Statewide water monitoring initiative underway on Mississippi River in Minnesota

Jun. 22—BEMIDJI — The Mississippi River is in good hands as a statewide initiative is underway to monitor its water quality.

As part of the

Clean Water Act,

the

Minnesota Pollution Control Agency

is spending this summer monitoring the

Mississippi River

throughout Minnesota to help maintain clean water and provide data on the condition of the river along with other bodies of water throughout the state.

Kim Laing, surface monitoring manager for the MPCA, has been with the agency for 16 years and has been overseeing water monitoring for two of those years.

"Part of our Clean Water Act responsibilities are to monitor and assess all of the water bodies within Minnesota," Laing said. "Thankfully, due to the

Clean Water Fund

and the Legacy Amendment, we have been able to support our natural resources."

According to Laing, collecting hard data is important because it can then be put into the hands of decision-makers.

"Is the Mississippi River fishable or swimmable? Are invertebrates and aquatic life healthy? What does the water chemistry look like?" she said. "All of these questions can be answered through our water monitoring process."

With the rise of climate change, legislation can be used to improve supporting the environment and prevent further harm.

"There are instances of great improvement and sometimes improvement might be simply changing a trajectory, and stopping things from getting worse," Laing explained.

Laing emphasized the importance of the health of the Mississippi River and the surrounding waters.

"Essentially why we are doing this is to look at the health of the Mississippi River in its entirety," she said.

According to Laing, a large portion of Minnesota contributes to the Mississippi River. Rivers such as the Minnesota, Red, Rainy and St. Croix also get rotated for monitoring because they are additional important natural resources in Minnesota.

"The Clean Water Fund has enabled us to both restore and protect our resources, and climate change is something that we're going to have to keep working on," she added. "We're utilizing the data to help us understand how that's going to impact Minnesota and our water resources."

As the headwaters of the Mississippi River and home of thousands of lakes and rivers, Laing explained how crucial it is to keep the state's natural waters as healthy as possible.

"When we test in northern Minnesota we are being responsible for both those downstream in Minnesota and the downstream states," Laing said. "We are being responsible for what we are sending downstream to our neighbors, so that is a very important aspect that we must consider."

Employees from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency Noah Dammer, Jacob Engel and Ben Vosika ventured out on June 10 to monitor the water in the Mississippi River where it flows through Bemidji.

Environmental Specialists Dammer and Vosika take turns in the various duties on the job. On this particular day, Dammer handled the water samples and Vosika collected data.

This year, they are focusing on the Mississippi River because of the statewide monitoring initiative.

"We're on a different large river every year," Dammer said.

"It's a good balance between being in the office and doing fieldwork. With our jobs, we get to travel around the state and we really like that," Vosika chimed in.

They collected several samples that will be sent to different labs in the state to be tested. While collecting samples they also collect water chemistry data and log information into their database to compile.

"We collect data and report on things that aren't meeting criteria for our system," Dammer explained. "When we assess if a body of water is impaired that data is used by others to get the funding needed to restore it. Funding is often provided by local governments and it is important for us to find this data so people know how our natural waters are doing."

Technician Engel mentioned the perks of the job and how rewarding it is to serve the public.

"I love doing field work and with the hard data that we collect, it's clearly being used in a non-abstract way," he shared. "You can tell people if it's safe to swim, if things are improving or getting worse — I think the public appreciates that a lot."

Funding from the federal and state governments makes a task this large possible. Public Affairs Engagement Strategist Adam Olson distinguished the difference between the Clean Water Act and the Clean Water Fund.

According to Olson, the Clean Water Act is national and includes all U.S. states. Minnesota voters approved the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment on Nov. 4, 2008, it was implemented on July 1, 2009, and will continue until 2034.

"The Clean Water Fund is what really makes monitoring at this level possible in Minnesota," Olson said. "No other state could take on something as ambitious as monitoring the entire Mississippi in a single season. Minnesota can do this because of our Clean Water Fund, and now we've been building this awesome foundation of data which leads to better water quality."

Laing added that the contributions of their partners are a huge help to their data collection.

"I just can't emphasize enough how important our partners are for our watershed work and our pollutant load monitoring work — we have great partners," she exclaimed. "Thankfully there are a lot of partners that also are monitoring the Mississippi River as well in the intervening years that we're not monitoring and also provide a great wealth of data, particularly through the metro and the lower Mississippi River."

People can join the volunteer water monitoring program to take samples of lakes, rivers and streams in their area. There is a website to learn more and apply to be a volunteer.

"We train people how to take water samples, monitor water and take observation measurements," Laing said. "We provide all of the training and we have a Facebook group so there is an online community to connect with. That's what we really want, is to have those conversations with water quality and get people involved in our mission."