4. Minnesota has 90,000 miles of
shoreline, more than California,
Florida and Hawaii Combined.
5. Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment
2008 Legacy Amendment
• Increases the state sales tax by three-eights
of one percent
• Additional sales tax revenue is distributed
into four funds
• Clean water fund (over $759 million)
• Protect, enhance, and restore water quality
• Protect groundwater from degradation
• At least 5% to protect drinking water sources
5
6. Managing Resources at the Watershed Scale
6
• MN adopted a Watershed Approach
to assess and manage water
resources
• Watershed Restoration and
Protection Strategies (WRAPS)
• One Watershed One Plan
7. Driving Interest in Groundwater Protection
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• Lack of groundwater
information available for local
water planning
• Soil and Water Conservation
Districts requesting to be
resource partners
8. Information Gathering to Identify Local Needs
• Statewide survey to assess
groundwater confidence
• Quality and Quantity
• Needs Assessment Survey on
Drinking Water
• Barriers to implementation
8
9. 75% of SWCD’s ranked drinking water
protection as a priority, yet 74%
spent 0-25% of their time working on
drinking water protection in the past
year.
10. Survey Results
Local Partners Limited by:
• Lack of access to state agency
data/information and technical expertise
• Lack of technical knowledge
• Lack of funding
• Lack of education and training
• Water Resource Professionals
• Decision makers
10
13. Background Information
Land Cover /Land
Use
Geology/
Hydrogeology
Pollution
Sensitivity
(Aquifer
Vulnerability)
Drinking Water
Information
Groundwater
Withdrawals/Use
13
14. Groundwater Quality Information
NitrateContaminated
Sites
Arsenic
· New Well
Samples
SSTS
Pesticides
Animal
Feedlots
14
· Active Tank & Leak Sites
· Closed Landfills
· Ambient Monitoring
· Private Well Sampling Initiative
· New Well Samples
· Private Well Sampling Initiative
· Ambient Monitoring
15. Groundwater Quantity Information
Surface Water
vs.
Groundwater
Water Level
Trend
Interpretation
Groundwater
Use Trends
Trout Streams
Calcareous Fens
Lakes
Animals
Plants
Native Plant
Communities
Groundwater
Connected
Features
15
18. Table of Actions
and Strategies to
Restore and
Protect
Groundwater
• Organized by
subwatershed and county
• Provides tips for targeting
• Acknowledges multiple
benefits
18
23. Lessons Learned
8/13/2019 23
• Know your audience
• Identify and prioritize critical
capacity-building needs
• Information is not enough
• Expand stakeholder groups
• Get started today
Four funds:
Arts & cultural heritage – 19.75%
Outdoor heritage (wetlands, prairie, and habitat restoration) – 33%
Parks & trails – 14.25%
Clean Water Fund (33%)
The Legacy Amendment transformed water planning in MN
WRAPS and 1W1P combine many elements of the EPA’s Healthy Watersheds Initiative.
WRAPS is a watershed assessment, that includes an extensive monitoring and assessment period to characterize watershed issues and identifies targeted measures to achieve CWA goals of fishable and swimmable, in addition to classifying healthy lakes and those close to being impaired.
WRAPS develops restoration and protection strategies to maintain and restore watershed health. This assessment is handed off to local resource partners to help inform the 1W1P.
The 1W1P considers a range of issues from habitat, flood mitigation, water quality, drinking water protection, among others issues to achieve multiple benefits in a given watershed.
1W1P is the driving force for resource protection in the state, bringing increased staff capacity and financial resources to implement plans.
While the development of WRAPS has been ongoing for a decade, there hasn’t been a similar push for groundwater protection until recently.
Groundwater is managed by four primary agencies in MN. MDH ensures safe drinking water from public water supplies, DNR manages groundwater availability, and the MPCA and MDA run the ambient groundwater quality monitoring program. This division of responsibilities was intended to provide checks and balances, but has lead to silos where each agency effectively maintains their program but doesn’t readily share information with other agencies let alone local resource partners.
This was recognized by agency managers, as well as by our SWCDs. In 2013 the MASWCD adopted 5 resolutions regarding groundwater.
Before developing a program, we needed to better understand local partners needs.
Identifies barriers that prohibit implementation
This has lead to the culmination of GRAPS
Protection framework to help target areas at greatest risk to contamination
High level overview of groundwater concerns
Interagency effort that assembles existing state agency information
Compiled into one report on GW from all state agencies makes for easier interpretation & targeting
MDH envisions GRAPS as a tool for local resource staff to provide technical assistance for private well users on groundwater risks. This is the clientele that they work with, so it makes sense that they could be the messenger on resource concerns.
Green hexagons are contaminants/blue hexagons are landuses that may lead to contamination
Arsenic sampling began in 2008, relatively new dataset
MPCA Ambient program has over 260 sites; tests for 40 CECs, 130 analytes, such as pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and fire retardants.
DNR is evaluating trend use to try and state if the aquifer is at risk of overuse.
The information discovered from our search on both quality and quantity issues informs the strategies and actions recommended for implementation.
- Follows how the WRAPS is organized, so strategies/actions can be easily inserted into other planning documents.
- Future reports going to evaluate if we could add a column to note if an action is also reflected in the WRAPS
Tips for targeting and the maps that would helpful in identifying target area
Four of maps referenced will be used in the following slides to demonstrate targeting
- In the Cannon when you start layering information, similar to the zonation process, your target area becomes clear. Start with the pollution sensitivity of near surface, then overlay the pollution sensitivity of wells. This generally reduces the planning area, but in this case it exposed a risk in the western part of the watershed for drinking water wells.
- You can further refine your target area by bringing in landuse such as MDAs TTP maps and MDHs nitrate sampling data, which is overlaid on top of the pollution sensitivity of wells. All of this data supports that the wells in the NE part of the watershed are at greatest risk.