Chippewa River Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategy Report

The Chippewa River Watershed in western Minnesota drains over 1.3 million acres to the Minnesota River. This Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategy (WRAPS) report summarizes the condition of surface water resources (i.e. lakes and streams), the scale and types of changes needed to restore and protect waters, and options and available tools to prioritize and target conservation work on the landscape in the Chippewa River Watershed. The work summarized in this WRAPS report will be expanded and revised every 10 years as part of the state of Minnesota's "Watershed Approach". The identified pollutants in the Chippewa River Watershed are: sediment, phosphorus, nitrogen, bacteria and dissolved oxygen (DO). The identified stressors and conditions in the watershed are: low DO, altered hydrology and poor habitat. The maps on this page illustrate the stream reaches and lakes found to be impaired or supporting the water quality standards. Note that only a fraction of the total water bodies was tested or assessed. This does not imply that pollutants/stressors are only problematic where identified as impaired. Rather, the high percent of tested waters that were found to have problems indicates that the pollutants/stressors are likely common across the watershed.