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December 19, 2008
Q&A: Follow-Up with Bruce Wilson
On December 3, the Water Policy Study Committee heard from Bruce Wilson of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA). Bruce has been involved with several collaborative efforts to clean up lakes and rivers, including the Chain of Lakes in Minneapolis. (See more in my Dec. 4th blog.)
There was plenty more to talk about when the meeting ended, so I caught up with Bruce to ask a few more questions:
Q: In the case of the Chain of Lakes clean up, the responsibilities of all the parties involved were pretty clear, because they were spelled out by agreements signed by each group (including the cities, the Park Board, the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District, the MN Pollution Control Agency, etc.). Was it difficult to come to agreement on who would be responsible for what? How did you do it?
Bruce Wilson: The Minneapolis Chain of Lakes Clean Water Partnership is an example of how different groups came together to solve problems. I believe the basic formula was: (1) acknowledgment of problems; (2) acknowledgment that many hands (and funding sources) will make lighter work; and (3) local leadership and commitment to solve the problems. Inherent in the agreement was to define realistic expectations over short (~5 years) and long terms (~5-20 years) and then focus on priorities starting at the top of the list. (Rehabilitation efforts usually take years, as it takes time to define causes and solutions, design fixes, construct, and allow the water body to respond.)
Key Leader -- Jeff Lee of the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board was the extraordinary staff-leader who was the core of the project. A citizen advisory committee was established and received intensive training while their Clean Water Partnership monitoring was underway. The citizen advisory panel crafted management goals that were submitted to the cities and watershed district. Funding of various goal work components (sediment basins, etc.) were discussed by the Mayor of Minneapolis with the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District, the Minneapolis Park Board Director and Minneapolis Public Works, and agreement reached.
I think the collective synergy of galvanized electorate, superb leadership (from Jeff Lee of MPRB, Mayor Sayles Belton, Hennepin County, Minnehaha Creek Watershed District managers), flexible grant resources, and technical support all contributed significantly to their successes.
Q: In the Crow River clean up, did you work out contracts similar to the Chain of Lakes? If not, how did the parties (as well as citizens) know what their job was and what to expect from others?
BW: Remember I mentioned the importance of "ramping up" of citizen and local decision makers' awareness of problems and their management options. In this case, there was a two year ramping up phase of working with citizen groups who, like the Minneapolis Chain Project, were very concerned about degradation of the Crow River system. The MPCA assisted in establishing river monitoring network and helped citizens and the counties in developing management options. (This was before much of the impairment listing/TMDL process currently in place.)
After preliminary assessments confirmed widespread and substantial degradation of the River's health, the watershed counties formed a joint powers organization (JPO). the JPO then applied and received a MPCA Clean Water Partnership grant diagnostic study with utilized 30 stream monitoring locations. That monitoring along with the more detailed TMDL modeling effort now being completed, allowing targeting of various phosphorus and sediment loading sources.
Q: When we're talking about pollution prevention rather than cleanup, would you say it's less clear who is responsible for what? If so, do you have suggestions to make it clearer?
BW: I believe there are two issues in this question: responsibilities and available funds. There is also the phrase "if it isn't broke, don't fix it" that describes a commonly heard theme.
Protection efforts, while extremely cost-effective, may not rise to priority status to some overstretched municipal and county budgets. Many counties prepare water management plans to address protection, but funding is a universal problem. Watershed districts, in contrast, generally focus on water quality and quantity issues and have taxing authority.
Secondly, there continues to be the need for institutional recognition of the potential effects of urban runoff on very sensitive waters, particularly of the Northern Lakes and Forests and Central Hardwood Forests ecoregions (NE and Central MN). Hence the need for development commissions to fully detail new development infrastructure costs and benefits by including long term operation and maintenance costs for municipal public works departments, for example. Adoption of low-impact design and conservation design ordinances will be most important in this regard by reducing runoff volumes and impervious cover.
Q: In your experience, how much of nonpoint source pollution clean us is due to actually reducing pollution versus trapping pollutants before they enter water bodies?
BW: In reality, you are describing three of the 8 management approached which I am simplifying:
- education/information (preventing pollution);
- source controls (a variety of onsite agriculture and urban practices); and
- treating runoff waters (e.g. agricultural and urban stormwater treatment systems
I am convinced that effectively marketed information and education can make huge changes in behavior that in turn result in substantially reduced pollutant loading (measurable changes of 5% to 50%). For example, we rarely hear of waste oil being dumped into storm sewers. Farming practices have changed dramatically over time. We are selling a product -- clean water -- and will need long-term reinforcing marketing efforts to maintain behavior changes.
Common watershed management goals focus on series of reductions, for example reducing 25% phosphorus loads over ten years. To accomplish these goals, we rely upon a series of "base hits" mirroring the 8 Common Watershed Approaches in my presentation. Pollution prevention could be an important part of the 25% reduction goal over a ten typical year effort.
Sometimes education efforts get overwhelmed by other forces and regulation may be needed -- for example the limitation of phosphorus in household detergents that was advanced in the 1980's or the more recent restrictions in urban fertilizer phosphorus content. (A study in Minnesota showed that the fertilizer phosphorus limitation was likely reducing total phosphorus loading by 12-15%.)
Impervious cover, ~2/3 for car habitat, is really our main urban problem generating source. To the degree we can prevent or reduce impervious cover and/or connected impervious cover in urban areas (as in low-impact and conservation designs), the greater our protection potential. Adoption of low-impact design and conservation design ordinances will be most important in this regard by reducing runoff volumes and impervious cover in new and retrofitting of old urban areas.
Q: What elements of successful cleanups do you think could be replicated broadly, without the large price tags that were required for the complete projects?
BW:
- Watershed planning, land conservation (maybe via trust funds, easements, set asides, tax forfeit lands), watershed stewardship (information and education), better land use designs and erosion and sediment control of developing and established urban areas.
- Rehabilitation projects requiring multiple Best Management Practices are going to be expensive, hence the emphasis on avoiding via protection.
Q: At the end of your presentation to the committee, you started to tell us your "wish list" for policy change related to nonpoint source pollution. Unfortunately, we ran out of time before you could finish. I'm interested to hear the rest of your answer.
BW:
- Increased education and information efforts and continued UM certification training of watershed managers and professionals.
- Support incorporation of specialties needed to rehabilitate our water resources, in a similar fashion as human medicine has specialties.
- Re-examination of institutional aspects to more fully integrate watershed management across political boundaries. New technologies should be harnessed for city and watershed planning (GIS-based and computer enhanced images, for example).
- Use of targeted professional marketing approaches for clean water as "products."
Posted by Annie Levenson-Falk at December 19, 2008 2:12 PM