What is a watershed? And why should you care?
Terry Schwalbe, Administrator

Whether or not you know it, you live in a watershed.

But what is a watershed? And what does it do?

There are various ways to answer these questions.

In one sense, a watershed is a ridge that divides lower areas or valleys from each other.

In another sense, a watershed is the lower area that falls away from such ridges and that drains to a body of water like a lake, stream, or river.

It’s this second sense that we mean when we say you live in a watershed.

Yes, a watershed is a geographical area that falls away from ridges or high points and drains into a body of water.

So what?

Well, it’s not just water that obeys the law of gravity and runs downhill.

Oil runs downhill, if we flush it into a storm drain.

And storm drains connect directly into lakes, streams, wetlands, and rivers.

Animal waste runs downhill, too, from feed lots, farm fields, and our homes, if it’s not properly disposed of.

Fertilizers also run off into storm drains and from there into lakes, streams, rivers, and, yes, aquifers, those deep recesses that collect rain water and are the source of drinking water for many communities. The excess nitrates and phosphorus from fertilizers can contaminate our drinking water. (As of January 1, 2005, it’s illegal in Minnesota to use a lawn fertilizer containing phosphorus.)

Chemical contaminants also find their way into a watershed via storm runoff.

In urban areas like ours, where land has been converted to buildings and parking lots, the rain that runs off these surfaces is not absorbed by natural vegetation. It makes its way downhill precipitously, carrying contaminants like oil, antifreeze, grass clippings, fertilizer, and takes out vegetation as it goes. In other words, it accelerates both contamination and erosion.

When pollutants wash into streams and rivers, they threaten aquatic life. And as soil spills into these water bodies, the resulting fine silt material clouds the water and so limits the amount of sunlight that can penetrate. This cloudiness, or turbidity, then, also threatens aquatic plants and the animals that depend on them

All of this sounds a lot, doesn’t it, like the house that Jack built?

Like an interconnected system, in other words, where everything that we do has consequences.

So if we flush oil down the drain, we pollute the lakes and streams to which our storm sewers connect. And if we use phosphate fertilizers, they too can go down the drain and produce algae and weeds which choke off other aquatic plants that animals depend on for food sources.

So, we might be just a little more conscious of the effects that our actions have.

We all do live, indeed, in a watershed. And we also live, it turns out, in a watershed district — a governmental entity established by law here in Minnesota in the early 1960s to safeguard our water resources.

If you live either side of the Minnesota River, upstream from Carver all the way to Lilydale, you live in the Lower Minnesota River Watershed District. (See map.)

The District was established in 1961 for two principal reasons: 1) to help the Army Corps of Engineers maintain a nine-foot channel for commercial barge traffic from Savage to the confluence with the Mississippi, and 2) to safeguard the various water resources of the District.

These resources include not just the lower Minnesota River and its tributaries but also rare resources like calcareous fens within Ft. Snelling State Park, plus trout streams like Eagle Creek in Savage and the Boiling Springs that help supply it with cold clean water.

For more information on the Lower Minnesota River Watershed District — and what you can do to help protect your water resources, go to www.watersheddistrict.org. Or call me, Terry Schwalbe, District administrator, at 952– 227-1037.

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