All Projects

Provides grants to Soil and Water Conservation Districts that focuses on increasing capacity to address four resource concern areasSoil Erosion, Riparian Zone Management, Water Storage and Treatment, and Excess Nutrients.

Governor Mark Dayton's landmark buffer initiative was signed into law in 2015. The law establishes new perennial vegetation buffers of up to 50 feet along rivers, streams, and ditches that will help filter out phosphorus, nitrogen, and sediment. The new law provides flexibility and financial support for landowners to install and maintain buffers. For grants to Soil and Water Conservation Districts to ensure compliance with riparian buffer or alternate practice requirements for state required buffers and soil erosion law.

This program annually evaluates a sample of up to ten Clean Water Fund restoration projects, provides a report on the evaluations in accordance with state law and delivers communications on project outcomes and lessons learned in restoration practice.

A legislative directive provides Clean Water Funds to be contracted for services with the Conservation Corps of Minnesota. Through these grants, the Corps funds crew labor to eligible local governments through an application process hosted by the Conservation Corps.

The Board of Water and Soil Resources is required to contract with the Conservation Corps of Minnesota and Iowa (formerly Minnesota Conservation Corps), or CCMI, for installation of conservation practices benefitting water quality for at least $500,000 in each year of the 2010-11 biennium. The Board approved reserving the following funds in each year of the biennium to comply with this appropriation:$200,000 from the Runoff Reduction Grants, $200,000 from the Clean Water Assistance Grants, $100,000 from the Shoreland Improvement Grants.

Provides grants to Soil and Water Conservation Districts that focuses on increasing capacity to address four resource concern areas: Soil Erosion, Riparian Zone Management, Water Storage and Treatment, and Excess Nutrients.

The AgBMP Loan Program provides needed funding for local implementation of clean water practices at an extremely low cost, is unique in its structure, and is not duplicated by any other source of funding. The AgBMP loan program provides 3% loans through local lenders to farmers, rural landowners, and agriculture supply businesses. Funds are used for proven practices that prevent non-point source water pollution or solve existing water quality problems.

Widseth Smith Nolting (WSN) will evaluate and recommend to MPCA groundwater monitoring staff prospective sites/locations for the installation of groundwater monitoring wells to evaluate contaminant/pollutant concentrations from various sources. Peer will oversee the installation of monitoring wells by retaining a state drilling contractor or preparing bid documents to retain well driller through the Department of Administration. Superfund staff will assist in the project by providing oversight of contractual requirements and provide technical assistance as needed.

The DNR is working with local communities and an interagency team to define, prioritize, and establish groundwater management areas in Minnesota. Groundwater management areas will have increased data collection and monitoring that allow the state and local communities to understand water supplies, uses, limitations, and threats to natural resources that depend on groundwater. This information will support detailed aquifer protection plans that ensure equitable and sustainable groundwater and drinking water use for the future.

Governor Mark Dayton's landmark buffer initiative was signed into law in 2015. The law establishes new perennial vegetation buffers of up to 50 feet along rivers, streams, and ditches that will help filter out phosphorus, nitrogen, and sediment. The new law provides flexibility and financial support for landowners to install and maintain buffers. The DNR's role in Minnesota's new buffer law is to produce a statewide map of public waters and public ditches that require permanent vegetation buffers. The DNR is scheduled to produce these maps by July 2016.

This project will create a new chloride source assessment model and generate the best management practice (BMP) information and needed water softening data for the Smart Salting Assessment tool, which will allow Minnesota communities to fully evaluate their specific sources and magnitude of chloride and develop a community specific chloride reduction plan.

The  goals of the program are to evaluate the effectiveness of agricultural conservation practices, identify underlying processes that affect water quality, and develop technologies to target critical areas of the landscape. Funded projects provide current and accurate scientific data on the environmental impacts of agricultural practices and help to develop or revise agricultural practices that reduce environmental impacts while maintaining farm profitability.

Tetra Tech will gather information for eventual incorporation into the Minnesota Stormwater Manual. The Stormwater Manual is used by stormwater practitioners to make decisions related to stormwater management, such as selecting appropriate Best Management Practices, meeting stormwater regulatory requirements, and determining pollutant and stormwater volume reductions associated with implementation of different stormwater management practices. The goal is to update existing information and provide new information on active construction site erosion prevention and sediment control.

The goal of this project is to develop a core team of wastewater professionals and academics engaged in understanding and solving wastewater-related problems in Minnesota, with national relevance. The team will promote the use of new technology, designs and practices to address existing and emerging wastewater treatement challenges, including the treatement of wastewater for reuse and the emergence of new and unregulated contaminants.

In conjunction with the Board of Soil and Water Resources (BWSR), the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) is developing a process for public participation that can be used across Minnesota Water Quality Framework programs such as 1 Watershed, 1 Plan, Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategies (WRAPS), Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) studies, and others. This contract will provide support for a northern Minnesota Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) to assist in shaping the statewide guidance.

The County Well Index (CWI) contains well and boring records wells within Minnesota; over 400,000 records. It is the principal source of well construction information and geologic interpretations of well records and also contains soil boring records, mineral exploration test hole records, and scientific/research test hole records.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) offers grants to counties for Subsurface Sewage Treatment System (SSTS) program administration and special projects to improve SSTS compliance rates, and assistance for low-income homeowners with needed SSTS upgrades. The MPCA will determine grant allocations based on applications review; funds will flow to counties through the Board of Water and Soil Resources' Natural Resources Block Grants.

The DNR works with the Minnesota Geological Survey (MGS) to convey valuable geologic and groundwater information and interpretations to government units at all levels, but particularly to local governments, private organizations and citizens. The MGS focuses on geology (Part A reports) and DNR focuses on groundwater (Part B reports). These provide useful information for projects completed by community planners, industry, agriculture, citizens and state agencies related to groundwater.

This is a legislatively mandated project. In order to receive $1,075,000 in water recreation account appropriations for enhancing public water access facilities in FY 2014 and FY 2015 respectively, the commissioner must develop design standards and best management practices specifically for improving water quality by avoiding shoreline erosion and runoff for water accesses.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) has identified streamflow alteration as a key stressor on aquatic life, but the characteristics of streamflow alteration acting as stressors have not been identified in the MPCA Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategy (WRAPS) process. Without indices that characterize streamflow alteration, the MPCA cannot quantitatively associate metrics of aquatic life condition to streamflow alteration. The lack of quantifiable indices limits the ability of the MPCA to assess environmental streamflow needs for streams and rivers throughout Minnesota.

The Drinking Water Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CEC) program identifies environmental contaminants for which current health-based standards currently do not exist or need to be updated, investigate the potential for human exposure to these chemicals, and develop guidance values for drinking water. Contaminants evaluated by CEC staff include contaminants that have been released or detected in Minnesota waters (surface water and groundwater) or that have the potential to migrate to or be detected in Minnesota waters.

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.

The primary goal of this project is to enhance the current version of the Expert System for Calibration of HSPF (HSPEXP+) so that it can be more efficiently used for QA/QC of hydrology and water quality models developed using Hydrological Simulation Program FORTRAN (HSPF) and develop input files for two receiving waterbody models.

The Bell Museum will sort and identify all fish samples collected by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's (MPCA) North and South Biological Monitoring Units. The Bell Museum of Natural History (Bell Museum) will provide professional fish Identification expertise to the MPCA fish voucher program, while also helping the Bell Museum annually update their fish distribution map for the State of Minnesota. As the MPCA samples and vouchers species of significance, the Bell Museum shall catalog these species into their official fish collection.

The DNR works with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and the Minnesota Department of Health to determine the level of contamination from mercury and other harmful chemicals in fish from Minnesota's lakes and rivers and to track the success of efforts to reduce mercury pollution. Clean Water Legacy funding is being used to significantly increase (more than double) the number of lakes and rivers that are assessed for mercury contamination on an annual basis. Fish are collected during DNR fishery surveys, processed for laboratory testing, and analyzed for contaminants.

This is a project to to proactively address future threats to safe drinking water. This project will incorporate findings and recommendations from the Future of Drinking Water report to assess, prioritize, and manage drinking water risks.  Through this project, a voluntary statewide plan for protecting drinking water will be developed.  Additional outcomes from this project include public health policies and an action plan.

Groundwater sample collection and analysis will be conducted for contaminants of emerging concern (CEC) at large subsurface treatment systems (LSTS) and rapid infiltration basins (RIB), using an enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) methodology. Results from the ELISA analysis will be reported to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) and used to conduct follow-up investigations at a select number of these sites.

The goal of this project is to develop a tool to generate meteorological time-series input data for Minnesota Pollution Control Agency Hydrologic Simulation Program FORTRAN (HSPF) models based on publicly available gridded meteorological products.

The primary goal of this project is to train the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency staff in Hydrologic Simulation Program FORTRAN (HSPF) model calibration of nutrients, oxygen demand, and algal processes and in MATLAB script development for model output processing and report generation. Additionally, a pilot application process will be developed to link HSPF applications to Water quality Analysis Simulation Program (WASP) to take advantage of the advanced sediment oxygen demand processes.

The goal of this project is to develop a watershed-scale decision support tool, Scenario Application Manager (SAM), to facilitate prioritization and placement of best management practices (BMPs) needed to achieve the necessary reductions identified by various watershed management programs in Minnesota. SAM consists of a Geographic Information System (GIS) for site selection, and Hydrological Simulation Program – Fortran (HSPF) model application to simulate the transport of pollutants.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) has been monitoring for contaminants of emerging concern in Minnesota's surface water since 2007. These contaminants include a wide variety of pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and other chemicals that can harm fish and wildlife and human health. One group of these chemicals, disinfection by-products, are formed when water is treated with chlorine. Some of these chemicals are cancer-causing and highly toxic.

The biological communities present in a lake are the result of cumulative effects of natural and human-caused influences within the entire area of land and water that flows into the lake (i.e., the watershed). Biological assessments are used on lakes to identify water pollution and habitat concerns based on the type and abundance of selected animals and their habitats. Certain species cannot survive without clean water and healthy habitat while other species are tolerant of degraded conditions.

This project will complete updates to existing information and incorporate new information into the Minnesota Stormwater Manual including the Blue Star Assessment tool. Stormwater practitioners use the information and assessment tool to implement the most effective and cost-efficient practices for managing stormwater runoff volume, stormwater pollutants, and to meet regulatory requirements associated with stormwater permits.

Appropriations from the Clean Water Fund allow the Minnesota Department of Health to expand and improve the way groundwater and drinking water protection is implemented at the local level. In 2015, $300,000 was allocated to update wellhead protection areas within groundwater management areas. From 2016 onward, funding will be dedicated to the Groundwater Restoration and Protection Strategies (GRAPS) initiative which will provide groundwater and drinking water information and management strategies on a HUC 8 watershed scale.

The objective of this project is to build on previous efforts aimed at determining the public health risk due to virus contamination in Minnesota groundwater. The Minnesota Department of Health will examine the occurrence of viruses in non-disinfecting groundwater sources in Minnesota as well as evaluate the association between source water virus occurrence and community acute gastrointestinal illness.

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.

Minnesota's Legacy Website is a site that follows the progress of all projects and programs receiving constitutionally dedicated funding from the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment as well as the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund.