to the city and partnering on what they want to do next, too.”

Although the BSU project is coming to a close, it is not the only stormwater pollutant project for Lake Bemidji over the next few years.

The board also heard updates from the Beltrami County Public Health Department regarding their Community Health Assessment and Community Health Improvement Plan.

“We had 580 responses to our community survey. That’s the most we’ve ever had in the history of completing [this],” said Beltrami County Public Health Director and Community Health Services Administrator Amy Bowles. ” Their voice was heard for primary health areas that we want to focus on over the next five years. We’ll continue to meet and talk about how we’re doing to meet these strategic goals, how we’re measuring them, if we need to make adjustments to them. And maybe some of them aren’t achievable and some of them we achieve right away, and we can kind of check them off and just keep monitoring how we’re doing.”

The results of the Health Improvement Plan came from a survey that went out to the community last year to see what changes residents wanted to see in their local healthcare. The county board is now working on approving those changes in the coming months.