News

Cindy Potz has been hired as the new YMRW District Administrator, taking over for Terry Renken, who retired on March 1, 2008 after 30 years of involvement with the Yellow Medicine River Watershed District, first as one of the watershed district managers, then for 10 years as the watershed administrator.

Cindy spent her childhood years with her siblings on a farm on the banks of the Blue Earth River in Winnebago, MN. Often, when gardening and animal chores were done, she boarded the duck boat, and oared both upstream and downstream, exploring and watching the changing environment and habitat. She would also get in some fishing, and caught some very nice catfish, as well as carp of course, and bullheads. She developed a great admiration and respect for our Minnesota rivers and lakes.

Cindy began work with the watershed district in 1996 as an office manager, and as time passed, she became more and more involved and educated about the policies and programs of the Yellow Medicine River Watershed District. During this time, she also learned about the political side of protecting our watershed environment.

She has been the technical assistant for the watershed districts’ CWP and TMDL programs since 1996, and was given the task of completing semi annual reports and budgets, storet submission, and the new e-link program, as well as becoming educated in the data collection aspect of the water monitoring programs.

Cindy was also in charge of secretarial and bookkeeping duties, as well as payroll and monthly budget reports.

Cindy will continue many of those duties, under her new title as the YMRW district administrator. She plans to continue to strive to work with all agencies in ensuring the improvement of the status of our lakes and rivers in the Yellow Medicine River Watershed, and ensuring adequate drainage for all landowners in the Watershed.

Mark Paluch - Field Specialist

Mark came to the Yellow Medicine River Watershed on the 5th of May. Mark was born and raised on a farm on the south side of Lake Shaokatan in Lincoln County. He spent most of his summers handling 10-15,000 bales of hay and straw. After a day of working on the farm everyone would head down to the lake and catch bullheads for an hour and then go home and clean bullheads for another hour.

After graduation from Ivanhoe High school he attended South Dakota State University receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in Agricultural Education. He taught Ag Education and was the FFA advisor at schools in Maynard IA, and Ivanhoe and Hendricks, MN. He was previously employed as a Corn grader with NAPI, a subcontractor that works out of the ADM plant in Marshall.

Mark is the Field Specialist for the YMRW and does the permitting for tiling. His job also includes water sampling and working with area farmers about helping to clean up the Yellow Medicine River.