GRANITE FALLS — The Yellow Medicine County Board voted to opt out of the One Watershed, One Plan program for the Redwood River watershed on Tuesday.

One Watershed, One Plan is a program of the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources to create comprehensive watershed management plans for surface and ground water quality protection and wetland habitat preservation and restoration.

The Redwood River flows through Lincoln, Lyon, Murray, Pipestone, Redwood, and Yellow Medicine counties, but only 2.95% of the area of Yellow Medicine County.

The resolution states the board supports the plan but elects not to participate in an official capacity, as provided by state statutes for counties with less than 10% of their area in the watershed.

In other business, Human Services Director Rae Ann Keeler Aus informed the board that Yellow Medicine County meets federal requirements to withdraw from the Minnesota Merit System.

Under state law, a county may withdraw from the Minnesota Merit System after the commissioner of Human Services certifies its personnel system meets federal requirements.

Currently, social services agencies in 37 Minnesota counties are not under Merit System jurisdiction.

The board also heard a briefing by Joseph Caruso, External Affairs coordinator of Summit Carbon Solutions on a project to capture carbon dioxide from ethanol plants, liquify it and send it through pipelines to be sequestered a mile-and-a-half underground in North Dakota.

The planned site in North Dakota has favorable geology, a reservoir of spongy sandstone under a layer of solid caprock.

Yellow Medicine County is home to the Granite Falls Energy ethanol plant, one of 32 plants in the Midwest interested in the carbon capture project.