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Implementing water quality standards come with tangible costs and benefits. Costs such as taxes to residents, regulated parties, and communities help achieve benefits such as increased property values, tourism, and protecting human health.
The MPCA 401 certification fills a unique niche in protecting water quality by applying state water quality standards to projects.
Protecting and restoring water quality is one of the MPCA's core areas of focus.
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.
For more than 50 years, volunteers have gathered critically important water clarity data on Minnesota lakes and streams.
State and federal permits and regulations that are designed to protect groundwater and surface water (lakes, rivers, streams, and wetlands) apply to specific facilities and processes that could pose…
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.
The Clean Water Council was created to advise the Legislature and the Governor on the administration and implementation of the 2006 Clean Water Legacy Act
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.
Standard operating procedures (SOPs) reflect how agency staff and contracted partners complete agency-funded field activities.
Excess nitrate remains a long-term challenge to manage. In our lakes, rivers, and streams, it is toxic to fish and other aquatic life. In drinking water, it can pose a risk to human health,…
Every two years, MPCA creates a list of impaired waters in the state that do not meet water quality standards.
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 monitors and assesses lakes around the state to determine if they meet water quality standards.
This committee included a broad range of stakeholders and was charged with providing perspective, input, and advice to the commissioner on MPCA's water fees.
Dakota County is now hosting We Are Water MN, a traveling exhibit and community engagement program that explores Minnesotans’ relationships with water.
Removing of an old dam and restoring a creek's curves are improving habitat and water quality in the Pomme de Terre River Watershed.
The MPCA proposes to adopt the U.S. EPA's 2013 national recommended water quality criteria for ammonia as its Class 2 ammonia water quality standards for the protection of aquatic life.
Southeastern Minnesota is characterized by an unusual type of geography called karst, where the distinction between groundwater and surface water is blurry.
The MPCA plans to amend Minnesota Rules chapter 7050, which establishes beneficial uses and water quality standards to protect those uses, and designates where the uses occur in waters of the state.