Contractor assistance with site selection, reconnaissance and obtaining access for installation of ambient groundwater monitoring wells in Ramsey county and Hennepin county. This project will provide services and oversight of the installation for up to 16 well sites.
Contractor assistance with site selection, reconnaissance and obtaining access for installation of ambient groundwater monitoring wells in northcentral and northeastern Minnesota. This project will provide services and oversight of the installation for up to 31 well sites.
This project will promulgate a nitrate water quality standard to address aquatic life toxicity, and gather information needed to support the development of total nitrogen (N) loading reduction strategies for Minnesota’s waters and also address Minnesota’s contribution to marine water hypoxia. Project will also develop a framework for a watershed nitrogen planning aid that can be used to optimize selection of Best Management Practice (BMP) systems for reducing nitrogen.
This project will continue to develop, and calibrate/validate the hydrology of an Hydrological Simulation Program FORTRAN (HSPF) watershed model for the Buffalo River watershed. The consultant will add representation of point source discharges to the model. The consultant will compile flow data for the purposes of calibration and validation. An initial hydrologic calibration will be performed and submitted for approval.
This first year of the project will collect available data relevant to the TMDL development, determine the data sets best suited for the TMDL development. Gain a better understanding of the watershed and impaired lakes, and assessment of all potential sources (internal and external) of the causes of lake impairment. EOR will also review the data produced by the MPCA for the impairment assessment for each of the lakes during year 1 of the project.
This project covers activities necessary to complete the major watershed restoration and projection project. The major objectives this project covers include contract administration, watershed coordination, stressor ID activities, identifying priority management zones, engage watershed citizens, and the creation of watershed restoration and protection plans.
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 determine the magnitude and frequency of contamination from endocrine active compounds (EAC's) and other contaminants of emerging concern in shallow groundwater in non-agricultural areas of Minnesota. EACs and other contaminants of emerging concern in this study include compounds typically found in waste water, including, pharmaceutical compounds, antibiotics, and hormones. This project supports the third phase, including laboratory analysis of samples for an additional 80 wells to be sampled by MPCA staff.
This project will continue HSPF watershed model construction beyond the initial framework development. The consultant will add representation of point source discharges to the model. The consultant will also compile flow data for the purposes of calibration and validation. Finally, an initial hydrologic calibration will be performed and submitted for approval.
This project will complete a guidance document for the construction of Hydrologic Simulation Program FORTRAN (HSPF) watershed models which are intended to support MPCA Watershed programmatic activities. It will also customize and populate a national HSPF parameter database with values from Minnesota HSPF model applications. This enhanced database will expedite the future construction of HSPF models as well as increase the consistency among HSPF model applications in Minnesota.
USGS will make streamflow discharge measurements at lowflow measuring stations throughout the state. Measurements will be made during lowflow conditions. On average 100 measurements will be made during FY2012. Stream flow measurements will be entered into the USGS database and made available on the USGS Low Flow Data for Minnesota Streams website.
The Minimal Impact Design Standards (MIDS) project represents the next generation of stormwater management in Minnesota. MIDS offers guidelines, recommendations and tools that help low impact development practices be implemented more uniformly across Minnesota's landscape and provides guidance to effectively implement the concepts and practices of low impact development. Products include performance goals for new development, redevelopment and linear projects, a graphic user interface calculator and flexible treatment options for sites design.
The Minimal Impact Design Standards (MIDS) project represents the next generation of stormwater management in Minnesota. The consultant was hired to conduct research and design specifications for permeable pavement and turf.
This project will develop a reasonable statewide estimate of recharge using the Soil-Water-Balance (SWB) Code (Westenbroek and others, 2010), validate the simulation results, and conduct a parameter sensitivity analysis to identify the most sensitive model parameters. For the purposes of this application of the SWB application, comparing the simulation results will be conducted on selected watershed basins in the state against previously established recharge estimates.
This project supports monitoring and assessment activities by MPCA EAO staff and includes lab analysis, equipment, and fieldwork expenses associated with monitoring and assessment activities.The ambient groundwater monitoring network describes the current condition and trends in Minnesota's groundwater quality.
This project supports activities by MPCA Watershed Division staff that provide technical assistance, project oversight, coordination, outreach and other agency activities associated with assessing, listing and conducting TMDL studies throughout the State of Minnesota. Project also includes lab analysis, equipment, and fieldwork expenses associated with TMDL work at the MPCA.
MPCA technical assistance & guidance provided to Clean Water Partnership grant program which provides funding for grants that prevent impairments and degradation of lakes, rivers, streams and groundwater.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) uses a watershed-oriented approach to assess surface water quality and define restoration and protection measures. Each of Minnesota’s 81 major watersheds is assessed intensively every 10 years, based on a staggered schedule that addresses, on average, eight watersheds per year. To increase the amount of data directly available to the public online, and to make internal operations more efficient, the MPCA started a multi-year Watershed Data Integration Project (WDIP).
This project will provide an interpretive assessment of nitrogen concentrations in Minnesota rivers and streams, including spatial and temporal trends based on historical data sets. The trends analyses will provide information useful for evaluating nitrogen reduction efforts in the past couple of decades.
International Water Institute (IWI) staff will monitor 24 sites in the Bois de Sioux, Mustinka (2 sites), Buffalo (8 sites), Red Lake (4 sites), Sandhill (3 sites), Thief (2 sites), and Tamarac River (3 sites) Watersheds intensively over a 2 year period in an attempt to collect 25 samples per year at each site. If conditions allow for the collection of all planned samples, 1200 stream samples will be collected over the time period. Monitoring will include field measurements, observations, and at least three photographs during each site visit.
MN Legislative Clean Water Fund funding to engage citizens in local watershed monitoring, work with regional partners to promote understanding and protection of watersheds, and organize and facilitate gathering of scientific data all for the benefit of water quality in the Red River Basin.
The Statewide Sediment Network was established to measure the levels of suspended sediment concentrations and particle size distributions at eight sites across Minnesota to evaluate the amount of sediment carried by rivers. USGS sample collection and laboratory analysis techniques provide a more rigorous, robust, and technically accurate measure of sediment in water than the current use of total suspended solids as the measure of sediment in water.
This project will improve water management in the State of Minnesota. The result will be a water management tool that can be used by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) to determine low flow statistics when establishing permit discharge limits and by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) to help in water appropriations and permitting. This tool will also be used by watershed districts in understanding and quantifying the State's water budget, the Nature Conservancy in its Ecological Limits of Hydrologic Alteration (ELOHA) process, and the U.S.
Project outcomes include results from hydroponics experiments, which will likely consist of information on the response of wild rice growth to a range of concentrations of sulfate, sulfide, and various cations. Results from these experiments will be used to help determine what additional research is needed in 2013. The MPCA will use this data to evaluate the current sulfate standard and the need, if any, for modifications to it.
Project outcomes include data that will ultimately allow the MPCA to quantitatively compare the environmental conditions (surface water and sedimentary geochemistry) at sites that successfully support wild rice growth to sites that do not support wild rice. These data, in particular the analysis of the porewater samples obtained under this project, will be compared to the results from a separate project that will assess the growth of wild rice using hydroponic methods.
The MDH Environmental Laboratory provides essential analyses of water for the MPCA Wild Rice Standards Study, which is gathering information about the effects of sulfate on the growth of wild rice. For this study, the lab developed a ultra-sensitive test for hydrogen sulfide, which greatly facilitated the research. For this large study, the lab staff analyzed several thousand water and sediment samples from lakes, wetlands, rivers, rice paddies, experimental mesocosms, and hydroponic experiments.
