GRANITE FALLS — One of Yellow Medicine County’s largest ditches is facing environmental scrutiny from a statewide advocacy group.

County Ditch 9, which runs from the St. Leo area to the Minnesota River near Granite Falls, is seeing a petition for improvements by landowners. The proposal is being challenged by the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, which contends that it will worsen conditions along downstream rivers.

The advocacy group presented a list of objections. One of them states that the ditch project will worsen hypoxia conditions in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Yellow Medicine County Board, acting as the ditch authority for County Ditch 9, held a ditch meeting to discuss the objections. After a lengthy discussion, the board voted 4-1 to send a letter asking for more detailed information.

Commissioner Gary Johnson, who cast the only vote not to send the letter, questioned whether the concerns are relavent to the Ditch 9 proposal.

“We shouldn’t have to respond to general statements,” Johnson said. “They aren’t being specific about Ditch 9 because it’s more than a Ditch 9 issue to them. They want to restrict drainage everywhere.”

Johnson said he favors working with other Minnesota counties to change laws in a way that requires comments on ditch projects to specifically address the issues at hand.

He said one option would be to utilize multi-county joint powers groups. Another possibility could be to work with the Association of Minnesota Counties and with state legislators.

John Kolb of St. Cloud, an attorney who specializes in drainage and who advises the county on drainage law, participated in the meeting.

He advised the board to respond to the concerns since it’s the next logical step in the evaluation process for the ditch project. He said lack of a response would delay the improvements.

“There’s a need to demonstrate an effort to gather facts,” Kolb said. “If we don’t respond at all, they’d go to court for an injunction and we’d lose. The project would definitely be delayed.”

Other commissioners voted in favor of sending the letter but agreed with Johnson that there should be factual proof of a connection between Ditch 9 and downstream conditions.

“They (the Center for Environmental Advocacy) should have to prove something,” said Commissioner Greg Renneke. “We all know that water flows downstream and eventually ends up in the Gulf. They need to show that a Ditch 9 improvement would make a difference, that it would somehow make things worse.”

After the meeting, Yellow Medicine County Ditch Inspector Chris Belfany said the advocacy group will eventually have to decide how far to pursue its objections.

“A similar situation in Renville County recently ended up in court,” Belfany said. “There’s a potential for that with Ditch 9. So far the permitting process is just in the early stages.”