This project will provide support for the 10th Annual Road Salt Symposium at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. The symposium brings together environmental organizations, companies that produce winter road de-icing salts and chemicals, scientists, policy-makers and transportation workers. They Symposium provides information on chlorides in our waters and provides innovative and new approaches to help repair our waters and sustain our resources for future generations.
This project will promulgate a nitrate water quality standard to address aquatic life toxicity, and gather information needed to support the development of total nitrogen (N) loading reduction strategies for Minnesota’s waters and also address Minnesota’s contribution to marine water hypoxia. Project will also develop a framework for a watershed nitrogen planning aid that can be used to optimize selection of Best Management Practice (BMP) systems for reducing nitrogen.
This Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) project will develop a TMDL Report and Implementation Plan defining the sources contributing to the impairments and outlining the steps necessary to bring Bluff Creek back to meeting water quality standards.
This project will develop a Final TMDL report and Implementation Plan for the Bluff Creek Watershed. The main outcomes of this project are the development of a Final TMDL Report approved by MPCA and EPA and a Final Implementation Plan approved by MPCA.
This project will develop a watershed approach plan, including impaired waters allocations, for the Mustinka Watershed, located at the headwaters of the Red River of the North, in western Minnesota, lying partly in Grant, Stevens, Ottertail, Big Stone, and Traverse counties. The watershed approach plan will set water quality goals for the watershed, recommend allocations for achieving total maximum daily loads where waters do not meet state standards and are listed as impaired.
This project will complete a comprehensive and sustainable Major Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategies report for the Chippewa River, its tributary streams, and the many lakes in the Chippewa River watershed that is understandable and adoptable by local units of government and residents.
This project will provide Soil and Water Conservation Districts the opportunity to nominate an individual, business, company, municipality or organization for their concern, cooperation and/or implementation of conservation practices in a community environment. This award recognizes nominees that have excelled in a variety of categories which include: storm water management; land use conservation planning and implementation, and leadership relating to community conservation practices.
This project will provide Stressor ID work and assistance for the development of a work plan for the Major Watershed Project. The Major Watershed Project will include a plan for civic engagement and outreach, with assistance from ten Local Government Units from the Crow Wing River Watershed.
This project will initiate project coordination among project partners. It will enhance civic engagement and outreach endeavors activities to support Phase 2 of TMDL project. It will also support field activities associated with stressor ID work.
The Buffalo River Watershed Pilot Project is one of two pilots in Minnesota designed to develop a watershed approach for managing Minnesota’s surface waters. The goal of this project is to develop a plan that will guide surface water quality management throughout the watershed.
This project will identify and compile existing nitrate data from groundwaters and surface waters in the Lower Mississippi Basin (LMB) generally and focus on the Root River Watershed. The purpose is to investigate the quantity and quality of existing nitrate data, and to organize it for use in comprehensive watershed strategy development (including assessment, TMDL computation and identification and study of nitrate sources and delivery mechanisms).
This project will provide additional monitoring data to be utilized in the watershed assessment process for the Le Sueur River Watershed Project. Blue Earth County SWCD will provide a technician to complete the water sampling for the sampling years 2011 and 2012 on the Maple River.
This first phase of project will define the existing watershed conditions; identify gaps in existing data; design and implement a plan to address data gaps; incorporate gap data into watershed description; guide development of the HSPF model; establish citizen advisory, technical advisory and locally-based focus groups; research and design an education and outreach strategy; and design and deploy the tools and methods to employ the strategy.
This project will complete an implementation plan, as required by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, for the Zumbro River turbidity TMDL project. It will also revise the Zumbro River Watershed Management Plan (completed 2007) to ensure it continues to reflect local needs, incorporates new information, and develops more effective linkages with related local, state and federal government programs.
This project will promote positive land use changes, along with a sense of watershed stewardship and awareness throughout the Crow River Watershed. This project contains three main tasks: BMP installation, public outreach and administration. This project will also work with the Big Swan Lake Association in Meeker County to host a shoreline naturalization workshop.
Deer Creek has been identified as an impaired water body. This project will quantify the reductions in pollutant loading that would be necessary to bring water quality in the creek to an acceptable level. The project also includes collection of any additional data needed for stream channel modeling scenarios.
This project will quantify and qualify the effectiveness of herbicide treatments and native plant re-establishment at Duck Lake through systematic vegetative surveys pre and post herbicide application and following mid-summer die-off of curly-leaf pondweed. The data and analysis will ultimately be used in the development of TMDLs, implementation and protection strategies for other lakes in the Middle Minnesota Major Watershed.
US Geological Survey-MN Water Science Center will complete laboratory analysis of groundwater samples for endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) and other emerging contaminants of interest, including organic waste water compounds, pharmaceuticals, and endrocrine active compounds, and report results. MPCA staff will complete sample collection tasks. The USGS National Water Quality Laboratory and the Kansas Water Science Center Laboratory will perform the laboratory analyses.
This project will study the geologic controls on nitrate transport in southeast Minnesota's karst landscape and will also provide datasets for other projects over time.
This project will support construction of three watershed framework models built using the Hydrologic Simulation Program FORTRAN (HSPF). These executable models will simulate hydrology at the subbasin scale. An HSPF model will be built for each of three major watersheds: the Crow River/North Fork Crow River, the South Fork Crow River, and the Sauk River.
This project will support construction of three watershed framework models built using the Hydrologic Simulation Program FORTRAN (HSPF). These executable models will simulate hydrology at the subbasin scale. An HSPF model will be built for each of these major watersheds: Crow Wing River, Redeye River, and Long Prairie River.
This project will finalize HSPF watershed model construction and complete the calibration/validation process for the following three watersheds: North Fork Crow River, South Fork Crow River, and Sauk River.
This project will complete the development of two watershed HSPF models for the Mustinka River and Bois de Sioux River watersheds. These calibrated and validated executable models will simulate hydrology at the 12-digit HUC subbasin scale.
This project will complete spatial and temporal revisions of 6 Hydrologic Simulation Program FORTRAN (HSPF) models, the recalibration and validation of 7 watershed HSPF models, and the revision of the drainage network and point source representation of the Pomme de Terre HSPF model.
Project between Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and United States Army Corp of Engineers at Knowlton Creek Watershed to address a large amount of sediment deposited into the St. Louis River Area of Concern (AOC).
This project will complete data collection on 11 lakes over a 2 year period in the Pomme de Terre Watershed. The data collected will be be used in the Major Watershed Project proposed for this watershed.
This project will initiate the process of community engagement in the LeSueur River watershed by assessing the needs and interests of the community and bringing a diverse set of stakeholders together to determine how best to foster action in improving and protecting water quality.
This project will use the Spatially Referenced Regression On Watersheds (SPARROW) model as a means of assessing and characterizing the nitrogen loading situation in Minnesota. These results will be used along with other nitrogen loading characterization efforts conducted by others, so that a more complete characterization can be conducted. The results of this effort will be useful as Minnesota works to establish state-specific goals and strategies to address its contribution to Gulf of Mexico hypoxia.
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.
Lake Monitoring: Lakes are monitored for nutrients, clarity and other information to provide the data needed to assess the aquatic recreation use support.
This project supports monitoring and assessment activities by MPCA Environmental Assistance and Outcomes staff and includes lab analysis, equipment, and fieldwork expenses associated with monitoring and assessment activities.The ambient groundwater monitoring network describes the current condition and trends in Minnesota's groundwater quality.
This project supports activities by MPCA technical staff that provide technical assistance , project oversight, coordination and other agency activities associated with assessing, listing and cunducting TMDL studies throughout the State of Minnesota. Project funding also includes lab analysis, equipment, and fieldwork expenses.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources will coordinate the collection of high-resolution elevation data for northeastern portion of Minnesota using Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) systems. The geographic area of the work includes Minnesota counties of Carlton, Cook, Lake, and St. Louis Counties and that portion of Koochiching County that comprises Voyageurs National Park.
This new initiative aims to increase student achievement in and through the arts in nine west-central Minnesota schools. With the ultimate goal of positively impacting the learning of more than 1,500 students this year in the Lakes Country region, 40 teachers in the arts and in other content areas are engaged in professional development, curriculum development, and assessment literacy, leading to the development and implementation of arts-integrated lessons and units tied to the Minnesota Academic Standards.
The Arts Education in Minnesota Schools Research Project is surveying all public and private schools to collect baseline data on the status of arts education statewide to serve as a resource for making data-driven decisions. A national research and evaluation company, Quadrant Arts Education Research, is conducting the study, comprised of three elements.
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 develop feasibility analysis, a drawdown plan for Malmedal Lake and an analysis of available options for fish barriers in the watersheds of Malmedal Lake and Strandness Lake.
This project will support water quality monitoring and data analysis in nine major watersheds (8-digit Hydrologic Unit Codes) of the Lower Red River Basin. The monitoring will assist in providing water chemistry data needed to calculate annual pollutant loads for the Major Watershed Load Monitoring Program (MWLMP) and provide short term data sets of select parameters to other MPCA programs.
This project will monitor streams in target watersheds located in Ottertail and Wadena counties. Six sites have been identified by MPCA for biological monitoring; this project will complete the chemical and field analysis at these six sites.
TMDL project in the Root River Watershed that will support surface water assessment, analysis of data, interpretation of southeast Minnesota's karst landscape, stressor identification, TMDL computation, source assessment, and implementation planning.
This project will complete an assessment of watershed lakes and streams. The assessment will include biological and stressor id analysis, which will support a summary report on lake conditions and protection strategies for lakes included in this watershed study.
