Buffalo River Watershed Total Maximum Daily Load

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) has listed 38 waterbodies in the BRW as impaired for water quality (i.e., not meeting the standards that have been set for them) and needing a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL). The draft 2014 303(d) list contains a total of 61 impairment listings for the BRW's waterbodies: 22 for E. coli, 13 for turbidity, 16 for excess nutrients, 4 for aquatic macroinvertebrate bioassessment, 3 for fish bioassessment, 2 for dissolved oxygen (DO), and 1 for mercury. Of the 61 listings on the 303(d) list, 53 are addressed in this TMDL, i.e. a TMDL calculation is performed. They include the 22 E. coli, 13 turbidities, 15 excess nutrients, and 3 biologic impairments. In January of 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an approval of the adopted amendments to the State Water Quality Standards, replacing the historically used turbidity standard with Total Suspended Solids (TSS) standards. All turbidity impairments on the 2014-303(d) list will be considered as TSS impairments and address as TSS TMDLs. The remaining eight listings are not addressed because either they already have an approved TMDL (one mercury impairment), are the result of non-conventional stressors like altered hydrology (four biological impairments), are wholly located within a National Wildlife Refuge (one excess nutrient impairment – North Tamarack Lake), or will be completed in the future because of a lack of necessary data (two DO impairments).