The purpose of this project is for Cook County Soil and Water Conservation District to continue to assist with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's (MPCA) watershed approach and Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategy development process in the Rainy River Headwaters watershed. Working alongside other MPCA partners, Cook County Soil and Water Conservation District will provide guidance for the MPCA's watershed approach to address local needs through participation in technical, planning, and Core Team meetings as well as review of produced reports.
The purpose of this project is to develop implementation prioritization strategies to restore and protect the Vermilion River and Rainy River-Headwaters watersheds’ waterbodies and finalize Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategy (WRAPS) reports for both the Vermilion River and Rainy River-Headwaters watersheds.
This project will meet the following goals: develop, implement, and evaluate the impacts civic engagement outcomes for the Rainy River Headwaters and the Cloquet watersheds; create a citizen understanding of the Watershed Restoration & Protection Strategy (WRAPS) process and the role that citizens, lake associations, institutions of higher education, and other stakeholders can play in attaining water quality restoration and protection; provide opportunities for citizens and stakeholders to assist local partners and state agencies in developing priorities for projects to accomplish resto
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.
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.
Little Rock Creek is the only trout stream in the Benton and Morrison County area. The creek has supported a wild brown trout population since they were introduced into Little Rock Lake in 1908. A population assessment done in 1992, however, failed to document the presence of brown trout suggesting that population may have become critically low during the drought years of the late 1980's and early 1990's. The stream has since been listed as impaired due to the low abundance of trout and other cold water fish.
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.
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.
This project will focus on Watershed Restoration and Protetion Strategy (WRAPS) and Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) report development for the Rum River Watershed, which includes Mille Lacs Lake (the second largest lake in Minnesota) and the Rum River of which Mille Lacs Lake is the headwaters. The project will produce a plan that partners and citizens will be able to implement, a framework for citizen engagement, and a set of watershed management activities that will achieve water quality standards for all impairments within the watershed.
