The Right Time
Many positive developments seem to be coalescing that could provide powerful energy to support a serious effort to restore Lake Pepin along with the South Metro Mississippi.
These include:
Unprecedented sums of state and federal funding are being allocated to water quality improvement. This includes the Clean Water Legacy Act of two years ago, followed by the 2008 Clean Water Amendment providing sales tax revenue for water quality for the next 3 decades; federal stimulus spending, which includes a big increase for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers available for use on Mississippi restoration projects.
·The Lake Pepin and South Metro Mississippi Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) is nearing completion. While the TMDL provides a "restoration recipe" in the form of maximum allowable loads of suspended solids and phosphorus to the Mississippi, allied projects including "Mississippi Makeover" are linking the study to plans for floodplain management and river enhancements such as island-building and drawdowns, together with local investments in parks and trails in Dakota County.
·Cutting-edge geological research is being conducted in the Minnesota River basin, the main source of sediment to Lake Pepin. This research is identifying where fine sediments originate-fields, ravines, bluffs and stream banks. This research will be used to develop implementation plans to reduce sediment.
·The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) is embracing a watershed strategy, or "one-water" approach, that will help to coordinate implementation and assessment efforts at the major watershed scale. The Lake Pepin TMDL is one of the first projects to incorporate this approach on a large scale. This means that the research that has been conducted for the TMDL, and on sediment sources, will be utilized at the local scale for optimum targeting of implementation efforts.
·Federal and state partners are ramping up for increased funding to improve the ecology of the Upper Mississippi River. The reach from Lake Pepin on to the north is receiving particular attention, because it has been excluded from many previous projects due to its location outside the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Mississippi River Valley Refuge, which made funding more difficult.
·More generally, as Minnesota conducts numerous TMDL studies within the Lake Pepin watershed on pollutants such as phosphorus and sediment, plans will be rolled out at all scales aimed at similar objectives. In many cases, it will be evident that substantial reductions in rural nonpoint source pollution will be needed to achieve restoration goals. As this message gets repeated, the need for better approaches to nonpoint source pollution control will become a clamor, increasing chances that the legislature will respond by enacting more effective regulations.
Many positive developments seem to be coalescing that could provide powerful energy to support a serious effort to restore Lake Pepin along with the South Metro Mississippi.
These include:
Unprecedented sums of state and federal funding are being allocated to water quality improvement. This includes the Clean Water Legacy Act of two years ago, followed by the 2008 Clean Water Amendment providing sales tax revenue for water quality for the next 3 decades; federal stimulus spending, which includes a big increase for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers available for use on Mississippi restoration projects.
·The Lake Pepin and South Metro Mississippi Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) is nearing completion. While the TMDL provides a "restoration recipe" in the form of maximum allowable loads of suspended solids and phosphorus to the Mississippi, allied projects including "Mississippi Makeover" are linking the study to plans for floodplain management and river enhancements such as island-building and drawdowns, together with local investments in parks and trails in Dakota County.
·Cutting-edge geological research is being conducted in the Minnesota River basin, the main source of sediment to Lake Pepin. This research is identifying where fine sediments originate-fields, ravines, bluffs and stream banks. This research will be used to develop implementation plans to reduce sediment.
·The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) is embracing a watershed strategy, or "one-water" approach, that will help to coordinate implementation and assessment efforts at the major watershed scale. The Lake Pepin TMDL is one of the first projects to incorporate this approach on a large scale. This means that the research that has been conducted for the TMDL, and on sediment sources, will be utilized at the local scale for optimum targeting of implementation efforts.
·Federal and state partners are ramping up for increased funding to improve the ecology of the Upper Mississippi River. The reach from Lake Pepin on to the north is receiving particular attention, because it has been excluded from many previous projects due to its location outside the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Mississippi River Valley Refuge, which made funding more difficult.
·More generally, as Minnesota conducts numerous TMDL studies within the Lake Pepin watershed on pollutants such as phosphorus and sediment, plans will be rolled out at all scales aimed at similar objectives. In many cases, it will be evident that substantial reductions in rural nonpoint source pollution will be needed to achieve restoration goals. As this message gets repeated, the need for better approaches to nonpoint source pollution control will become a clamor, increasing chances that the legislature will respond by enacting more effective regulations.