2013 Macroinvertebrate Assessment

In 2013, aquatic macroinvertebrates were colleced in Minnehaha Creek from Lake Minnetonka to the Mississippi River, and five tributary streams to Lake Minnetonka (Figures 2-3). These same sites were monitored in 2003. The overall conclusions are very comparable between the 2003 and 2013 MCWD studies and the 2013 MPCA Assessment of the watershed. The 2013 results show that many of the streams are heavily impacted by urbanization and stream channelization, including Long Lake Creek, Painter Creek, Gleason Creek, and Classen Creek. Long Lake Creek and Painter Creek are listed as impaired by the MPCA (Figure 1). Six Mile Creek showed the best biological community of the Upper Watershed streams, but is still impacted by urbanization. Minnehaha Creek shows fair habitat and biological community diversity in the first 6 sites after Lake Minnetonka, and as it flows through Minneapolis the biological community declines. This shows the effect of urbanization on the creek and it's biological community. Minnehaha Creek is listed as impaired for chloride, fecal coliform, dissolved oxygen, and macroinvertebrate and fish IBIs (Figure 1). The combination of degraded habitat and poor water quality have affected the biological community in these streams. Stream restoration projects in these areas could show improvement in the biological community. It is helpful to have these data sets as a "before" condition to any future improvements.