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Clean Streets Lead to Clean Water: Keep the leaves in your yard!

The way we care for our lawns has a huge impact on the environment and water quality. Particularly in the fall, rain washes dead leaves from our yards and streets into storm drains and directly into our lakes and rivers, feeding them with excess nutrients. These nutrients, like phosphorus and nitrogen, increase algae growth, lead to fish kills, and cause reduced water quality. Additionally, leaf litter carries other toxins and bacteria into our lakes, rivers, and streams. Proper fall lawn care keeps our waters clean, helps pollinators survive winter, and supports a more vigorous spring growing season. Here are three ways to keep leaves out of the street:

RAKE

Raking up your leaves is often the simplest solution. Bag your leaves after raking them and put them out for curbside collection or bring them to a yard waste drop-off site. Don’t forget to rake the street too, especially around any storm drains! Although many cities are increasing their street sweeping frequency, it is everyone’s responsibility to rake up leaves as they fall to keep them out of our waterways.

MULCH

Using a lawn mower to mulch fallen leaves can help add natural fertilizer back into your lawn and keep your grass healthy. Turfgrass is also better able to hold onto the smaller leaf bits so they don’t wash off into storm drains. If done regularly, this is a great option to keep your lawn healthy while protecting water quality.

COMPOST

Finally, if you have a backyard compost bin, leaf litter is a source of brown, dry material that balances out any wet, nitrogen-rich food scraps. If you don’t have a backyard compost bin, fall is a great time to start! Leaves add carbon into your compost pile to provide energy for the decomposition process. Compost from your backyard compost pile can be used as a soil amendment or as mulch. Learn more about composting in your backyard at hennepin.us/composting.

Protect our water this fall by raking, mulching, or composting the leaves on your property and signing up to adopt a drain near you! Adopting a drain in your neighborhood is a simple, low time commitment action that can make a huge improvement in environmental health. Sign up online at mn.adopt-a-drain.org.

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