The Prioritization, Targeting, and Measuring Water Quality Improvement Application (PTMA) connects the general qualitative strategies in a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) and Watershed Restoration and Protection (WRAP) and the identification of implementable on-the-ground Best Management Practices (BMPs). Leveraging geospatial data from the International Water Institute this application will be developed for two pilot areas within the Red River Basin.
This project will review highly erodible land plans for landowner/operator compliance and update plans with landowners that are not meeting plan requirements due to changes in their operations.
This project will, over a 27 month period, fund a 0.75 Full Time Equivalent Conservation Planning Specialist position to update approximately 400 United States Department of Agriculture Highly Erodable Lands conservation plans on 40,000 acres in high priority areas within the Root River watershed. Currently, only 5% of the USDA conservation plans -approximately 40 per year - are being checked for compliance, and this project will increase that number to 150 or more per year.
This project will reduce sediment to the Minnesota River, control erosion and reduce sedimentation in a local DNR Protected Water and protect private land and public infrastructure. The County Road (CR) 6 ravine (Quarry Creek) cuts through the Minnesota River valley bluff in Blakeley Township. Active channel incision and erosion within the ravine has caused large amounts of sediment to be deposited under the bridge at CR 6 such that the road is frequently flooded and sediment has to be removed several times a year.
Ramsey County has 3,500+ acres tied to 358 faith organizations and 304 schools. On average, these properties contribute 1 billion gallons of stormwater runoff, 3,000 lbs of phosphorus, and 1,000 tons of sediment to our local water bodies. The Ramsey Conservation District (RCD), working with community partners and Watershed Districts/Water Management Organizations, will install 6-12 stormwater best management projects that will help protect and improve water quality of surrounding lakes.
As part of the FY 2012 funding cycle, the Board of Water and Soil Resources granted funds for development of the Water Quality Decision Support Application (WQDSA). The WQDSA will provide land and water managers with geospatial data and online tools to prioritize, market, and implement actions on the landscape to achieve water quality objectives identified in local and state water plans and to ensure that public funding decisions are strategic and defensible.
Capitol Region Watershed District (CRWD), in partnership with the City of Roseville, will construct a volume reduction/capture-reuse irrigation facility below the Upper Villa Park Softball field in the City of Roseville. This project will protect Lake McCarrons and the Villa Park Wetland System (VPWS) by reducing runoff volumes and the pollutants associated with urban stormwater such as Total Phosphorus (TP), Total Suspended Solids (TSS), heavy metals, and petroleum products among others.
The Rice Creek Watershed District (RCWD) will create a web-based, mobile-compatible public drainage system inspection and maintenance database. This database system will enable District staff to create and track maintenance requests and inspections from the field, including Geo-referencing locations requiring repair via a mobile device. The system will greatly reduce the time required to identify and log each maintenance request, enabling staff to inventory more miles of public drainage system yearly thereby identifying erosion problems more efficiently and thoroughly.
Rice Lake, in Stearns County, is an impaired water for nutrients that has a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) Implementation plan developed. Rice Lake is one of the larger lakes in the county, offering major water recreation opportunities, economic benefits as well as fish and wildlife habitat. It is a priority for Stearns County to implement projects that have positive impacts on this resource.
This project will engage the public and community partners in Rice County. The goal of this project is the implementation of conservation practices that retain water on the land by providing up to five sub-grants for rain gardens, vegetative buffers, and wetland restorations.
The Reinvest in Minnesota (RIM) Wetlands Partnership Phase V protected and restored 2,041 acres of previously drained wetlands and adjacent native grasslands on 23 conservation easements. All easements have been recorded. $35,000 of funds from other sources were also used.
Calcareous fens such as the Savage Fen are fragile ecosystems existing only under a unique combination of soil type, hydrology, chemistry, and vegetation. The City of Savage is continuing efforts to protect this important ecosystem through this project. Two large ravines -Dakota Avenue and McColl's Bluff - discharge to the Fen, which was granted special status under the State's Wetlands Conservation Act. Both ravines are highly eroded and carry a significant amount of stormwater and sediment to the Savage Fen.
The Ramsey-Washington Metro Watershed District (District) has determined that large impervious sites (like churches, commercial sites, and schools) are more economical for stormwater management retrofit projects than distributed small projects along roadways. Analysis of the watershed land use indicates that large impervious sites are typically commercial properties (primarily retail), churches, and schools. The District began assessing church sites for retrofit opportunities in 2013 and will continue this effort in 2014.
The Wright Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) will expand its partnership with its USDA partners; this will be the first time that SWCD staff will conduct compliance spot checks for USDA Highly Erodible Land plans. This activity will add a level of certainty that these plans are in compliance.
The Roseau River Watershed District in partnership with the Roseau County SWCD will complete a study to target and prioritize sites contributing impairments within legal drainage systems. Project partners will utilize data developed by the International Water Institute (IWI) Water Quality Decision Support Application that establishes multivariate scoring of each site based on all relevant features contributing to surface water degradation.
The purpose of this project is to provide a new shared position in southeast Minnesota which will accelerate the adoption of soil health practices by leveraging the existing efforts of the National Resources Conservation Service and other organizations.
The lack of sewage treatment in many small communities in Southeast Minnesota is causing surface water and groundwater pollution. Ten of these small communities will be the target of the technical assistance provided by this project. These communities have community or individual straight pipes which are discharging raw sewage directly into the environment, surfacing sewage, or have sewage contaminating groundwater.
Lakes and streams located in Blue Earth, Le Sueur, and Waseca Counties provide important public benefits such as hydrologic storage, economic and recreational opportunities, and regional water quality improvement. However, several of the lakes and streams have been listed as impaired because of excess nutrients and sediment from runoff.
The Stearns County Soil and Water Conservation District's (SWCD) Stump and Sagatagan Lakes Subwatershed Stormwater Treatment Projects will retrofit sub-catchment drainage areas on St. John's University (SJU) campus that drain untreated stormwater runoff directly into Stump and Sagatagan Lakes. This area of the region has been identified as ecologically significant by the Nature Conservancy's Eco-Regional Plan and the MN DNR's County Biological Survey.
The project will develop, adopt, and implement an agricultural erosion control ordinance for Steele County. Project funds will be used to hire a consultant to assist in this endeavor to gather input from citizens, organize meetings and develop a draft ordinance. County staff will assist with organizing meetings, holding hearings, and the formal process of adopting the developed ordinance.
This project is located in an area in the City of Isanti that developed before modern-day stormwater treatment requirements. It will result in the installation of a new stormwater pond in a historic core neighborhood. The urbanized drainage area presently has no other stormwater treatment, except for street sweeping. The new stormwater pond will reduce discharges from a 55 acre site draining to the State Scenic and Recreational Rum River by 12 pounds/yr for phosphorus and approximately 3 tons/yr of sediment.
The Le Sueur Watershed Technician will provide highly focused targeting of conservation programs and practices in this key watershed. The technician will enhance current staff capabilities in the Le Sueur watershed by collecting landowner contact information, producing landowner mailings about funding opportunities, and meeting one-on-one with landowners to discuss conservation concerns they may have. This has been a highly successful method for targeting projects, project identification, landowner contact, and project follow through.
The Le Sueur Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD), who acts as County Ditch Inspectors, will partner with the Le Sueur County GIS Coordinator to accomplish the inventory and inspection of drainage ditches. A database will be established for all 250 miles of Le Sueur County Drainage Authority ditches. The inventory will be conducted using Lidar, 2010 and 2013 Pictometry and onsite technical review. Sites that have potential water quality issues will be identified from worst to most stable for side inlets, buffers and retention storage.
A new GIS technician will help prioritize and target conservation activities and protection strategies in nine north-central Minnesota counties. The GIS technician will create GIS products, assessments, and watershed analysis to identify the high priority areas in each County or watershed in need of protection or restoration using all available data, including LiDAR, soils, land use, completed WRAPS and other datasets. These areas will then be targeted for future resource management efforts, Clean Water Fund projects, and additional conservation activities.
Fourteen permanent RIM Easements on 766 acres of high quality, riparian and forested habitat have been recorded and will provide lasting wildlife habitat. Attempts were made to acquire three tracts in fee title that would have relied on this funding. The owner of one tract rejected an offer of the certified appraised value. Acquisition attempts on the other two tracts were discontinued when it became apparent that the planned use of the land as DNR Wildlife Management Area would be incompatible with local government plans for future municipal growth.
This project represents the third septic inventory effort by Todd County. The four lakes included - Guernsey, Juergans, Little Sauk, and Long Lakes - are all designated by the Sauk River Water District's Sauk Lake Management Unit as high priority for water quality improvement. Three of these lakes are listed as water quality-impaired for nutrients and the fourth - Long Lake - has had periodic e.Coli problems documented in several tributaries. This project will allow Todd County to expand on previous evaluations of 13 other lakes.
The Southwest Prairie Technical Service Area 5 (SWPTSA), located in the southwest corner of Minnesota, encompasses 11 Soil and Water Conservation Districts (SWCDs): Cottonwood, Jackson, Lac Qui Parle, Lincoln, Lyon, Murray, Nobles, Pipestone, Redwood, Rock, and Yellow Medicine. This project will protect natural resources within the three major river basins of Minnesota, Missouri and Des Moines Rivers. The SWPTSA will assist member SWCDs in locating and identifying priority subwatersheds that have soil erosion and water quality issues using terrain analysis.
This project will assure that buffer strip compliance is being followed throughout the system. It will identify areas that will work to keep excess sediment and nutrients out of the water and provide a good strategy for cleaning the water and reducing costs to the system long term. More importantly, it provides an opportunity to have dialogue with landowners along the entire ditch and communicate the importance of buffers and conservation practices such as detainment areas and catchment Best Management Practices that keep the soil out of the system.
The Two Rivers Watershed is listed as a high priority in the Stearns County Comprehensive Water Management Plan. This project will inventory the existing public drainage systems and develop a targeting program to measure, prioritize and target the factors causing the water quality problems of Two Rivers Lake (impaired for nutrients) in Stearns County. With public access and a county park on the lake, it is a destination for fisherman in the area.
The Cannon River is a designated Wild and Scenic River that originates in Rice County and joins the Mississippi River 120 miles downstream near Red Wing. The Upper Cannon, which encompasses 29% of the entire watershed, has been identified as a priority subwatershed.
Ramsey County is the smallest, most densely populated county in the state of Minnesota consisting of primarily urbanized land use. Ramsey County's water resources provide the industrial base, drinking water, and recreational opportunities for over one-half million people on a daily basis. The major environmental problems that Ramsey County lakes and streams face can be traced to the effects that urbanized land use has on these natural resources.
The Watonwan Watershed Technician will provide highly focused targeting of conservation programs and practices. The technician will enhance current staff capabilities in the Watonwan watershed by collecting landowner contact information from previous studies and GIS methods, produce mass mailings about funding opportunities, and meet one-on-one with landowners to discuss their conservation concerns. The technician will implement 45 projects/practices over a three year period.
The West Central Technical Service Area (WCTSA) serves 12 Soil and Water Conservation Districts (SWCDs) in west central Minnesota and has been experiencing increased workload due to greater requests from member SWCDs. This funding will sustain a limited-term technician and purchase related support equipment to assist landowners in implementing targeted, high priority practices that result in the greatest water quality outcomes.
Twenty six easements protecting 1,173.3 were recorded which exceeded the original proposal by 173 acres (15%). 11.6 miles of shoreline were protected which exceeded the 8 acre goal by 30%. Total expenditure was $1,355,000 which was 17% lower than originally budgeted. No fee-title land acquisition opportunities on wild rice lakes that fit within DNR and other government agency land plans were available during this time period thus DU did not expend any of the $100,000 budgeted for fee-title acquisition. Instead the program focused on RIM easements.
This project builds on the successful implementation of previous work, installing 29 water and sediment control basins and 25 acres of vegetative filter strips within the priority Marsh Creek watershed to reduce sediment loading into the Wild Rice River, which is currently not meeting water quality standards for sediment.
The Yellow Medicine River Watershed District will contract with the Water Resource Center at the Minnesota State University - Mankato to complete a Geographic Information System (GIS) terrain analysis for the watershed using recently completed LIDAR data in southern Minnesota. Analysis will concentrate on the impaired reaches of the Yellow Medicine River Watershed and its tributaries. This inventory will utilize the State of Minnesota LiDAR elevation datasets to create many datasets through the analysis of this elevation data.
