TCMA Chloride Management Plan - Monitoring, tracking, reporting, and adaptive management Revision as of 15:21, 22 March 2016 by PLeegar (talk | contribs) (Created page with "===Monitoring, Tracking, Reporting, and Adaptive Management=== Addressing the issue of the environmental impacts of chloride in the TCMA is a long-term endeavor. Water qualit...")(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) TCMA Chloride Management Plan - Monitoring, tracking, reporting, and adaptive management

Monitoring, Tracking, Reporting, and Adaptive Management

Addressing the issue of the environmental impacts of chloride in the TCMA is a long-term endeavor. Water quality improvements may take time to observe, due to historical loadings, groundwater inputs, variable residence times, and other complicating factors. Continued monitoring of the TCMA lakes, wetlands, and streams for chloride is critical, along with documenting changes in winter maintenance activities, point source discharges, and water softener usage. Continued water quality monitoring along with improved source tracking will allow adaptive management and inform the future steps to restore and protect the TCMA waters. This CMP is intended to be revisited and revised within 10 years based on improved understanding. The update of the CMP will also include new waterbodies that are identified as impaired by chloride.

Water Quality Monitoring

Addressing the issue of chloride impacts on the environment in the TCMA is a long-term endeavor and it may take some time before water quality improvements are seen due to historical loadings, groundwater inputs, variable residence times and other complicating factors. Therefore, continued monitoring of the TCMA lakes, wetlands, and streams for chloride is critical as well as the need to document changes in winter maintenance activities, wastewater source discharges, and water softener usage. Continued water quality monitoring, along with improved understanding of the sources of chloride will allow adaptive management to take place and inform future steps needed to restore and protect TCMA waters. The CMP is intended to be revisited within 10 years and revised based on improved understanding.

There are a number of organizations across the TCMA that monitor water quality or partner with others to conduct monitoring. In addition the MPCA, Metropolitan Council and the USGS also collect data throughout the TCMA. Incorporating the recommendations below into existing local water monitoring programs will provide valuable data to assist with tracking progress and meeting water quality goals. Monitoring should take place at the existing sites for consistency and comparison purposes. However, since monitoring activities are lead at the local level it will be dependent on available resources and local priorities. We encourage local monitoring data be shared with MPCA by routinely submitting data to the MPCA’s water quality database, EQuIS. The monitoring that MPCA conducts across the state follows the 10-year monitoring strategy as described in Minnesota’s Water Quality Monitoring Strategy report.

The MPCA has worked with the MSG to develop monitoring guidelines for lakes, streams, wetlands and storm sewers. Monitoring guidance documents are available on the MPCA TCMA chloride project website. The key components of continued monitoring to support the implementation of the CMP include:

• Collect samples during the critical periods for elevated chloride concentrations: January through May for lakes and December through April for streams. However, always put safety first when assessing conditions for collection of samples through the ice.
• Analysis of chloride should also be included in typical summer season sampling. Analysis for chloride is relatively inexpensive and should be included if the effort is being made to collect samples for analysis of other parameters.