Lower Prior Lake was the target of a 2011-2013 diagnostic and feasibility study that identified projects and ranked subwatershed by phosphorus loading to the lake. This project is in a high loading subwatershed and includes three elements designed to reduce phosphorus loading and control rates and volumes of stormwater runoff: 1) retrofitting an existing ditch section with in-line iron-sand filters; 2) expanding storage capacity and creating wetland upstream of the ditch; and 3) installing a new control structure in an existing berm.
Arctic Lake, while not listed as an impaired water on the statewide 303(d) list, both regularly exceeds the statewide phosphorus standard for shallow lakes and drains directly to Upper Prior Lake, which is impaired for nutrients Reducing Phosphorus to Arctic Lake will help reverse the current declining water quality while also reducing the loading entering Upper Prior Lake.
South Central Technical Service Area (SCTSA) will use this Clean Water Fund grant to provide Soil and Water Conservation Districts and other local organizations in its eleven-county area with a Geographic Information System (GIS) Technician to assist in using available GIS information to target specific locations where Best Management Practices (BMPs) can be installed to help improve water quality.
This grant to the City of Morris provides public improvements for the beneficial use of wastewater effluent, where beneficial use is defined as the use of stormwater or wastewater effluent from a publicly owned wastewater treatement plant to replace the use of groundwater.
The Q-Lot at St. Cloud State University (SCSU) is an 8 acre (1,000 spaces) gravel and asphalt parking lot. The parking lot's surface is impervious, which means it doesn't allow for rainfall or snow melt to soak into the ground. Instead, the water runs off directly into storm sewers, taking with it sediment, bacteria, automotive fluids and other pollutants which flow straight into the Mississippi River. SCSU staff has frequently witnessed plumes of sediment the color of chocolate milk where the storm sewer discharges into the river.
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 install new stormwater treatment practices in neighborhoods directly draining to Coon Lake. The objective is to remove phosphorus, which fuels algae growth, before the water is discharged into the lake. Seventeen potential project sites have been identified and ranked and include curb-cut rain gardens, swales, stabilizing stormwater discharge points, and a basin outlet modification.
The Sauk River Watershed District (SRWD) is the drainage authority for Stearns and Pope Counties. The SRWD manages 12 public drainage systems totaling over 90 miles. The majority of the public systems provide drainage for agricultural land uses and were constructed in the early 1900s.
The Faribault County Soil and Water Conservation District Drainage Engineer will inventory public drainage ditches to identify priority systems and areas where erosion, sediment, and nutrients contribute to water quality degradation. Sites identified for potential side inlet control, buffer strip need, or water storage will be prioritized for landowner contact and follow through by seeking external funding opportunities.
Working with a consultant, a current online database to manage public drainage systems will be enhanced and a corresponding mobile inspection app will be developed to facilitate drainage compliance and improve inspection planning. With these improvements, a long-term, comprehensive, GIS-compatible database will be in place to help plan, collect, document, summarize, and analyze system condition, repair needs, and violations with the overall goal of protecting and improving water quality.
The Minnesota DNR and the Minnesota Forest Resources Council work with forest landowners, managers and loggers to implement a set of voluntary sustainable forest management guidelines that include water quality best management practices (BMPs) to ensure sustainable habitat, clean water, and productive forest soils, all contributing to healthy watersheds. This project will monitor the implementation of these forest management guidelines and BMPs on forested watersheds in MN.
This project will install an iron enhanced sand filter (IESF) to restore water quality in Golden Lake. Golden Lake is within a fully developed area of the Twin Cities, surrounded by residential land use, and the focal point of a city park. The IESF will achieve 11% of the phosphorus reduction (21 lbs/yr) required for Golden Lake to meet State water quality standards, as identified in the approved Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL).
Minnesota’s use of groundwater has increased over the last two decades. An increasing reliance on groundwater may not be a sustainable path for continued economic growth and development. The DNR is establishing three pilot groundwater management areas (GWMA) to help improve groundwater appropriation decisions and help groundwater users better understand and plan for future groundwater needs associated with economic development.
The goal of this project is to extend the existing HSPF models through 2012 in the Chippewa Watershed (07020005) and Hawk-Yellow Medicine Watershed (07020004) to incorporate recent monitoring data to support current MPCA business needs and sediment source investigations.
Funding supports an Irrigation Specialist to develop guidance and provide education on irrigation and nitrogenbest management practices (BMPs). In this position, Dr. Vasu Sharma provides direct support to irrigators onissues of irrigation scheduling and soil water monitoring. She is collaborating on the development of new irrigationscheduling tools that help irrigators manage water and nitrogen resources more precisely. These tools help reducenitrogen leaching losses in irrigated cropping systems.
This project will reduce sediment and nutrient loading to the main stem and local tributaries of the Lower Minnesota River (LMR) by providing cost share for practices that treat ravine headcut and channel erosion, streambank/shoreline erosion, ephemeral gully erosion, and direct-discharging open inlet drainage systems. Targeted Best Management Practices (BMPs) will include but not be limited to grade control structures, grassed/lined waterways, water & sediment control basins, shoreline/streambank stabilization and alternative tile inlets.
This project will establish a groundwater monitoring network in the 11 county metropolitan area. The network will provide information about aquifer characteristics and natural water trends by monitoring healthy aquifers (non-stressed systems). The project will also develop an automated system that captures groundwater level and water use data. This system will enhance evaluation of changes in aquifers that are stressed by pumping from existing wells.
Ensuring natural resource practitioners are applying state-of-the-art approaches is the best way to achieve optimum Best Management Practice (BMP) selection, design, and placement in the landscape, thereby maximizing Clean Water Fund (CWF) benefits. To that end, it is critical to train new staff, create modeling protocols for new BMPs, refine and calibrate models, and test ever-advancing modeling applications.
This project will create a high accuracy elevation dataset - critical for effectively planning and implementing water quality projects - for the state of Minnesota using LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and geospatial mapping technologies. Although some areas of the state have been mapped previously, many counties remain unmapped or have insufficient or inadequate data. This multi-year project, to be completed in 2012, is a collaborative effort of Minnesota's Digital Elevation Committee and partners with county surveyors to ensure accuracy with ground-truthing.
The DNR has been charged by the legislature to develop rules that protect and manage the Mississippi River Corridor Critical Area (MRCCA) for natural resource, economic development, transportation, historic preservation, and other values. This project engages stakeholder groups in a public process to balance regulatory protections with local flexibility and control.
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 within the described priority watersheds. Lake Monitoring: Lakes are monitored for nutrients, clarity and other information to provide the data needed to assess the aquatic recreation use support. Biological and Water Chemistry Stream Monitoring: Monitoring to assess the conditions of streams in each watershed.
This project supports monitoring and assessment activities by MPCA EAO staff and includes lab analysis, equipment, fieldwork, data management, and interpretation expenses associated with monitoring and assessment activities.The ambient groundwater monitoring network describes the current condition and trends in Minnesota's groundwater quality.
The goal of this project is to analyze and document database architecture, platform, table structures, systems and data fields at six Minnesota agencies (Board of Soil and Water Resources, Department of Natural Resources, MN Department of Agriculture, MN Department of Health, Metropolitan Council, and MN Pollution Control Agency) for 30+ databases related to water.
MECA will offer day sessions intended to educate permittees on the requirements for the MS4 permit. The sessions will be held in Vadnais Heights, Detroit Lakes, St. Cloud, St. Paul and Mankato Minnesota.
The goal of this project is to add dual endpoints to the turbidity section of the North Fork Crow TMDL so that it addresses the proposed TSS standards.
This Oak Glen Creek stormwater pond expansion and enhancement using an iron enhanced sand filter (IESF) is a partnership between the Anoka Conservation District (ACD) and a private company to protect a downstream corridor stabilization and improve the quality of stormwater discharged to the Mississippi River. Very little stormwater infrastructure currently exists in the 573 acre Oak Glen Creek subwatershed, and it discharges 147,519 pounds of sediment and 353 pounds of phosphorus to the Mississippi River annually.
The goal of the Pomme de Terre River Association (JPB) is to improve local water resources within the watershed through targeted voluntary efforts and build strong relationships with local landowners, producers, and citizens. Utilizing the State's first Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategy, the JPB has targeted and identified specific areas and activities required for marked water quality improvement.
This project will reduce sediment to the Minnesota River, control erosion and reduce sedimentation in a local DNR Protected Water and protect private land and public infrastructure. The County Road (CR) 6 ravine (Quarry Creek) cuts through the Minnesota River valley bluff in Blakeley Township. Active channel incision and erosion within the ravine has caused large amounts of sediment to be deposited under the bridge at CR 6 such that the road is frequently flooded and sediment has to be removed several times a year.
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.
The goal of this project is 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 for the benefit of water quality in the Red River Basin.
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.
Rice Lake, in Stearns County, is an impaired water for nutrients that has a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) Implementation plan developed. Rice Lake is one of the larger lakes in the county, offering major water recreation opportunities, economic benefits as well as fish and wildlife habitat. It is a priority for Stearns County to implement projects that have positive impacts on this resource.
Calcareous fens such as the Savage Fen are fragile ecosystems existing only under a unique combination of soil type, hydrology, chemistry, and vegetation. The City of Savage is continuing efforts to protect this important ecosystem through this project. Two large ravines -Dakota Avenue and McColl's Bluff - discharge to the Fen, which was granted special status under the State's Wetlands Conservation Act. Both ravines are highly eroded and carry a significant amount of stormwater and sediment to the Savage Fen.
This project will provide lake and stream monitoring assistance to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), identifying impaired waters within the Lower Minnesota RIver Watershed (Watershed ID: 07020012) according to the Intensive Watershed Monitoring (IWM) Approach.
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.
