Scott Sparlin is sitting back, strumming a guitar inside an 1880s school house at Riverside Park in New Ulm, the old rooms now filled with history, research and resources about the Minnesota River.

Sparlin puts down the guitar, leans forward, looks out the window at the river and began preaching the virtues of the river valley like a southern preacher whipping up the parishioners.

“People still lament the water quality of the river, but it has really improved. You can see it with your own eyes.

“When you’re seeing sturgeon — everyone is catching them — that’s a water quality indicator. And people are catching paddle fish, that’s a water quality indicator,” Sparlin said.

“It’s not great. But it’s not all doom and gloom. A lot of good progress has been made.”

Sparlin’s first love is fishing and it’s what made him a river activist 21 years ago. “I was fishing down here with my son and he asked,why does this water look like chocolate milk. I said I didn’t know, but I’d find out.”

Sparlin, founder and still president of the New Ulm Area Sport Fishermen club, began researching the river and decided a new group needed to be formed to fight for water quality issues. He recruited members up and down the valley and formed the Coalition for a Clean Minnesota River, of which he remains the executive director.

The CCMR’s latest effort is turning the city-owned, formerly abandoned school house along the river into the Regional River History and Information Center. “New Ulm prides itself on its history and this is a pretty significant building. It’s good to be using it.”

Sparlin runs the information center, a room of brochures, reports, and technical information on the river. There are public-use computers, tied to the MSU Water Resources Center, where people can look up myriad studies done on the Minnesota River. “A lot of people do research for science fair projects.”

In the room next door, Ron Bolduan runs the history side of the operation. A display on the booming clam shell industry along New Ulm, old bison and elk skulls, photographs of the river and other displays are taking shape in the center. “We’re still looking for artifacts, collections, pictures, anything people have of the river’s history,” Sparlin said.

One wall of the history room contains dozens of photos from throughout the years of fish people have caught from the river — record walleye, monster catfish, northern and paddlefish. “People ask why the water quality is important and you just have to look at this wall of photos,” Sparlin said.

Sparlin said the CCMR’s proudest moment was in helping to successfully lobby Congress to get hundreds of millions of dollars to permanently put sensitive farm land into the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program and in prodding stricter inspections of non-compliant septic systems.

Sparlin said the next two big challenges are trying to slow down the rapid drainage from farm fields that sends too much water too quickly to the river, and reducing the amount of nitrogen that gets in the river from farm fields.

Technology, he believes, can help both problems at once. A new conservation drainage management system can be installed in fields. The systems release enough water to keep crops from drowning, but keep the water table high enough that nitrogen is held in and can be used by the crops later in the summer.

“It’s good for the farmer — their crops get the moisture and nitrogen when they need them and it keeps the nitrogen out of the river.”