1996-10-24_AgendaPacket - Laserfiche WebLink

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ow any stoneflies oes It Take To ake ~ ~ ~ Clean Stream? v.'~-~o..i. .~~ . . HCD doesn't know for sure, ~ '~ `~• '~ ± ~ ~' ' ~ but in the past year of biological ~y~ ~ ~~ stream monitoring no stoneflies '~ have been located. stoneflies are an excellent indicator of a healthy stream. stoneflies are all freshwater inhabitants as lar- vae. As a group they are close relatives of the cockroaches. Their name comes from the fact that many of the stoneflies are found crawling or hiding among stones in streams or along stream banks.. stoneflies are known as clean water insects since they are often restricted to highly oxygenated water. We believe Hennepin County may have some streams with high enough water quality to support stoneflies. Although we have not officially monitored the Crow River, Rockford High School has found stoneflies in that waterway. . . HCD plans to continue biological monitoring of the streams and creeks this fall. September will celebrate the start of our second year of the volunteer monitoring program. The volunteer monitoring program started with a pilot group of six high schools and has grown to twelve. This fall we will have seven sample sites in the Elm Creek Watershed, two in the Shingle Creek Watershed, two in the Minnehaha Creek Watershed, and one in the Pio- neer-Sarah Creek Watershed. HCD is a member of the National River Watch Network. This membership connects our local ef- forts tothe efforts of other volunteer monitors across the country. River Watch reports to have 10,000 volunteers in sixty programs along 100 rivers. Our teacher training workshop will be held on Septem- ber 13th and will be lead by HCD staff, a DNR Aquatic Entomologist, and aMinnesotaRiverWatch Trainer. Three other Soil and Water Conservation Districts have asked for information on the program and plan to attend the training session. GIS Sum er Internship HCD has. been fortunate to obtain summer college interns from the Hennepin County Techni-_ cal Employment and Assistance program. One of this year's summer intern, Joel Little, a senior at St. Thomas majoring in GIS and Environmental Sci- ence, spent. the summer working on the District's potential contaminant source inventory program. Joel was given a list bf abandoned dumps that were received from the MN Pollution Control Agency. Some initial location work had been done on these sites over 20 years ago. However, many of the dump locations needed to be confirmed and the quality control of the location data needed upgrad- ing. To solve this problem, Joel spent much of his summer at the University of Minnesota's Wilson- BourchertMap Library pouring over a collection of historic air photos. By looking at the general vicin- ity of each dump on air.photos dating from 1938 to 1992, in most instances he was able to pinpoint the exact dump location. Using the air photos as a guide and the District's GIS system as a tool, Joel then drew polygons representing the corrected size, shape and location of each dump he found. During that process Joel updated 2 other data bases and gener- ated anew data base which permits a user to identify on exactly which air photos in the University collec- tion the dumps appear. By identifying the earliest and the latest year an abandoned dump appears on air photos, a time frame of when the dump was active is determined. The District benefits from having its GIS data continuously refined and upgraded. Through the work of summer interns like Joel Little, Hennepin County residents will have better information about potential sources of ground water contamination that will be accurate to the parcel level of detail. It is anticipated that the information about abandoned dumps will be shared with State agencies, which have often stated the need to do this type of detailed research. but frequently lack the resources to do the work involved. Hennepin Conservation District 3