My Outdoor Life: State's rivers got his full attention

Paul Nordell's life as a conservationist started as a kid going on walks in the woods with his dog in Worthington, Minn.

By the 1960s, he was guiding trips through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, advocating for hauling out garbage, rather than burying it or sinking it in the lakes as once was customary.

"I gained an appreciation for the outdoors early on," he said. "It was just the freedom of exploration and the chance to be impressed by and fascinated with God's creation."

His inclination toward the natural world led to a nearly 35-year career working for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, from which he retired in January. His biggest assignment came 10 years into that career, in 1991, when he was appointed to establish the Adopt-a-River program. Since that time he has facilitated the cleanup of 6.5 million pounds of waste by 100,000 volunteers from 11,000 miles of public waters.

He still counsels the program, and said he is hopeful it will continue to make an impact long after his tenure. In a recent interview, Nordell, 67, reminisced about the effect and legacy of Adopt-a-River.

Before the first waste treatment plant opened on the Mississippi in the 1930s, people were starting to move away from the river because it was more of a sewer than a resource. The "toilet" was getting plugged every time they built a new dam, so once the natural flushing of the river stopped, it made a big, frothy mess at the dam. I think because of that, other things started to get dumped because no one could stand to be down there anyway. I've talked to people who as kids in the early 1960s would go down to the river flats at the gorge in Minneapolis and their idea of recreation was riding dirt bikes in and out of large appliances along the riverbanks. It sounds puzzling in this day and age, but disposal of things was a problem.

The birthing moment for Adopt-a-River was probably the (Gov. Rudy) Perpich-driven cleanup down in ­Lilydale in St. Paul in 1988. Lilydale was definitely the first, but another area that has dramatically turned around was Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary. In 2003, it was an abandoned rail yard that became a dumping area like Lilydale. Fences had fallen down and no one was watching, so dumping was piling up. When the deed went over to the city, I was able to mobilize the Minnesota Four Wheel Drive Association to do a service project. Later, a whole bunch of other people came along and shaped it into what it is today. A wildlife easement now goes through there. It's kind of revolutionary for the DNR to pick up an old industrial property, but there was enough interest in cleaning it up, reshaping it, and turning it into a nature sanctuary right under the nose of downtown St. Paul.

If you go to Minneapolis City Hall you see the big Father of Waters statue. When that was put up, they were celebrating the power of St. Anthony Falls and the river. They were thinking about milling in the 1890s. At a certain point that started to fade, and we stopped celebrating the river as an industrial center. So it became an industrial rust belt of sorts until people said, 'Wait a minute, there is something else we can celebrate in terms of the heritage of the river, but we have to make it something worth looking at first.' Now we have lights down on the river, and we've lit up the Stone Arch Bridge. It's been an uphill battle for those who had the vision. Before it was popular, you just had to champion the riverfront and clean it up. Both Minneapolis and St. Paul have worked very hard over the last few decades to turn around the consciousness, and Adopt-a-River has just been part of that.

People don't usually dump things in the river purposely — it washes in by accident, especially when there is a flood. With Adopt-a-River, we aren't usually cleaning up people's intentional criminality, but rather people's oversight or carelessness. You empty your ashtray on the ground when you stop at an intersection and all those cigarette butts will end up on the shoreline from here to St. Louis and beyond, which then accumulates in the middle of the oceans. What I've tried to do over the years is to help people think about how their local actions have global implications.

To this day, I tell people, if you are enjoying a piece of shoreline in the state, you have people to thank, because that didn't happen by accident. And if we don't watch our step, problems will arise. It's always been a great exhilaration when I leave my desk and show up at a site to get my feet wet. I get inspired and recharged in about the first 30 minutes looking along the river and seeing the difference we've made. It's the realization that you can make it look untouched, and that's one of the things people look for in their outdoor recreational experiences — they want to get away from the crowds. If trash is everywhere, they are disgusted, rather than inspired. Once you get a little river mud on your hands volunteering with Adopt-a-River, you never think about the river the same way again, because then you have ownership. That's how I've tried to shape the program over the last 25 years.

Mackenzie Lobby Havey is a freelance writer from Minneapolis.