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The Upper Red River of the North Watershed drains an area of 371,689 acres in the Glacial Lake Agassiz Plain, while the extreme southeastern portion of the basin lies in the North Central Hardwoods ecoregion. The Red River begins its course just below Breckenridge, Minn.
Cleaner water is taking hold across Minnesota this Earth Day as farmers and communities scale up solutions that protect rivers, strengthen soil, and build resilience from headwaters to downstream lakes.
BALMM emphasizes land use practices to improve or protect water quality, particularly in the areas of watershed management, aquifer protection and floodplain management.
Standard operating procedures (SOPs) reflect how agency staff and contracted partners complete agency-funded field activities.
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.
For more than 50 years, volunteers have gathered critically important water clarity data on Minnesota lakes and streams.
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
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…
Under the federal Clean Water Act, states must designate beneficial uses for all waters and develop water quality standards to protect each use.
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.
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.
Within the three major watersheds that cover the Twin Cities area, there are 33 smaller watersheds managed by their own watershed district or watershed management organization.
The Rainy River - Headwaters Watershed covers nearly 1.9 million acres, starting in northern Cook and Lake Counties and flowing west/northwesterly into St. Louis County and the Canadian border waters.
The Buffalo River Watershed covers more than 1,100 square miles in portions of Becker, Clay, Otter Tail, and Wilkin counties, with a small portion of its headwaters in the White Earth Reservation.
Two small creeks in the Nemadji River watershed are cleaner, and some fish have returned, after restoration work that the MPCA took part in.
The North Fork Crow River Watershed covers 949,107 acres.
A new planning effort in northwest Minnesota takes a basin-wide approach to reducing the state's phosphorous contributions to the Red River, and to Canada's Lake Winnipeg.
Proposed changes to permits that regulate the state’s largest animal feedlots target nitrate pollution statewide.
The East Fork Des Moines River Watershed covers 839,518 acres, which includes Minnesota's Martin and Jackson counties.
Water softeners produce much of the chloride that pollutes Minnesota’s waters. An MPCA grant aims to reduce that pollution with water softener replacement rebate programs.