Duluth Urban Watershed Advisory Committee: Protecting Water Quality and Enhancing Resilience to Flooding through Community CollaborationMinnesota has adopted a watershed approach to address the state's 80 major watersheds. This approach looks at drainage area as a whole instead of focusing on lakes and streams one at a time, thus increasing effectiveness and efficiency. This watershed approach incorporates the following activities into a 10 year cycle:
Duluth-area streams are divided by two major watersheds: Lake Superior-South and St. Louis River. Duluth-area streams are more similar to each other in land use (urbanized), geology (both glacial till and bedrock present), and landform (flat, wetland-dominated uplands with steep, bedrock-dominated lowlands), than their counterparts in the surrounding major watersheds, and thus were grouped as their own major watershed unit.
Monitoring & Assessment were conducted in 2015-2016 at 6 locations - Keene Creek, Merritt Creek, Miller Creek, Chester Creek, Tischer Creek, and Amity Creek - and built on an already extensive monitoring network dating back to 2002. Water quality data was collected and analyzed by both NRRI and MPCA scientists. 10 streams in the Duluth-area are considered impaired for aquatic life beneficial use and/or aquatic recreation beneficial use. Aquatic life beneifical use is considered impaired when one, or more, of the following criteria do not meet their target:
Aquatic recreation beneficial use is considered impaired when fecal indicator bacteria levels are too high; Escherichia coli (E. coli) is used to approximate the amount of fecal contamination in surface waters. Seven streams in the Duluth-area are considered impaired for aquatic recreation, and four are impaired for aquatic life:
Waters not meeting state standards are listed as impaired and TMDL studies are performed. A TMDL, or Total Maximum Daily Load, determines the maximum amount of pollutant a water body can handle and still be healthy. TMDLs for suspended soilids (floating sediment in a stream's water column which harm fish and macroinvertebrates) and E. coli (bacteria) were developed in 2016-2018. Restoration and protection strategies to address these impairments, as well as to protect those healthy streams, were also drafted in 2016-2018 - known as Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategies. Drafts of these documents are available for download below. Draft documents are available for download: DRAFT TMDL for TSS & E. coli in Duluth Urban-area DRAFT WRAPS for Duluth Urban-area ________ DRAFT Duluth Urban WRAPS HSPF Model Report Appendix A - Detailed Snow Calibration Results and Validation Appendix B & C - Detailed Flow Calibration Results & Validation Appendix D - Suspended Sediment Calibration & Validation Appendix E - Nutrients and DO Calibration & Validation Appendix F - Chloride Calibration & Validation ________ Duluth Urban Streams: An Implementation Focused Assessment of Six Streams Amity Creek Stressor Identification Report Unique to the Duluth WRAPS process, this project also supports community education through citizen science as well as community engagement through an advisory board. Minnesota Pollution Control Agency partnered with Minnesota Sea Grant and University of Minnesota-Duluth Natural Resources Research Institute to form an advisory committee in 2015 - the Duluth Urban Watershed Advisory Committee (DUWAC) - tasked with uniting communities and agencies to work together to protet, preserve and restore local watersheds within the Duluth-area. |
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Duluth Urban Watershed Advisory Committee |
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The Duluth Urban Watershed Advisory Committee is made up of representatives from the municipalities in the Duluth Metropolitan Area. These include:
Representives from University of Minnesota-Duluth, the Department of Natural Resources, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, Minnesota Department of Transportation, and other relevant stakeholders which have a role in water management and watershed health, are also involved in the Committee. The Committee's primary purpose is to serve as an information exchange and coordinating mechanism for a wide variety of projects currently underway, as well as proposed future projects, with consequences for the region’s water resources. A secondary goal is to recognize efficiencies and opportunities to share expertise. Finally, the concept of building a shared urban watershed management framework is fundamentally about providing the intellectual space for partners and the citizenry to explore and institute practices, making sustainability of the region’s water resources a core part of how the region functions. Currently, members of the Committee are focused on:
Vision Statement:Our water resources and associated ecosystems become healthier and more resilient through public engagement and local government collaboration. Membership:The Committee is co-facilitated by: Jesse Schomberg, MN Sea Grant, jschombe@umn.edu, (218) 726-6182 Tiffany Sprague, UMD-Natural Resources Research Institute, tsprague@d.umn.edu, (218) 788-2673 Advisory Committee Member List Meeting agendas and minutes can be found here. |
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Contact Local Decision Makers |
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Duluth Streams |
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Amity Creek Brewery Creek Buckingham Creek Chester Creek Clarkhouse Creek Coffee Creek Gary Street Creek Greys Creek |
Keene Creek Kingsbury Creek Knowlton Creek Lester River Merritt Creek Miller Creek Mission Creek Morgan Park Creek |
Oregon Creek Sargent Creek St. Louis River Stewart Creek Tischer Creek U.S. Steel Creek 34th Ave E Creek 37th Ave E Creek |
38th Ave E Creek 40th Ave E Creek 43rd Ave E Creek 47th Ave E Creek 50th Ave E Creek 58th Ave E Creek 32nd Ave W Creek 82nd Ave W Creek |
Understanding |
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