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As part of our commitment to continuous improvement, transparency, certainty, and customer service, the MPCA is improving the way we track and administer permits. These efforts are part of periodical…
Removing Middle Lake from the impaired waters list required wrangling with a bottom feeder, the invasive carp.
Water quality trading is a market-based approach to the protection and restoration of surface waters, another tool to be used in conjunction with existing voluntary, regulatory, and financial assistance programs.
Water scientists from the MPCA published four watershed reports in 2025, updating the data we need to keep Minnesota’s waters clean and protected.
Protecting and restoring water quality is one of the MPCA's core areas of focus.
The MPCA has important roles in protecting and restoring waters in degraded conditions.
Starting Jan. 1, 2025, the first prohibitions of products containing intentionally added PFAS took effect in Minnesota.
A watershed is the area of land where all of the water that drains off of it goes into the same place — a river, stream or lake.
A water quality variance is a temporary change in a state's water quality standard for a specific pollutant and its relevant criteria, allowing deviation from meeting a water quality-based effluent limit for a particular discharger.
The MPCA completed 78 enforcement cases for water quality, air quality, waste, stormwater, and wastewater violations in the second half of 2025, for a total of 146 for the year.
From the days when raw sewage flowed into rivers and lakes, Minnesota’s water bodies have come a long way. However, there is still work to be done in the restoration and protection of our waters.
The MPCA works with city and county governments, watershed districts, consultants, and others on monitoring, protecting, and restoring water quality. This is a repository of guidance and technical resources for agency partners.
State agencies, counties, municipalities, nonprofit organizations, and many others are engaged in protecting Minnesota lakes.
Water quality standards are frequently adopted statewide or by ecoregions. These standards can include large areas with different types of water, biological communities and natural water chemistries.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) has canceled portions of the current air quality alert for western and southern Minnesota. The alert runs until 11 p.m. on Friday, July 25. Fine particle levels are expected to reach the red air quality index (AQI) category, a level considered unhealthy for everyone, in east central Minnesota, and the orange AQI category, a level considered unhealthy for sensitive groups, across the remainder of the alert area.
The MPCA monitors and assesses lakes around the state to determine if they meet water quality standards.
Under the federal Clean Water Act, states must designate beneficial uses for all waters and develop water quality standards to protect each use.
The MPCA studies, monitors, and regulates water pollutants to protect human health and the environment. Minnesota water quality standards strives to protect water for use, measures health of waters, and guides limits on what regulated facilities can discharge to surface waters.
Removing of an old dam and restoring a creek's curves are improving habitat and water quality in the Pomme de Terre River Watershed.
Waterways in the northeastern part of the state are generally in better condition than those in the southern, central, and western regions.