Peer Engineering, Inc. (Peer) 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.
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 place the Cedar River watershed on a sustainable and clearly understood implementation process for comprehensive water management. All people living in the watershed and all groups operating and managing land in the watershed, are responsible stakeholders in the effort. Objectives for this phase of the project include:
1. Develop a comprehensive watershed restoration and protection strategy.
2. Continue development of a more coordinated and comprehensive citizen participation process.
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.
This project will build upon existing planning and implementation efforts already taken on in the project area. The collection of existing information will be used to complement water information in support of a more successful and sustainable water quality improvement and protection implementation program. This will be achieved by active civic engagement activities throughout Phase I of this project.
This project will complete a comprehensive study, following a rational, step-wise process of data analysis, response modeling and comparison to the water quality standards, followed by impairment diagnosis, modeling of improvement and protection options, and development of a WRAP Report and Implementation Plan for Sunfish lake, Thompson lake, Pickerel lake, and Rogers lake.
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 provide the MPCA, CCWD, and all other stakeholders the information and tools necessary to improve the water quality within Coon Creek Watershed District. The improvements will take place using targeted activities throughout the watershed to reduce the primary biological and chemical stressors. In turn, the reduction of these stressors will help to reduce overall loadings of sediment, turbidity, total phosphorus, and E. coli bacteria.
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 VLAWMO watershed covers approximately 25 square miles in the northeast metropolitan area in northern Ramsey County and a small portion of Anoka County, Minnesota. It encompasses the City of North Oaks and portions of the Cities of White Bear Lake, Gem Lake, Vadnais Heights, Lino Lakes, and White Bear Township. This project will gather and organize existing data, support the continuation of modeling and TMDL allocations along with an additional stakeholder meeting. It will also provide the completion of a draft and final TMDL report.
Varney Lake is owned and maintained by the City of white Bear Lake as part of its stormwater collection system. The City will excavate approximately 10,000 cubic yards of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) contaminated sediment from Varney Lake (which is located in a residential portion of the City) and manage the sediments on site by encapsulating the sediment in a berm covered with clean top soil. The encapsulated sediment will be managed as a solid waste in what the MPCA refers to as a limited use solid waste landfill (Facility).
This project will remove accumulated sediment from two Stormwater Treatment Ponds in Circle Pines that were constructed in the 1970’s. Recent testing of the sediments indicates that Tier 2 and 3 PAH compounds were found in the sediment. The most recent estimate for the volume of material that will be removed is 2,400 Cubic Yards.
The GVCC Pond Excavation Project will remove approximately 2,500 cubic yards of accumulated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) Level/Tier 3 contaminated sediment from the Golden Valley Country Club stormwater treatment pond.
LEQA is a Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) program to help livestock producers address, using a non-regulatory approach, the unique water quality issues on their farms. The MDA has contracted with Ag Resource Strategies, LLC, to recruit farmers to enroll in the LEQA program. The company trains technicians to assess different areas of each farms, such as the farmstead, livestock facilities, fields and wooded areas. The technicians then develop an environmental assessment and identify financial assistance for these projects.
Certain stretches of the Pomme de Terre River have been identified as impaired. This project will quantify the reductions in pollutant loading that would be necessary to bring water quality in the impaired stretches to an acceptable level. It will also identify strategies that would improve water quality in these impaired stretches. Some funds will support public input activities into the Pomme de Terre River watershed management plan.
This project will provide the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and Ramsey-Washington Metro Watershed District the information and tools necessary to improve water quality in Battle Creek Lake, Beaver Lake, Carver Lake, Keller Lake and Wakefield Lake through targeted phosphorus reduction activities in the watershed.
The goal of the project is to create a complete Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategy (WRAPS) report for the Ramsey-Washington Metro Watershed District for inclusion into an updated Watershed Management Plan, including completion of a watershed-wide Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) report sufficient for EPA approval.
This project will collect real-time parameter data for specific conductance, water temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, turbidity and stream flow at the United States geological Survey (USGS) gaging stations located at Fargo, ND and Grand Forks, ND on the Red River of the North; and publish the data both on the USGS NWIS website and in the USGS Annual Report.
The purpose of this project is to improve understanding of primary productivity in the Red River and the diversity and population structure of the algal communities occurring along the river system. This will be accomplished through taxonomic identification of periphyton and phytoplankton assemblages necessary for characterizing responses to nutrient gradients along the Red River of the North.
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 goal of this project is the continued development of an overall strategy for reduction of turbidity/TSS, with sets of sediment reduction initiatives and actions for various sources, to address the Minnesota River Turbidity TMDL and the South Metro Mississippi River TSS TMDL. The overall strategy will be used to help establish a path towards achieving the required reductions of turbidity/TSS.
This project will complete a chloride management plan which will lay out a strategy for addressing chloride impacts to our surface waters for the 7-county metropolitan area. This chloride management plan will satisfy EPA requirements for impaired waters, address waters not yet listed, and develop a strategy to protect waters that are currently meeting the water quality standards.
This project will develop a watershed restoration plan that provides quantitative pollutant load reduction estimates and a set of pollutant reduction and watershed management strategies to achieve water quality standards for all impairments within the watershed. It will also an important framework for civic and citizen engagement and communication, which will contribute to long-term public participation in surface water protection and restoration activities throughout the watershed.
This project will support the monitoring of reaches where there are data gaps, incorporate new data and relevant data, continue identification of pollutant sources, complete load duration curves, coordinate and encourage participation in stakeholder meetings. The information gathered during Phase IIB will be utilized towards the development of a Draft Restoration (TMDL) and Protection Plan (Plan).
This project will provide MPCA staff, local partners and citizen volunteers with a framework for building local capacity to design civic engagement and communication/outreach efforts that will contribute to meaningful and sustained public participation in surface water protection and restoration activities throughout the watershed.
This is a joint project between the United States Geological Survey (USGS), Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), North Dakota, and Manitoba. The project is a basin-wide, up-to-date water quality trend analysis using the "QWTrend" program for approximately 40 bi-national river sites to review nutrients, total suspended solids, total dissolved solids, sulfate and chloride from 1980 - 2015.
