Pre-study work to be completed on Littlefork River
The 21-mile segment of the Littlefork River between the city for which it is named and north to the Rainy River was added to the state’s impaired waters list for excessive turbidity in 2006.
The recovery of the river will require years of continued study and the combined efforts of many agencies and the community, say officials with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
The MPCA is required by the Federal Clean Water Act to conduct a lengthy research and assessment of quality standards which could last two to four years.
At some point, area residents will be asked to join an advisory committee to provide local input and suggestions for river recovery.
Jesse Anderson, an MPCA research scientist and principal author of the report, said the study is linked to the combined efforts of the Department of Natural Resources, MPCA and other agencies involved with impaired water studies around the state. The Littlefork study is one important part of many in an elaborate and complex picture, he added.
“Right now we are in the early stages of the impaired water study and just trying to understand the science behind the impairment,” said Anderson. “So that when the study begins in earnest, we will have sufficient data and information to bring the public for input.”
The Littlefork Phase I study is scheduled for 2011, and Anderson said the groundwork on the “pre-parts of the impaired water study” would occur before then. Once completed, he said the MPCA post study would partner with others to develop a pollution reduction study and a plan to get the river up to standard.
This early work involves gathering data from spring high water samples in several areas of the Littlefork River and its tributaries. Laboratory results should be complete later this year and staff will begin assembling it some time in 2010. A separate study will look at biological monitoring in the river as part of a larger assessment of lakes and streams and will help with the clean up plan.
“It is a very complicated system and we need to get the science on impairment,” he added.
An MPCA water quality report released in July noted that heavy logging in the early to mid part of the last century contributed to greater runoff and erosion. This, the study concluded, contributed to the lack of clarity and destruction of the riverbanks. Data collection on the Littlefork River was already underway in 2004 with water researchers from the U.S. and Canada, along with tribal groups.
“It is a large and complicated question and the more data and science we have before Phase I then the more successful we will be,” he said. “Impaired water is a long process.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this year approved the Total Maximum Daily Load List of polluted lakes and stream segments in Minnesota. The biannual list includes 1,475 impairments, affecting 336 rivers and 510 lakes. The increase brings the total impaired waters in the state up to 2,575 impairments, affecting 353 rivers and 1,029 lakes. The report indicates that the difference is the increased number of waterways studied, and also from additional searches for mercury and fecal coliform.
The MPCA required 124 individual reports on the Rainy River basin, which includes five rivers and creeks that are impaired with one or more pollutants, including low dissolved oxygen and mercury. The Vermilion River alone has three reaches listed for impairment. The Littlefork so far is only noted for turbidity.
The report also accounted for 113 lakes with impairments of one or more pollutants, including, mercury or PCBs, fish tissue or excess nutrients. There is one new stream impairment and seven new lakes added since the 2006 List.
The listed waters contain pollutants above acceptable limits for specific uses, such as fishing or swimming. Once water-quality standards are being met, the water is removed from the impaired waters list.
The Clean Water Legacy Act, passed by the state legislature in 2006, authorized the MPCA to launch a 10-year biological monitoring project of state waterways and lakes in the 10 major river basins of Minnesota, of which they report about 32 percent contain mercury and other exotic or multiple pollutants.
Biological monitoring measures and evaluates the condition of rivers, streams and wetlands by studying fish, aquatic invertebrates and plant life. The MPCA follows through with intensive studies where abnormalities are discovered.
The MPCA “north team” of biological monitoring staff were working the watersheds this summer. Other MPCA monitoring teams sampled track water quality trends of the major watershed outlets.
