There are seven major watersheds Koochiching County, this project will work in five of them: Big Fork, Little Fork, Rapid River, Lower Rainy River, and Rainy River Headwaters watersheds. The local Koochiching County Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) is positioned to assist in several elements of the Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategy (WRAPS) process. This includes gap monitoring for water chemistry, sediment work, TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load) development, modeling scenarios, and WRAPS development.
The purpose of this project is to establish an International Watershed Coordinator for the Lake of the Woods and Rainy River (LOW/RR) watershed, to assist the MPCA in facilitating and enhancing civic engagement through collaboration and integration of the efforts of groups working on watershed activities at local, state/provincial and bi-national levels of organization.
The University of Minnesota will develop effective interview questions for community watershed assessments in the Rainy River basin and provide assistance in understanding the data collected through community interviews.
The Rainy River Basin WPLMN Sampling Program will focus on watershed load monitoring in the Big Fork River, Little Fork River, Rainy River-Rainy Lake, and Vermilion River watersheds. Four total staff will work on various portions of this agreement. The main objective is for one lead sampler and one backup sampler to collect water chemistry and field parameters for eight (8) sites, annually at various flows, especially peak flows, and utilize that data to determine the amount of pollutant load into each stream system.
This project will provide an important framework for civic and citizen engagement and communication in the International Rainy River-Lake of the Woods Watershed, which will contribute to long-term public participation in surface water protection and restoration activities.
The purpose of the grant is to increase and enhance the understanding of the American Indian Ojibwe language and culture to ensure positive reinformcement of the self image and sense of identity four our American Indian Ojibwe people: To engage American Indian Ojibwe language and culture in our communities.
The purpose of this contract is to establish an international watershed coordinator for the Rainy River- Lake of the Woods (RR-LOW) watershed. The coordinator will assist the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) in facilitating and enhancing civic engagement and public participation activities through collaboration and integration of the efforts of groups working on watershed activities at local, state/provincial, tribal, and bi-national levels.
The Rapid River Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategy (WRAPS) project will result in the development of the restoration and protection strategies for the watershed and engage the local stakeholders in the practices of watershed management. This project will also develop Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) for impaired waters.
This work order will fund the development and delivery of an approved final Total Maximum Daily Load Program (TMDL) study and Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategy (WRAPS) report for the Rapid River Watershed.
This project is a documentary film about the intercultural experiences of immigrants living in Minnesota. It features footage of live performances at the Southern Theater, followed by talkbacks with cultural leaders and scholars; and the voices of audience and community members, recorded in post-performance conversations and interviews.
Renovate Rice Creek Maintenance Shop and campground support facility to improve maintenance and operations efficiencies and improve visitor experience in park.
We will characterize environmental drivers contributing to the decline of wild rice using lake sediment cores to reconstruct historical wild rice abundance in relation to lake and watershed stressors.
This project will provide land and water managers in the Red River Basin with data and online tools to prioritize actions on the landscape that achieve water quality objectives identified in local and state plans. This will help identify strategically important locations for implementing erosion control and water management practices. Standardized watershed-based data products will be integrated into a web-based planning tool which will be added to the Red River Basin Decision Information Network (RRBDIN) being developed as part of the Red River Watershed Feasibility Study.
This project will develop an effective transferable model to engage and educate watershed residents, stakeholders and others to better understand and protect watershed ecostystems through environmental monitoring, training, and formal and informal education programs in their local watershed. The project will build on the foundation of the existing Red River Basin River Watch program by strengthening three main activity areas: 1) curriculum integration and teacher training, 2) youth leadership and civic engagement, and 3) applied research collaboration and watershed science skills building.
The goal of this project is to construct, calibrate, and validate a watershed model using the Hydrological Simulation Program FORTRAN (HSPF) model for the Upper/Lower Red Lake Watershed. The contractor will produce an HSPF model that can readily be used to provide information to support conventional parameter Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) Studies. The model will generate predicted output for hydrology, sediment, nutrients, and dissolved oxygen that is consistent with observed data.
This project will fund a Youth Executive Board (YEB) to create an anthology of youth stories and experiences that describe their identities, stories, and experiences. This anthology will include a variety of interdisciplinary art such as personal essays, poems, visual art, etc., and be a reflective and engaging multimedia project that highlights, preserves, and celebrates the cultural heritage and identities of YEB members and empowers communities to build and preserve their identities.
Bunker Hills Regional Park, replace wave pool filtration system. Rice Creek Chain of Lakes Regional Park, design and reconstruct roads, campsites, utilities, landscaping.
With this grant, we were able to perform 195 acres of treatment within polygons resulting in the restoration or enhancement of 21 parcels. Overall treatment effort was even greater within wetlands (271 acres), with many areas receiving multiple overlapping treatments. Focusing our treatments on the most ecologically damaged areas allowed us to improve wetlands substantially, even if active treatment did not occur throughout every part of the parcel where invasives may not have occurred. 268+ acres had 50% of their areas treated, which we consider a standard for substantial restoration.
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.
We propose identifying hot spots of groundwater chloride pollution of surface waters due to excessive road salt use, which is a long term source increasing chloride impairment of surface waters.
Shanaya Dungey aka The Foolish Know It All will facilitate an artistic & cultural heritage preservation pilot project with five to ten Minnesota based descendants of enslaved African American ancestry to discover, collect, & document their family genealogy in a manner that is culturally relevant, preserves their family history, & honors their stories. The project will culminate with an exhibit capturing the process, participant thoughts throughout, & snippets of genealogy documents created.
The purpose of the project is to collect data to represent the ambient condition of the lakes and streams of the Rum River Watershed within Mille Lacs, Isanti and Sherburne Counties that is needed to determine if thresholds set to protect designeated uses, such as aquatic recreation and aquatic life, are being met .
This project will gather watershed data necessary for the development of a Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategy with parameter-specific targets that will maintain or improve water quality in the Rum River Watershed. Local Partners will lead various portions of this project and a hired onsultant will be subcontracted to write selected TMDL protection plans.
