Jul. 18—Two popular and highly successful watershed education programs for students in the Red River Basin are in financial limbo after program staff learned they will not receive funding from the state of Minnesota for the biennium beginning in July 2026.
Program advocates, however, say they’ll explore other options to keep River Watch and its affiliated River of Dreams program afloat until they can hopefully get state funding back on track.
The Fargo-based International Water Institute administers the River Watch high school program and the River of Dreams program for fifth- and sixth-grade students.
“It’s like the signature program of the Institute,” said Chuck Fritz, the IWI’s executive director. “We’ll do what we can (without the funding), but ultimately, I think it comes down to being able to demonstrate the amount of support and successes that the program has (shown).
“Have we not done a good enough job of (showing) that? I don’t know.”
Now in its 30th year, River Watch
started in 1995 as a pilot project in the Sand Hill River Watershed District
of northwest Minnesota, with funding from the district and the Red River Watershed Management Board (RRWMB).
Based in Ada, the RRWMB — or “Red Board,” as it’s known for short — consists of seven watershed districts in the Minnesota portion of the Red River Basin, with a focus on flood control and water quality programs.
What started with four schools — Fosston, Win-E-Mac, Fertile-Beltrami and Climax — has grown into a basin-wide River Watch program with some 30 high schools in both Minnesota and North Dakota.
River of Dreams, a spinoff program, started in 2016,
with some 1,700 elementary students — 1,000 in Minnesota and 700 in North Dakota — participating this year.
“We have about 80 teachers in River of Dreams and about 30 in River Watch,” said Asher Kingery, IWI project specialist, whose job is closely tied to both programs. “We’re kind of tied into over 100 classrooms on a pretty permanent basis. There’s a lot of momentum moving forward with doing watershed education, and we’re seen as the group that has been around a long time and the group to use as an example.”
River Watch students monitor water quality and macroinvertebrates in the watersheds where they live, sharing the data with the IWI, which in turn shares it with state agencies in Minnesota and North Dakota. Students also participate in other activities such as canoeing and an
annual River Watch Forum,
held in February at the Alerus Center in Grand Forks.
River of Dreams students, meanwhile, decorate miniature canoes and send them down Red River tributaries, where the boats potentially can reach the Red River, Lake Winnipeg and even Hudson Bay. Each student-decorated canoe carries an identification number and a link where people who find a canoe can report the discovery before returning it to the water.
River of Dreams students also write short stories to put in their hand-decorated canoes before sending them on their way.
The mission, of course, is to teach the students that water connects everyone.
“We deliver the watershed lessons so the teachers are able to do what they’re good at, and we’re able to do what we’re good at,” Kingery said. “(River of Dreams) is the sought-after project for kids when they’re coming into fifth grade. A lot of times, it’s the first day of school, they know that they’re going to launch a canoe that year and … they’re pumped.”
Jeff Lund, superintendent of the Marshall County Central School District in Newfolden, Minnesota, said the programs provide a “rewarding learning experience” for both River Watch and River of Dreams students.
MCC teachers involved with the two programs have even gone to St. Paul to testify for funding support at the Legislature, Lund said.
“From a school administrator standpoint, we value authentic learning experiences, and this gives kids — especially those that have a high interest in science — an opportunity to practice those skills,” Lund said. “Perhaps, those are things they might do in a future career and so those opportunities are invaluable.
“They feel like they’re part of something; they’re learning through the process, and they’re helping all these entities with this information. They have a system where they share their information, and it’s very helpful.”
River Watch and, more recently, River of Dreams, have had “great support” from the Minnesota Legislature since 2008, when voters approved the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment, the IWI’s Fritz said.
With Legacy Amendment funding, the IWI has gotten from $150,000 to $170,000 annually in Clean Water funds from the Minnesota Legislature for River Watch and River of Dreams, earmarked through the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency as part of its water quality monitoring program, Fritz said.
Until this year, that is.
Unlike previous sessions, the Minnesota Legislature did not appropriate money to River Watch for the 2026-27 biennium, said Glenn Skuta, director of the MPCA’s Watershed Division. In the past, the Red Board has worked with legislators to get the River Watch appropriation in the Legacy Finance bill, which includes appropriations from the Clean Water fund, Skuta said.
This year, the Senate included River Watch funding in its version of the bill, but the program didn’t even get a hearing in the House.
As lawmakers grappled with
a looming $6 billion budget deficit,
the program apparently got lost in the shuffle.
“For years, (River Watch) was a perfect fit, but for some reason this year — and given that what happened in the Legislature this year wasn’t pretty — we just got nixed,” Fritz said. “There’s a lot of things St. Paul should and could do, but this is one where you go, ‘Man, this is a no-brainer, folks.’ I just don’t understand it.”
As a result, the Clean Water Council, a 28-member panel that determines how Clean Water funds are spent, didn’t include the River Watch earmark in its funding recommendations for MPCA monitoring programs.
The Red Board historically has distributed the earmarked funds to River Watch and River of Dreams, along with a dollar-for-dollar local match, as part of a contract with the IWI, said Rob Sip, the Red Board’s executive director.
“Unfortunately, we took a hit this year,” Sip said. On the upside, he said, the current contract with the IWI continues through March 31, 2026, and the Red Board will fund the programs through June 30, 2026.
“It’s that next year that’s kind of the issue,” Sip said. “I know my board is real supportive of the program; they’ll fund as much as we can.”
The programs are “too good to lose,” said John Finney of Humboldt, Minnesota, the Red Board’s president. “We’ve got to get the state on board to give us some steady source of funding,” he said.
Today’s River of Dreams and River Watch students are tomorrow’s water managers and board members, Finney says.
“These are the kids that, if they get involved with that in high school, they’re going to say, ‘Hey, I remember (River Watch),’ ” Finney said. “And if somebody needs to be on a watershed board or something like that, it’s ‘Oh, that interests me. And I’m going to take the place of these old gray beards that have been at it forever and ever and ever.'”
Despite the setback in St. Paul, the Red Board and the IWI will continue to explore funding options going forward, Sip said. That includes going back to the Legislature next year, applying for grants and exploring how to become more involved in the Clean Water Council’s funding process.
The earmark through MPCA has been a key funding source, but various North Dakota entities also contribute to River Watch and River of Dreams, Sip said.
“It’s a big chunk of change that supports the program, both Minnesota and North Dakota local governments,” he said. “It just shows that there’s a lot of leveraging going on, a lot of support for the program. And when one big funder doesn’t do anything, it just leaves the other funders with more pressure.”
In the meantime, with funding secured through next June, Fritz says he’s telling IWI staff — four full-time and one part-time — who work on River Watch and River of Dreams to proceed with business as usual.
“I told Asher and his team, you guys go full bore, deliver the program like nothing (has changed) and over the next three to six months, we’ll work on trying to figure out getting funding for ’26-’27,” Fritz said.