South Fork Crow River Watershed Monitoring and Assessment Report

The South Fork Crow River Watershed (HUC 07010205) drains an area of 331,206 hectares (818,428 acres) along the Upper Mississippi Basin's southern boundary with the Minnesota River Basin in central Minnesota. It spans an area from the city of Willmar on the watershed's western boundary to the Delano area on the eastern boundary, occupying portions of Kandiyohi, Renville, Meeker, McLeod, Sibley, Wright and Hennepin counties. In 2012 the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) began a two year, intensive watershed monitoring (IWM) project in the South Fork Crow River Watershed. This project was designed to assess the quality of the lakes and streams in the watershed through both biological and water chemistry monitoring. MPCA biomonitoring staff evaluated fish and macroinvetebrate communities at 83 unique monitoring stations across 49 assessment reaches of stream. MPCA surface water quality staff and the Crow River Organization of Waters (CROW) completed lake and stream chemistry sampling at 12 stream locations: 11 of which were at the outlets of the major subwatersheds and an additional location on the South Fork Crow River mainstem. CROW also collected water chemistry from four lakes (Barber, Goose, Johnson and South) to assess the aquatic life and aquatic recreation potential of each lake and stream where sufficient data was available. Overall 52 lakes and 88 streams were assessed for aquatic life and/or aquatic recreation. (Where insufficient data existed, assessments were not made). Results presented in this report indicate significantly degraded water quality and biological communities throughout the watershed. Overall, scores of biological communities in this watershed were resoundingly poor; not a single general use stream in the South Fork Crow River Watershed fully supported aquatic life for both fish and macroinvertebrates. Only six streams (<7% of assessed reaches) were determined to be supporting aquatic life for Modified Use waters (which have lower impairment thresholds than general use waters) for both fish and macroinvertebrate communities.