This project will work with the MPCA to conduct watershed pollutant load monitoring at four sites in the Chippewa River watershed and one site in the neighboring Pomme de Terre River watershed . The Chippewa River Watershed Project (CRWP) team will also aid the MPCA in measuring and comparing regional differences and long-term trends in water quality. The goal is to collect quality data and complete load calculations for the five sites using the MPCA's established protocols.
The goal of this project is to develop a stream restoration opportunities matrix for the Amity Creek watershed, which will prioritize the various protection and restoration options in the watershed for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) and local partners.
This project will use the We Are Water MN traveling exhibit and the Minnesota Humanities Center's approach to community engagement, relationship building, and storytelling, to increase community capacity for sustainable watershed management in six Minnesota watersheds.
This project will use the We Are Water MN traveling exhibit and the Minnesota Humanities Center's approach to community engagement, relationship building, and storytelling, to increase community capacity for sustainable watershed management in five Minnesota watersheds. The following communities were selected as host sites for this project:
Winona (City of Winona), active hosting period: March 3-April 25, 2022
Lake City (Lake Pepin Legacy Alliance), active hosting period: April 28-June 20, 2022
This project will provide condition monitoring and problem investigation monitoring at the following sites.
Mississippi River: Tributaries include Bassett Creek, Cannon River, Crow River, and Minnehaha Creek.
Minnesota River: Tributaries include Eagle Creek,Riley Creek, and Valley Creek tributary to the St. Croix River
This project will complete a Total Maximum Daily Load Implementation Plan for the watersheds of Big Sandy and Minnewawa Lakes. This restoration plan will provide pollution reduction and watershed management strategies that are developed with input from stakeholders in the watersheds.
The goal of this project is to develop and complete the Watershed Restoration and Protection (WRAP) process and report, while also enlarging and sustaining a public participation process that encourages local ownership of water quality problems and solutions (civic engagement).
This monitoring project includes lake and stream monitoring and encompasses all of Cass County, and surrounding counties. The project will obtain water quality data for streams; in 2009, lakeshed assessments indicated that many surface waters throughout the county were data deficient. This project will address the need for sufficient data on a county-wide basis and fulfill the State’s intensive watershed monitoring program goals by obtaining water quality data at targeted lake and stream sites.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) developed the Chippewa River Watershed Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) report in 2016 that addresses impairments 48 separate impairment listings for 16 stream reaches and 25 lakes in the watershed. The purpose of this project is to support the development of TMDLs for additional streams reaches and lakes that were not previously completed. MPCA has identified 12 waterbodies with aquatic recreation or aquatic life impairments that need to be addressed through the development of new TMDLs.
This project will complete a comprehensive and sustainable Major Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategies report for the Chippewa River, its tributary streams, and the many lakes in the Chippewa River watershed that is understandable and adoptable by local units of government and residents.
Duluth area streams received over 10 inches of rainfall on June 19 and June 20, 2012. This "500 year event" provides a once in a lifetime opportunity to further understand sediment movement and stream channel alterations due to an event of this magnitude.
The primary objective of this workplan is to demonstrate the ability of the City of Paynesville to meet the current and future wastewater treatment needs and achieve beneficial use of wastewater effluent, to replace the use of groundwater.
The goal of this project is to update existing bacteria and Total Suspended Solids (TSS) source inventory through desktop survey and field reconnaissance to identify and prioritize locations to reduce sediment and bacteria loading to the Clearwater River; then, design and implement best management practices (BMPs) at prioritized locations to reduce loading.
This project is to develop a watershed restoration and protection strategies report that provides quantitative pollutant source estimates and a set of pollutant reduction and watershed management strategies to protect and achieve water quality standards for all aquatic life and aquatic recreation impairments in the watershed. The strategies will be understood and adoptable by local units of government and other stakeholders. New understandings and new relationships will inform and lead to eventual environmental improvements.
The St. Cloud Waste Water Treatment Facility (SCWWTF) is currently conducting long term planning for future biosolids management. The most likely path forward includes dewatering of the digested biosolids, which will produce a supernatant stream with significant phosphorus and ammonia loads that would be returned to the liquids treatment portion of the WWTF. Returning these nutrient loads to the liquids train would result in increases to effluent concentrations, increases in power consumption, or both.
The project goal is to conduct water chemistry monitoring at five subwatershed sites and two basin sites annually from 2016-2019, based on flow conditions, targeting runoff events using protocols defined in the Watershed Pollutant Load Monitoring Network (WPLMN) Standard Operating Procedures and Guidance. The data collected will be submitted to Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) and used in the FLUX32 model for calculating pollutant loads.
This project will conduct a 2017 revision of the South Fork Crow River, North Fork Crow River and Sauk River Watershed Hydrological Simulation Program FORTRAN (HSPF) models and review of the Pine River Watershed HSPF model.
This project will provide fiscal resources for South St. Louis County Soil and Water Conservation District (SSLCSWCD) to participate and lead efforts to attain geomorphic data sets, dissolved oxygen assessments, culvert inventory, and civic engagement activities in three major watersheds, Nemadji River, South Lake Superior and St. Louis River. This work is currently being worked on as a part of the MPCA’s Watershed Restoration and Protection Planning efforts.
This project will finalize HSPF watershed model construction by incorporating internal phosphorus loading in modeled lakes, run a suite of implementation scenarios and generate a GenScn project containing model output. The consultant will produce HSPF watershed models that can readily be used to provide information to support conventional parameter TMDLs. The consultant will deliver all modeling files for baseline and implementation scenarios and provide a GenScn project containing model output.
This project will develop and execute three point source related scenarios for the Chippewa River watershed using an existing HSPF watershed model. This project will also support the review of the HSPF Modeling Guidance Document.
This project will complete a pollutant source identification and subwatershed information report and support the development of a Draft Restoration and Protection Plan (RAPP). It will also support the devlopment of a Implementation Plan that will identify target areas for BMP implementation for bacteria reductions.
This project will construct, calibrate, a set of HSPF watershed models covering the entire area of the Lake of the Woods drainage, including the Rainy River watershed. The consultant will produce HSPF models that can readily be used to provide information to support conventional parameter TMDLs. The consultant will clearly demonstrate that these models generate predicted output timeseries for hydrology which are consistent with available sets of observed data.
This project will support the completion of a final draft Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) document for the Osakis, Smith and Faille Lakes TMDL and the submittal to EPA for final approval.
The goal of this project is to develop a phosphorus TMDL for the six impaired lakes in the southwest portion of the Rice Creek Watershed District; Island Lake, Little Lake Johanna, Long Lake, East Moore Lake, Pike Lake and Lake Valentine.
The primary focus of this project is the collection of lake core samples to aid in the completion of lake TMDLs for Dean, Malardi & Fountain lakes. This work will enable completing tasks included in the North Fork Crow River Watershed Restoration & Protection Project (WRPP). Additional data collection is needed to update lake response models. This new data will provide a cohesive and comprehensive data collection for Dean, Malardi and Fountain lakes.
This project will educate the local residents of the importance of groundwater protection and provide financial assistance to those who need to properly abandon their unused well. This project will also support the upgrade of nonconforming sewage treatment systems to reduce nutrient contributions to groundwater and surface water through groundwater permeation.
This project will continue the restoration of Osakis Lake and protect the water quality of the Sauk River by addressing stormwater runoff from urban and rural areas. Activities include assisting eight landowners in designing and funding their shoreland restoration and rain garden projects.
This project will evaluate and prioritize approximately 13,000 lineal feet of Lake Koronis shoreline for shoreline erosion and vegetative buffer condition. Those property owners with the most erosion, stormwater and vegetative buffer issues will be targeted to stabilize, infiltrate and buffer their shoreline. This project will also evaluate an additional 300 properties in the subcatchment area and target those properties that are best able to capture and treat stormwater from impervious surfaces.
This project will complete a TMDL equation and report and an implementation plan for Deer Creek. The TMDL report will describe turbidity impacts to aquatic life uses of Deer Creek, correlate turbidity to other pollutants (sediment, suspended solids, etc.), describe and quantify unique turbidity/sediment stressors which include groundwater influences, legacy impacts of the watershed and stream channel, significant in-stream and near stream sources (slumps, bank erosion, etc.) and upland contributions.
Deer Creek has been identified as an impaired water body. This project will quantify the reductions in pollutant loading that would be necessary to bring water quality in the creek to an acceptable level. The project also includes collection of any additional data needed for stream channel modeling scenarios.
This project determines ambient background per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) levels in urban and non-urban soils. This information will help Minnesota develop management strategies for PFAS contaminated soils.
Four beaches along the North Shore of Lake Superior and within the Duluth Harbor have aquatic recreation impairments due to high concentrations of E. coli, a bacterial indicator of fecal contamination. The project area includes portions of the Lake Superior South and St. Louis River watersheds near Duluth. Several of the beaches are also listed as impaired for beneficial use (due to fecal bacteria) as part of the St. Louis River Area of Concern.
This project will complete the review process for the Duluth Beaches Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL). Tetra Tech will assist with compiling and incorporating the core team, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) preliminary review edits and comments, and prepare the final document for public notice. Tetra Tech will attend and present at the public meeting during public comment period. Compile all public comments and work with MPCA to develop written responses.
Several streams within the Duluth metropolitan area are identified as impaired and are included on Minnesota’s Impaired Waters List, with impairments to Aquatic Recreation, due to levels of Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria. Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) studies have been completed (draft) for these impairments, including Keene Creek and Tischer Creek. The goal of this project is for the City of Duluth to provide the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) with information on the sources of E.
This project continues the total maximum daily load (TMDL) and watershed restoration and protection strategies (WRAPS) process for the Duluth Metropolitan Area (DMA). The DMA is defined by water, sitting at the juncture of Lake Superior and the St. Louis River Estuary, and surrounded by semi-mountainous terrain. The project serves as a bridge into the next phase of restoration and protection identified by the Duluth Urban Stream TMDLs and WRAPS. In the first phase of community engagement, a collaborating organization was formed to define a framework for the DMA communities.
This project will respond to public notice comments received after a 2nd comment opportunity and several requests for changes to the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) report and petition for contested case hearings (CCH). Additional review work must be completed and if necessary, edits or updates to the TMDL and Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategy (WRAPS) reports. If there are substantial changes to both documents another public noticing will be necessary.
The purpose of the project is to fill critical data gaps - this data will provide a foundation for future development of watershed models, Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) reports and the creation of a Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategy (WRAPS) report.
This project is for the Duluth Streams Urban Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategy (WRAPS). The project is a core part of the WRAPS and Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) development for the Duluth Metropolitan Area (DMA).
