The Poplar River Management Board (PRMB) continues to work with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) on establishing turbidity standards for the Poplar River and getting the sediment level down to meet those standards.
At its Monday, August 2, 2010 meeting the PRMB discussed its unsuccessful application for a Great Lakes Restoration Initiative grant in the amount of $1,000,000 and some of the reasons it was turned down. PRMB consultant Curtis Sparks said, “There was no ‘fatal flaw’ in our application. It just didn’t have the ‘wow.’ We did have a good application.” Some of the projects that did receive funding claimed their bodies of water would be delisted if their grant projects were carried out. The PRMB tried to be as realistic as possible in its application and did not make that claim, Sparks said.
The PRMB has made the first cut for a Great Lakes Commission grant in which it requested almost threequarters of a million dollars.
TheMPCA is still trying to identify a river with less development along it than the Poplar River to use as a comparison in developing its standards. The MPCA has considered using the Pigeon River as a comparison with the Poplar River because it is similar in topography and data has been compiled on the Pigeon River much longer than on other North Shore rivers. Some rivers along the North Shore carry more sediment than the Poplar, Karen Evens of the MPCA said.
In dealing with a water body that is considered impaired, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), states and tribes calculate the “Total Maximum Daily Load” (TMDL), which is “the maximum amount of a pollutant that a water body can receive and still safely meet water quality standards.” The MPCA anticipates having a draft TMDL for the Poplar River by sometime in 2011 or early 2012. It will need to be submitted to the EPA, reviewed by the public, and submitted to the EPA again for final review.
Best management practices (BMPs) are being developed and would need to be implemented in specific areas along the Poplar River for a couple of years before the river could be delisted. Evens said the TMDL would have standards for various flow levels since the amount of sediment changes depending on rain and snowmelt or lack of them. Those measurements would be averaged together in evaluating the overall health of the river.
Evens said the whole process could take 10 years. Sparks said money to monitor the river that long is not available at this time. A list of projects that can be implemented over the course of time has already been formulated.
One project that would help stabilize the Megaslump (an area with a lot of erosion), according to Evens, would be to move the Caribou Highlands discharge pipe from the lip of the slump. “It’s one more BMP that will help stabilize the Megaslump in the future,” she said. Currently, someone rappels down the slump and puts a sleeve on the discharge pipe to capture sediment.
Evens said the natural state of the Poplar River could have more sediment than the standard that is to be set would allow. Sediment in a river can be caused by the river’s slope, clay in the riverbed, bedrock underneath the river, and the presence of wetlands upriver.
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