Water quality has become an unfortunate familiarity to Hastings residents. From nitrates to phosphorous to PFAS, what is in the water we use to wash our clothes, cook our meals and drink is an increasingly important question.
Fortunately, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) provides a number of constantly updating tools that allow anyone to check water quality data from statewide averages to hyper-specific water sheds and even individual points.
To showcase these interactive tools, the MPCA hosted a webinar on Minnesota’s Nutrient Reduction Strategy Interactive Maps on Friday, March 21.
The shift from written reports to dashboards, trackers and interactive tools continues to be a goal for the agency, according to Research Scientist at the MPCA Matt Drewitz. The issue of written reports on water quality data is that they were nearly always “out of date as soon as they went to print.”
The MPCA currently has various trackers available to the public ranging from long-term stream trends to watershed pollution load monitoring to a map of the best management practices adopted across the state.
One tool, the Wastewater effluent flow and nutrients allows users to examine individual facilities for their estimated output of pollutants. For example, the Hastings Water Resource Recovery Facility has data dating back to 2005 and it can be seen to have produced some 66,000 kilograms of nitrogen in 2024.
Phosphorus data can also be seen for the site that showcases how phosphorus has dropped some 84% from 2000, down from 9,728 kgs to 1,433 kgs in 2024.
Minnesota Department of Agriculture Supervisor Reid Christianson spoke to the importance of this long-term data comparing a single data point to “sailing a ship at night without stars, a compass, or a GPS. You’d be completely lost.”
To that point, the 66,000 Kg/yr of nitrogen from Hastings Water Resource Recovery Facility has doubled in the last decade from producing 34,281 Kg/yr in 2014. That longevity of detail is a key perspective for new data.
For those looking to see what is being done in their backyard to maintain and clean bodies of water, the local best management practices (BMP) tool allows just that. BMPs are “conservation practices designed to prevent or reduce water pollution,” and can range from statewide to hyper-local.
In the Spring Lake portion of the Mississippi watershed, some 65 BMPs exist ranging from the creation of a bioretention basin to grade stabilization to wastewater and feedlot runoff control.
In the City of Hastings itself, the MPCA counts 190 BMPs. The MPCA lists two water impairments for bodies of water in the city: fecal coliform and fish bioassessments. BMPs in the area are reducing tilling, prescribed grazing, the creation of pollinator habitat, and well decommissioning.
The data reported across these tools and beyond will contribute to the 10-year update to the Minnesota Nutrient Reduction Strategy. Originally written in September 2014, the strategy “serves as a framework that outlines voluntary and regulatory actions to reduce nutrient pollution to meet long-term goals,” according to the MPCA’s website.
For the Mississippi River, the 2014 goal was to reduce Phosphorus and Nitrogen levels by 45% of 1980-1996 conditions. This goal is specifically directed towards averting Hypoxia events also known as “dead zones” in the Gulf of Mexico. Excess nutrients flowing out of the Mississippi cause massive algae blooms that consume the oxygen within water, killing off other sea life in the area.
The 10-year update, which is expected in late 2025 will incorporate data from the last 10 years into the plan and update tracking for the various 2040 goals laid out in the original plan.
For more information on the Minnesota Nutrient Reduction Strategy, and to view the tools used in the MPCA’s demonstration, visit the MPCA’s website at www.pca.state.mn.us/air-water-land-climate/reducing-nutrients-in-waters