MUDDY WATERS: The confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers.

If you want to get an idea of what most ails the Mississippi River and its tributaries, you need go no further than the birthplace of Minnesota. Situated high atop a limestonecapped bluff, Fort Snelling affords visitors commanding views of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers as they merge. It’s not hard to see why U.S. Army Lieutenant Zebulon Pike picked this spot when, in 1805, he was charged with acquiring some buildable (and defendable) real estate in the wilds of the frontier.

But if you take a closer look at the scene today, a big problem quickly becomes evident.

The Minnesota River, which drains the highly agricultural southern and western portions of the state, is disturbingly murky. At the confluence, where the Minnesota’s latte-colored waters merge with the still-relatively clear Mississippi, the river is sharply demarcated, as if stroked on one side with a giant paint roller dipped in mud. Further south, the Mississippi looks almost as dirty where it joins the St. Croix, which is also a source of phosphorus, even though it is thought of as pristine.

From the headwaters at Itasca down to New Orleans, the water quality of the Mississippi has been an issue for well over a hundred years. And because the river is part of a complex river system, it impacts and is impacted by its tributaries, including not only the Minnesota but also the St. Croix, Root, Black, Lacrosse and Wisconsin rivers. In the 19th century, some of the biggest impacts came from the logging industry, which not only cleared tree cover from the surrounding banks but also fouled the river with enormous log booms that were floated down to the sawmills. Enormous quantities of sawdust that were generated by the mills were dumped directly into the river, with locally damaging effects. Other challenges—dam construction, industry and urbanization— also took their toll.

RON KROESE: “The Mississippi’s problems arise from a combination of agricultural runoff, urban storm water and other sources such as failing septic systems.”

Yet by many metrics, conditions on some stretches of the Mississippi River—especially in the cabin country in northern Minnesota—have improved markedly in recent decades. Since the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972, some of the worst so-called “point source” pollution—pollution directly released into the water by industries such as paper plants and inadequate municipal sewage treatment facilities—has been cleaned up.

“Now the impairments primarily begin around St. Cloud,” said Ron Kroese, environment program director for The McKnight Foundation. “These problems arise from a combination of agricultural runoff, urban storm water and other sources such as failing septic systems.”

Since 1999, McKnight has focused an enormous amount of resources toward improving water quality of the Mississippi River and its key tributaries, issuing about $100 million in grants to nonprofits (including the Initiative Foundation) trying to tackle the river’s woes from a broad array of angles. Two years ago, McKnight decided to change course and put its entire focus on what experts say poses the biggest threats to the river: farm pollution and the loss of wetlands and floodplains.

drowning in muck

In Minnesota, nowhere are those problems more evident than Lake Pepin.

Located about 60 miles downriver from St. Paul, Pepin is the largest natural lake on the entire length of the Mississippi River, 21 miles long and up to three miles wide. Famous as the birthplace of waterskiing and the backdrop for picturesque river communities like Red Wing and Stockholm, Wisconsin, Pepin has long been regarded as a natural treasure— a favorite destination for day sailors, anglers and outdoor enthusiasts.

But that watery playground also has a far less glamorous role: drain trap for Mississippi muck. That’s because as the fouled waters of the river funnel into the lake, the current slows, which allows suspended sediments and other pollutants to settle into the lakebed.

The toll has been staggering.

According to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), Pepin is now filling with sediment ten times faster than a century ago. At the current clip, the entire lake will be clogged in about three centuries,with little left but a muddy channel in the middle. For the upper third of the lake, which receives the brunt of the impact, the prognosis is grimmer: it is expected fill up in about 90 years.

As the lake’s waters grow murkier, sunlight won’t penetrate deeply enough for the aquatic vegetation that is vital to the lake. Scientists expect that fish, waterfowl and maybe even those iconic Bald Eagles that lure the birders to the area will start to disappear, too. It’s a problem endemic to much of the big river. But, on Pepin, it is writ large.

On top of those woes, Pepin is bedeviled by high levels of phosphorous, which comes from both farm fields and municipal sewage. During hot, calm summer days with low flow, that excess phosphorous sometimes triggers massive algae blooms, which can lead to localized fish kills and an offensive stench. According to a recent federal study, nitrogen flowing into the river from Minnesota and Wisconsin has increased 75 percent over the past two decades. And when the phosphorous and other nutrients finally leave Minnesota and make their way to the Gulf of Mexico, they contribute to the notorious Gulf “dead zone”—a massive area where depleted oxygen levels exact a brutal toll on ocean life.

	TIP SHEET: What you should and shouldn't do to help our rivers.
	(click to download/view a PDF)

While the pollution in Pepin has many sources, according to the MPCA and other researchers, the lion’s share—about 75 percent—comes from the Minnesota River and its tributaries. With its vast network of ditches and field drains (buried plastic tubes known as “tiling”), the landscape around the Minnesota River is intensively farmed. Most of the former wetlands and floodplains have been drained and cultivated and, by design, this land sheds its water more quickly than in the past. At Jordan, researchers say, flows in the Minnesota River have doubled since 1940.

“You have to look at all the perforated pipe that’s bringing the water off the land quicker,” said Kroese. In the pre-settlement days, prairie grasses with roots up to ten feet deep soaked up much of the water. While corn can also absorb water, that doesn’t count for much if the rain falls before the crops are in the ground.

Today, as rainfall rushes into the ditches and creeks, it carries sediments from the fields into the river. Because there is a greater volume of water traveling at a greater speed, the river’s bank and bottom become scoured, too, releasing even more sediments. Most of that gunk, along with phosphorous and nitrogen from the fields, eventually finds its way to Pepin.

coming clean

If you want to improve Mississippi water quality, experts agree that you have to clean up the Minnesota River. And that involves changes in agricultural practices across a vast swath of prime Minnesota farm country. Solutions may require that some land be taken out of cultivation and that new farming techniques be employed to help the land hold the water longer.

Politically and economically, this will be no easy feat—a fact not lost on most river advocates.

“The solutions have to be things that give us clean water and prosperous farms,” said Trevor Russell, the watershed program director for the Twin Cities-based Friends of the Mississippi River. “You could say, ‘Pull out the drain tile! Stop planting corn!’ But that’s just not practical.”

Dave Legvold thinks he might have some of the practical answers.

CONSERVATION FARMER: Dave Legvold has been experimenting with an array of farming techniques that will help rivers and lakes.

A former middle school teacher, Legvold is keenly interested in the environmental implications of his 700 acre farm in the rolling countryside near Northfield. As a former executive director of the Cannon River Watershed Partnership, he also knows the importance of controlling runoff from his farm. While he employs drain tiling, he directs as much water as he can toward a wetland where the runoff—and the accompanying sediments— can percolate into the ground rather than running into the streams and ditches.

Legvold has also been experimenting with an array of “conservation farming” techniques with the aim of tilling as little soil as possible. “The key here is retaining all this stuff,” Legvold explained, as he crouched down in a cornfield and grabbed a fistful of old corn stalks. Under the conventional approach, most of that detritus from the prior year’s crop would have been plowed under. Keeping more of the old dead vegetation on the tops of fields has benefits, including protecting the soil from drying out too quickly during hot weather. It also decreases erosion because, by plowing sparingly, there is less loose dirt to wash away. Meanwhile, the residue left on the fields provides habitat to macro invertebrates that are beneficial to soil quality.

One of Legvold’s principle weapons in this battle is a precision tilling implement called the Soil Warrior, which was invented by a farmer from Faribault. Because it only turns up narrow strips of soil, which are then fertilized and seeded in a highly targeted manner, it requires less fertilizer.

	PEPIN PRIDE: Mike McKay is the executive director of the Lake Pepin Alliance, a citizen’s group that is pushing to clean up the lake.

Legvold procured the Soil Warrior two years ago with a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program—a program that rewards farmers who agree to employ conservation techniques on their fields.

Unfortunately, in Legvold’s informal survey of agricultural equipment dealers in southeast Minnesota, he charted a steady increase in the sale of mold board plows, which are used to turn over the entire field.

While the efforts of farmers like Legvold are commendable, Trevor Russell of the Friends of the Mississippi contends that the only long-term solution to river water quality will come from a major change in federal farm policy.

“We have to find a way to modify the farm bill to reward ecological behaviors,” Russell said. “It’s not the farmer’s fault. They are doing the right thing for their families in the system they are working in. But if the system is broken and we can’t balance ecological services with farm prosperity, we’re not going to get very far with water quality.”

room for optimism

“Ag is not so monolithic,” said Mike McKay, the executive director of the Lake Pepin Legacy Alliance, a citizen’s group that is pushing to clean up Lake Pepin.

McKay is encouraged by the heightened public awareness of water quality issues. In six southeastern counties, he noted, county zoning officials have begun aggressively notifying farmers of violations to buffer regulations—rules that require farmers to leave strips of perennial vegetation along creeks and streams to combat erosion.

It’s a good start, McKay said. But like many who follow the issue, he is convinced that the river’s best and only hope lies with Congress.

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"We have to find a way to modify the farm bill to reward ecological behaviors."
- Dave Legvold

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George Boody, the executive director of the Land Stewardship Project, agrees that the next farm bill, expected in 2012 or 2013, will be critical. If farmers are provided incentives to grow more perennial crops and less corn and soybean, he said, water quality will improve.

“Will things change overnight?” Boody said. “No. Did we get where we are now overnight? No. But we’ve got more opportunities than ever to put forward approaches that work. I choose to be hopeful.” IQ

TIP SHEET: Field Good Options: Five ways farmers are helping the river.

(click to download/view a PDF)