Goodhue County Administrator Scott Arneson presented Commissioner Linda Flanders with a 2023 National Association of Counties (NACo) Achievement Award last week for the Mighty Mississippi Cleanup Challenge.
NACo President Denise Winfrey. “This year’s winners represent some of the most innovative
and collaborative efforts we have seen in over 50 years of presenting these awards.”
Centered around grassroots collective action, the Mighty Mississippi Cleanup challenge was created to engage local government leaders and their constituents to create many small-scale solutions in order to address a large-scale issue.
In its first year, the cleanup challenge was extended to hundreds of Minnesota local governments along the Mississippi River.
Since the conclusion of the event on May 15th, dozens of local governments created events or means to help clean the Mississippi River.
Goodhue County received three challenge submissions with calculated metrics from Anoka County, Dakota County, and Ramsey County.
Goodhue County thanks all the local government entities who created events or means to aid in cleaning up the Mississippi River.
Anoka County - 85 Volunteers - 74 bags of trash - 53 bags of recyclables - 2 truckloads of larger debris.
Dakota County - 178 Volunteers - 335 participation hours - 2,387.5 lbs. of trash removed.
Ramsey County - 50 Volunteers - 50 bags of trash.