balmm currents EXTRA
Basin Alliance
for the Lower Mississippi in Minnesota
February 4, 2004
NEXT BALMM MEETING: Wednesday,
February 16, MPCA-Rochester.
DISCUSSION FOCUS: NITROGEN IN THE WATER
BALMM PARTNERS AWARDED THREE NEW 319 GRANTS:
Three partners in the BALMM collaborative will have new projects funded through
Clean Water Act Section 319 funding from the Environmental Protection Agency,
administered by the MPCA, it was recently announced. The projects are described
in the following summaries provided by the grant recipients:
Volunteer Nitrate Monitoring Network in Targeted Areas
– a Pilot Project
319 Demonstration Project submitted by the SE MN Water Resources Board
This proposal entitled,
“Volunteer Nitrate Monitoring Network in Targeted Areas – a Pilot Project” has
been awarded a grant of $275,000. The project is designed to be a nine-county
effort to develop and test the concept of a cost-effective, locally driven, and
sustainable means of obtaining long-term trend data for nitrate occurrence in
private drinking water supplies. In each county, approximately 50 - 150
homeowners will be selected to participate in a monitoring design developed by
hydrologists from the MN Departments of Health (MDH) and Agriculture (MDA) in
cooperation with county water resource managers. Homeowners will be an integral part of the
proposed project design and will be trained to sample for nitrates and ship
their water samples to specified county locations. The concept would build upon the existing
framework of the highly successful Nitrate Well Testing Program that has been
funded by 319 funds since 1999. Through the Nitrate Well Testing program, many
county cooperators have become trained in using the nitrate testing equipment
and experienced in working with homeowners on water quality issues. County
staff will conduct the nitrate analysis using this existing
instrumentation.
In southeastern Minnesota, virtually all
drinking water supplies are from ground water sources. A baseline ground water monitoring study was
conducted throughout the region in 1992 -3.
As part of discussions regarding a 10-year follow-up monitoring design,
a survey was conducted in 2003 to determine the primary ground water concerns
of county staff. In eight out of nine
counties, nitrate contamination of drinking water supplies in certain sensitive
areas was determined to be the chief concern.
Based on this survey, areas identified for targeted monitoring included
those identified in geologic atlases as hydrogeologically
sensitive, areas where the protective Decorah shale layer is absent, areas of
focused recharge at the edges of confining layers, where the Cedar Valley
aquifer is still used as a water supply (>50 feet to bedrock), sensitive
areas where nitrates are still relatively low, high growth areas, river
corridors, areas with high sinkhole potential or other karst
features, and Wellhead Protection Areas.
Although nitrates are a
proven health risk, Minnesota
has no program in place to determine long-term trends for nitrate contamination
in private drinking water wells. This
situation exists despite the fact that the Minnesota Ground Water Protection Act of
1989 states that pollutants found to be consistently at or above the Health
Risk Limits require “expanded investigation of source
and extent”. With a monitoring network
in place, counties would have the means to determine the efficacy of their
water quality programs, to identify emerging trends, and to target water
management resources for program implementation.
Furthermore, this proposed
regional project would give the ground water-vulnerable counties of
southeastern Minnesota
an opportunity to obtain significant long-term water quality data at a time
when federal pressure has caused the state to focus their attention on surface
water concerns at the expense of protecting drinking water sources. As such,
the state fails to recognize the acute and chronic health impacts of human consumption
of contaminated drinking water and ignores the significant contribution of
ground water to the base flow of many surface water bodies. This is especially true in the karst areas of southeastern Minnesota where groundwater provides base
flow for coldwater streams.
This proposed project
includes five major elements:
1)
Based on analysis of existing data, MDH,
MDA, and county staff will design a scientifically defensible ground water
monitoring network for each county;
2)
Each county will hire a County Well
Network Coordinator to establish a long-term nitrate sampling network;
3)
The Network Coordinator will visit each
potential home to conduct a brief site inspection, administer a homeowner
survey of drinking water attitudes and practices, and train the homeowner on
the proper way to collect, preserve and ship the water samples;
4)
Based on homeowner and staff feedback,
evaluate the feasibility of this innovative approach for nitrate data
collection and its applicability to other areas of the state; and
5)
Prepare county staff for transition to
maintaining a low-cost well monitoring network with existing county resources.
This project will be carried
out by a partnership of nine member counties of the SE MN Water Resources Board
in partnership with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and the Minnesota
Department of Health.
South Branch
Whitewater Watershed - Bacteria Reduction Project
Submitted by the
Whitewater Watershed Project
This project was awarded a
grant of $174,660 and a loan of $300,000. The South Branch of the Whitewater
River Watershed is located in Winona and Olmsted counties, in Southeast
Minnesota, and is 93 square miles in size. The western portion of the South Branch is
part of the Rochester Plateau, with gently rolling land that is heavily row
cropped. The eastern portion of the
watershed is more rolling, and is dissected by steep valleys with wooded
slopes. The crop fields in the Eastern
portion are smaller, with more hay and pasture present. Dairy and beef are the major livestock types
in the watershed. Overall the South
Branch is 64% cropland, 16% forest, 10% pasture, and 10% wildlife and
urban/suburban.
70% of the urban population
of the Whitewater Watershed is in the South Branch, and includes the rapidly
growing cities of St. Charles, Dover and Eyota.
The lower third of the South
Branch of the Whitewater
River supports a healthy
population of brown trout, and flows through the Whitewater Wildlife Management
area. Crystal Springs Fish Hatchery is
located in this lower portion of the South branch. The South Branch enters the main stem of the
Whitewater River near the town of Elba, then flows northeast, through the
27,000 acre Whitewater Wildlife Management Area, and discharges to the
Mississippi River at Weaver Bottoms, an important waterfowl staging area.
The South Branch of the Whitewater River is listed as impaired for full
body recreation and aquatic life because of exceedences
of the fecal coliform and turbidity standards. Monitoring data shows the Whitewater River
Watershed having the highest fecal coliform bacteria
levels in the Lower
Mississippi River
Basin. The
May geometric mean is 1,988 CFU/100ml and the summer mean is 1,070 CFU/100ml,
compared to the state chronic water quality standard of 200 CFU/100ml. The Whitewater Watershed Project diagnostic
study found fecal coliform bacteria contamination of
surface and ground water to be a significant problem, and set goals and
objectives to address the problem. The
project goals and objectives include education, cost-share, and incentives –
and are the focus of this proposal.
Through this bacteria
reduction project, the project will utilize education, technical assistance and
financial assistance to reduce bacteria levels in the South Branch of the Whitewater River.
Using the Regional TMDL Implementation Plan as a guide to focus our
efforts, we will target our resources on failing residential septic systems,
unprotected feedlots, manured fields, sensitive
features, and urban storm water runoff sources to bring them into conformance
with state rules and best management practice guidelines for fecal coliform. More
specifically the project team will focus its efforts in the South Branch of the
Whitewater River Watershed to 1) educate watershed residents and local
officials about fecal coliform bacteria pollution, 2)
develop customized maps on sensitive features and setback requirements for all
livestock farmers, 3) offer low interest loans for low-cost feedlot fixes and
individual sewage treatment system upgrades, and 4) utilize existing cost share
programs and watershed staff to increase technical and financial assistance
utilization for the adoption of targeted BMP’s for
the reduction of fecal coliform bacteria
pollution.
We will implement our goals
and objectives within the South Branch subwatershed
utilizing existing partnerships and financial resources available in the watershed,
coupled with additional resources, as outlined in this proposal, in a targeted
effort to reduce coliform bacteria levels in the
river system. Work on this project will
be prepared to begin in June 2005.
Building Local Capacity for Community Solutions to
Wastewater Problems, Cannon River
Watershed Partnership
This proposal entitled “Building Local Capacity for
Community Solutions to Wastewater Problems” is part of a basin-wide response to
the findings of the Regional Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) Study of Fecal Coliform Bacteria Impairments in the Lower Mississippi
River Basin in Minnesota (MPCA, 2002).
This TMDL identified excessive levels of fecal coliform
bacteria in the streams of the Lower Mississippi River Basin
in Minnesota
as posing a risk to human health. Both unsewered communities and failing individual sewage
treatment systems (ISTS) were identified as major sources of fecal coliform pollution.
In the spring and summer dry periods, these sources account for an estimated
52% of the fecal coliform load contribution. The Regional TMDL calls for a 65% reduction
of bacterial loading from failing septic systems and unsewered
communities. Given that an estimated
65,000 people and 104 communities in the basin have inadequate wastewater
treatment, a concentrated effort to upgrade improperly operating systems and
effectively manage compliant systems is necessary to achieve this magnitude of
reduction. Previous basin-wide grants
have focused on improperly functioning ISTS and health threats posed by unsewered communities.
They provided guidance, instruction, facilitation and fiscal assistance
to move individuals and communities toward attaining responsible sewage
treatment and performing proper operation and maintenance of community and
individual wastewater treatment systems.
The proposed project will consolidate and build on the
achievements of previous efforts by developing ongoing local capacity to
effectively manage rural sewage treatment.
If funded, this proposal will support the hiring of two facilitators who
will be responsible for education and technical assistance. These facilitators, along with University of Minnesota Extension Service’s Onsite
Sewage Treatment System program, will help communities begin solving their
wastewater treatment problems. In
addition, the program will offer a financial incentive to communities to become
engaged in the improvement process, creating local ownership of the issue along
the way. This will be done in two
phases.
First, the project will work with unsewered
communities to conduct an initial needs assessment. This helps communities determine local
regulations, geographic conditions, lot sizes, status of current ISTS, well
locations and depths, and potential individual or cluster onsite
solutions. The assessment is necessary
in order to establish which direction the community will proceed with: publicly
funded community collection and treatment, privately funded replacement of
ISTS, or a combination of both.
Then, based on the findings of the initial needs
assessment, project facilitators will help communities overcome initial hurdles
by providing small cost-share grants to complete necessary inventories and
feasibility studies. These studies are
necessary to initiate the upgrade process and are often a barrier for
communities that are aware of significant wastewater issues but do not have
staff or resources to begin such a detailed process. They also allow a community to consider a
variety of creative approaches to solving its treatment problems. Once these hurdles are overcome, communities
will be in a position to compete for more substantial funding to design and
construct the treatment system that best suits their community.
Requested funding for the project would implement the
following objectives:
- Provide education and
facilitation to 20-30 communities throughout the region.
- Engage at least six new
communities in the improvement process.
- Assist at least 3 targeted
townships with the development of programs aimed at reducing human sources
of fecal coliform pollution through pumping
programs, educational campaigns, etc.
- Positively affect local
policies to embrace new or expanded management practices within county ISTS programs.
- Research and evaluate the capabilities
and costs of various ISTS management programs.
- Work with counties to utilize
the capabilities of their ISTS data management systems to encourage Best
Management Practices for ISTS owners.
The
project will be carried out by a partnership of six counties in the Cannon River
watershed, seven counties of the Basin Alliance of the Lower Mississippi in MN,
the Cannon River Watershed Partnership, the SE MN Water Resources Board, the
Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, and the University of MN Extension
Service.
BEARS REPEATING:
“…we, ignorant of ourselves, Beg often our own harms,
which the wise powers Deny us for our good; so find we profit By losing of our
prayers.” – Wm. Shakespeare, Antony
& Cleopatra.
Send comments and
items for future editions to:
balmm
currents editor: Norman Senjem, MPCA
Phone: 507/280-3592
norman.senjem@pca.state.mn.us