Lower Vermillion River Watershed Turbidity TMDL

Vermillion River and the Mississippi River south of Lock and Dam 3. Water quality monitoring of the LVR has shown that turbidity levels exceed the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's (MPCA) water quality standard approximately 40 percent of the time. As required by the Clean Water Act, MPCA has developed this Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) report to identify the activities that need to occur to address the turbidity impairment. The goals of the LVR Watershed Turbidity TMDL Project are to describe the nature and extent of turbidity in the highly complicated setting of the LVR, determine turbidity source load allocations that consider major sources, and produce this final report that expresses the turbidity dynamics in terms of an "allocation" among sources and recommendations for corrective actions. Because of the complexities of the system, the project was implemented in three phases: 􀂃 Phase I: Data Gathering and Conceptual Model Development 􀂃 Phase II: Sampling and Model Setup 􀂃 Phase III: Model Refinement and TMDL Development This report documents the results of the Phase III analysis, with the Phase I and II findings included as Appendices A and B, respectively