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News from the Rum River Watershed

Volume #1 Issue #2
July 15, 2005

Letter from the Editor

As the river slips by, so does the summer. Upon casual reflection I’ve decided to make this
newsletter something that comes out every other month. Right now I may have time to bring it
out monthly, but that won’t be the case come fall.

In this issue I plan to concentrate a bit more on the importance of considering the watershed as
a whole, instead of just the entity of the river itself. No system stands on its own, all things are
interconnected. Not only do birds, beasts and plants depend on the water and soil and the
impact of weather on the flow of water through the local system, but adjacent watersheds affect
each other, as all eventually flows towards the oceans, then cycles back. In fact, one could
almost think of our planet as a living organism in itself. As we view all the parts of our own
bodies as important to the health of the whole self, the Earth can be viewed and analyzed in the
same way.

If you have received a hard copy of this newsletter, you will see a watermark behind this text
delineating the Rum River watershed. Take a look at the same map on the following page, and
have fun discerning new things…

Kriste

Mission Statement:
To provide a base of knowledge that we can use to help make wise decisions concerning
the Rum River watershed.

Vision Statement
To improve our ability, both as part of the private and as part of the public sector, to care for
the Rum River watershed and all of the associated watersheds that make up the Mississippi
River system.

Contents:

• Map of the Rum River Watershed

• Natural resource concerns in Mille Lacs County
• Feature article by area hydrologist Mike Mueller: “Watersheds: Part 1”
• Adding/removing names from RumRiverWatershedNews@yahoo.com list serve
• To be addressed in our September 15 issue:
¾ Are the waters of the Rum River impaired?
¾ Natural Resource Concerns in Sherburne and Anoka County
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Map of the Rum River Watershed

From “The Streams and Rivers of Minnesota” 1977 by Thomas F. Waters.

University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis
(Used with permission of author and publisher)
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Natural resource concerns in Mille Lacs County

Feasibility Study for Wild Rice Restoration at Lake Ogechie

• The Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Department of Natural Resources/Environment has
contracted with Houston Engineering and St. Cloud State University to conduct a feasibility
study to evaluate the options available to restore wild rice in Ogechie Lake. Updates and
additional information will be included in following newsletters. For questions about the
project please feel free to call Scott Hansen at 320-532-7445 or Perry Bunting at 320-532-
7442.

A note of explanation on the following article:

Short Elliott Hendrickson Inc. (SEH) is an engineering consulting firm with headquarters
in Minneapolis. The Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy is a statewide,
nonprofit environmental group that “is the legal and scientific voice protecting and defending
Minnesota’s environment.” (See www.mncenter.org for more information.) We will look further
into the impaired water status of the Rum River in our September 15th issue.

City of Princeton to begin sampling of Rum River in answer to lawsuit

Used with permission of the Princeton Union-Eagle. Posted 6-9-05.
By Joel Stottrup

The city of Princeton has decided to hire someone to take water samples in the Rum River
as part of dealing with a lawsuit by an environmental group. The group opposed the way the
state had offered a permit for expanding the city's wastewater treatment plant, sued in court
and won.

The city has been working for the past two-plus years with the engineering consulting firm
SEH to set up a plan for expanding the mechanical wastewater plant that began operating
about 10 years ago. At first the city considered doubling its size but then decided to triple
it, reasoning the cost would be cheaper than if it doubled it now and later expanded.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), after long deliberation and meeting with
SEH engineers, agreed last year to a plant general design and granted the permit to begin
the expansion.

But then the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy challenged the MPCA giving the
permit in the Minnesota Court of Appeals. A few weeks ago the appellate court ruled in favor
of the challenge.

The court did not grant a contested case hearing that the group asked for but said the
MPCA had erred in what it said the city had to do in tripling the plant's capacity.

At issue in the lawsuit is the plan to discharge treated wastewater into the Rum River once
the expansion is completed.

The environmental group said that it wants less discharge into the Rum River than what the
planned expansion would do.

The group also said the city should have first studied more the possibility of reducing the
size of the expansion. One way the environmental group suggested was to study the
feasibility of having wastewater treatment setups on the sites of large new developments.

Five MPCA officials met with the City Council for about two hours during the council's study
session last Thursday. A sixth MPCA official listened to the meeting over a speakerphone
and made some comments during the meeting. Some of the MPCA officials said that the
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problem in how the court case turned out was that the MPCA had not done a good enough
job in explaining its case.

Gregory Gross, with the water standards unit at the MPCA, said at Thursday's meeting that
he agreed with the court that the MPCA could do a better job of analyzing the quality of the
Rum River in the permit process. But he then added that the MPCA could also do a better
job explaining why the Rum River is classified as an outstanding water resource. Gross said
it is classified that way not so much on the basis of the water's quality but on its recreational
uses.

After MPCA officials left the meeting Thursday, the council continued discussing the issue
and drew a conclusion with City Administrator Mark Karnowski that the MPCA doesn't really
want to test the quality of the Rum River. Karnowski suggested the council take those tests
anyway and advised council members to think about the situation and then talk more about
it at the meeting on Monday this week.

The council did agree with a suggestion by one of the MPCA officials at Thursday's meeting
that the city should have someone negotiate with the environmental group who can
understand the environmental group's position.

The council agreed Monday to take two actions.

One was to hire a firm to take samples of the water in the Rum River at intervals of about
every three months over at least a year's time. That way the water will be taken at different
levels and during different parts of the year to reflect most conditions, said Mayor Brian
Humphrey on Tuesday.

Second, the council decided it will try to find someone to negotiate with the environmental
group to come to a resolution so the city can expand its wastewater plant to meet projected
growth.

Humphrey said the city wants to find a firm or agency that will be considered "neutral" to test
Rum River water so that the readings won't be thought of as leaning in favor of anyone.

The testing is expensive, said Humphrey, noting that when public works superintendent Tom
Mismash, who oversees the operation of city wastewater plant, has tested for eight or nine
items in the water, it has cost about $1,000.

SEH engineer John Stodola, who was at last Thursday's council meeting, was also present
at the Monday meeting. He prepared an analysis on how much inflation could add to the
cost of expanding the wastewater plant the longer it takes to get the project started.

The cost of the planned expansion is now somewhere in the range of $12 million and that is
about 14 percent higher than it was three years ago, according to Stodola's report, said
Humphrey. The inference is that it could increase that much more in another three years,
Humphrey indicated.

Part 2 of a series about Water Quality: Watersheds by Mike Mueller

Area hydrologist for Chisago and Isanti Counties, Mike Mueller, will delve more deeply
into watershed dynamics in this and the following issues of NRRW. *

There is a great deal of interest these days in watersheds. So much so that we have units of
government created for the sole purpose of “managing” the activities within a watershed area.
In the Twin Cities there are 23 Watershed Management Organizations, each with its own 20 to
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50 square mile area of concern. Around the state there are 46 Watershed Districts that have
taxing authority and the ability to develop specific regulations. Lake Improvement Districts are
formed to levy assessments for problems emanating in their watersheds. Though not
government units, lake associations are increasingly looking beyond the boundaries of their
lake, realizing that some of their problems come from somewhere else.

So what is a watershed anyway? A watershed is simply that area of land that drains to a
particular point on your lake or stream. Everyone lives in a watershed, as all lands drain to one
body of water or another. The size of the watershed depends upon the scale at which you’re
looking. If you looked at a map of the watershed for the Mississippi River at New Orleans, you
would see an area measuring hundreds of thousands of square miles. By contrast, the
watershed for your particular lake will be considerably less. For example, the Chisago Chain of
lakes near Lindstrom has about 3900 acres of lake surface area. There are about 8500 acres of
land surrounding this chain that contribute water to the lake system. In other words, there are
slightly more than two acres of land surface in the watershed for every acre of water. More
commonly, the watershed to lake area ratio is about 20 acres to one.

What happens within the watershed is a key factor in determining the overall health of the lake
you live on. Rain falling on a forest may be partially intercepted by the leaves, and then
evaporated back into the atmosphere before touching the ground. Some of the rain will trickle
to the ground, where it may be absorbed by the roots and become a part of the plant. It could
also soak into the ground below the root zone and become a part of the groundwater aquifer. Or
it could strike a hard surface that cannot absorb it and at that point it becomes runoff. As we
change the land use within a watershed we alter the ability of the watershed to absorb
precipitation.

In east central Minnesota, a typical year’s precipitation measures about 28 inches. Of that,
nearly 23 inches either stays with the plants or is absorbed into the ground. The remainder
becomes runoff. As it travels through the watershed, it is influenced by the physical
characteristics of the land and the type of land use. Steep topography with intensively drained
agricultural land tends to produce more runoff than flat, heavily forested areas. Similarly, urban
land that has high amounts of impermeable surfaces (rooftops and roads) also produces more
runoff.
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The Center for Watershed Protection estimates that impervious cover produces 16 times more
runoff than a forest. The example they cite compares a parking lot, which allows 1.9 inches of
runoff after a 2 inch rainfall, to a forest that allows only 0.12 inches of runoff from the same rain
event. As little as 10 % impervious cover within a watershed can start having a negative impact
on the receiving water. By the time impervious surfaces reach 25% of the watershed, serious
degradation is likely to occur, including: more frequent flooding, higher flood levels, stream bank
erosion, habitat loss and sediment transport.

Urban sprawl is a problem across Minnesota and the U.S. According to the US Department of
Agriculture, developed land in the U.S. increased by 34 percent from 1982 to 1997 while the
population grew by 15 percent. Thus land consumption occurred at more than twice the rate of
population growth. During the same period, the number of watersheds with more than 15
percent impervious surface nearly doubled.

Runoff also collects pollutants as it travels through the watershed. Soil particles represent the
largest source of pollution to our lakes and rivers. How can soil be a problem, you’re
wondering? Well for one thing, soil has nutrients in it. Elements like phosphorous and nitrogen
are attached to the soil particles. Plants rely on these elements in order to grow. Though it may
be a good thing to have plenty of phosphorous and nitrogen in your garden, it is nearly always a
problem to have excess amounts in your lake. When soil is deposited in lakes, the nutrients
can be released into the water column where they become available to plants or algae. This in
turn causes a decrease in water clarity and can reduce overall plant diversity.

To be continued….

*Used with permission of the author.

Parting Words from Sandra Steingraber :

"I think that one of the big misconceptions about rivers is the idea that they are contained within
the banks that they flow in, when in fact the life of a river encompasses the entire watershed in
which it is part. So that the rain that falls upstream from us becomes the river, the rivers
themselves empty into the great lakes, they empty into the Mississippi, they flow. And the
groundwater which are these big underground basins themselves discharge into rivers. So that
protecting rivers means paying attention, being mindful of all the activities that go on in the basin
around the actual river itself that flows through its channels.

"So I think it's time for us as a culture when we look out at that ribbon of water flowing through a
bank to realize that what we're seeing is only a tiny piece of a great web of flowing water, some
of which are going underground and feeding that river, some of which are rain moving down or
snowmelt moving down from the surrounding hills into that river. And to protect the river means
to protect the land around the river as well."

- from the Healthy Rivers CD, available from the MN Dept. of Natural Resources

Contact Information:
Kriste Ericsson, Editor
News from the Rum River Watershed
PO Box 82, Grandy, MN 55029
RumRiverWatershedNews-owner@yahoogroups.com

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