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Water Resources of the Minnehaha Creek Watershed

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Water Resources of the Minnehaha Creek Watershed Water Resources of the Minnehaha Creek Watershed Introduction The Minnehaha Creek Watershed contains a wealth of water resources, including Lake Minnetonka, the Minneapolis Chain of Lakes, and Minnehaha Creek. Millions of people use these water resources for swimming, fishing, boating, and other forms of recreation. These water resources are vulnerable, however, because of their extensive use and because of the urban setting in which they occur. In 2003, students from Benilde-St. Margaret’s High School in St. Louis Park conducted a project to examine the water resources of the Minnehaha Creek Watershed. An important goal of the project was for students to utilize skills they learn in school and apply them to a real-world situation. Students gathered information on soil, water quality, geology, hydrology, ecology, history, and management for Minnehaha Creek or a lake in the watershed. The students compiled their information and placed it onto a website (http://www.bsm- online.org/bsmonline.aspx?pgID=1461). For example, did you know • Lake Calhoun draws 2.5 million visitors annually, as many as Yellowstone National Park? • about 15% of the water in Gray’s Bay, Lake Minnetonka, comes from ground water, while about 85% comes either from rainfall or stormwater runoff? • the rocky red gravel on the east side of Hiawatha Ave was important to the formation of Minnehaha Falls? • by looking at the pollution tolerance of insects in Minnehaha Creek, we can tell how healthy the stream is? • in the early to mid-1800’s, there was only one actual roadway in the vicinity of Cedar Lake, although there were several less developed paths used by Native Americans? This and much more information is contained in this website. You can also find out about ground water by scrolling down in this document. This document also contains acknowledgements and a summary of methods used during this study. Acknowledgements This project was partly funded through a Cynthia Krieg Scholarship (http://www.minnehahacreek.org/ckrieg.php) provided through the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District (http://www.minnehahacreek.org/). Staff at the Watershed District provided funding and support for the project. Keith Leiseth was the teacher at Benilde- St. Margaret’s who was willing to incorporate this project into his Honors Ecology class. The names of individual students who worked on this project are found on the individual sites they prepared (http://www.bsm-online.org/bsmonline.aspx?pgID=1461). Patty Leiseth and Caren Hansen were responsible for constructing the Benilde-St. Margaret’s website. Additional support for this project came from the Minnesota Ground Water 1 Association and staff at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, including Paul Estuesta, Don Berger, Jim Lundy, and Jim Stockinger. Ground Water What is Ground Water? When you walk, rollerblade, or bike along Minnehaha Creek or around Lake Harriet and Lake Calhoun, do you ever stop at the hand pump to get a drink? Have you ever wondered where that water comes from? How do you know the water is safe to drink? The water from this well comes from an aquifer about 250 feet below the ground surface The water comes from deep underground. Specifically, the ground water you are drinking comes from the Prairie du Chien aquifer. The Prairie du Chien aquifer is the most important source of drinking water in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area, including the Minnehaha Creek Watershed. Ground water is water held in saturated pores of soil or rock. Ground water exists everywhere beneath the land surface. In most places within the Minnehaha Creek Watershed, ground water occurs within about 20 feet of the land surface. But water from wells usually comes from much greater depths, sometimes hundreds of feet below the ground surface. Ground water is a source of drinking water for most communities in the Minnehaha Creek Watershed (Learn more about ground water at http://www.epa.gov/seahome/groundwater/src/ground.htm). 2 Water stored in the ground is a hard concept to understand. We cannot see it, but it supplies us with drinking water and feeds our lakes and rivers. In some places, ground water is easily contaminated, while in other places supplies are limited. This section provides information about ground water resources of the Minnehaha Creek Watershed. Geology 101 To understand ground water you have to understand geology. This is because water is stored in and moves through geologic materials, such as sand, clay, and rocks. Throughout the watershed, there are layers of sand, silt, and clay that overlie bedrock. If you visit Minnehaha Falls, you can see a thin layer of soil over bedrock. In some places in the watershed, however, the layers of sand, silt, and clay are more than 100 feet thick. Soil Limestone Shale Sandstone At Minnehaha Falls, you can see the different rock formations found in the Watershed. Hundreds of millions of years ago, oceans covered parts of Minnesota, including the Minnehaha Creek Watershed. Sediments were deposited at the bottom of these oceans. Over the years, the weight of overlying materials caused the sediments to be compacted, transforming them into sedimentary rocks. There are three basic types of sedimentary rock. Sandstone consists of sand particles that have been cemented together. Shale consists of clay and silt particles that been cemented. Carbonates, which include limestone and dolomite, consist mainly of calcium and magnesium that was deposited by the remains of marine animals. 3 For millions of years after the oceans retreated, the surface was sculpted by wind, rain, and rivers. Valleys formed and eroded sediments were deposited. Eventually, ice ages occurred and glaciers advanced across the landscape. The most recent ice advances occurred about 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. The older ice advance came from the northeast (Superior ice lobe), while the last ice advance came from the northwest (Des Moines ice lobe). The landscape we see today is largely the result of glaciers. In places where ice water melted and moved away from the glaciers, large sand outwash areas developed. In places where the glaciers moved back and forth, rolling till plains developed. Till contains a mixture of clay, silt, sand, and rocks. After the glaciers retreated, new materials were eroded and deposited. The most important of these materials are windblown silt, called loess, and materials deposited along rivers and in lakes. Loess covers most of the watershed and is usually about a foot thick. Alluvial deposits are only found in the floodplain of creeks or rivers and often consist of sand, but may include silt and clay. Similarly, eroded materials that wash into lakes settle to the bottom as sediment. These lacustrine materials include sand, which is deposited close to shore, and silt or clay, which settle away from shore. 4 Ground Water Resources of the Minnehaha Creek Watershed Geology is important because water moves differently through different types of materials. Water moves quickly through sand and through fractured or dissolved bedrock. These materials are aquifers because they yield water at a rate sufficient for us to use it. Clay, silt, and bedrock that is not fractured or dissolved do not readily transmit water and are called aquitards because they retard water movement. Aquifers are either confined or unconfined. If we drill a well and water in the well is not under pressure, the aquifer is unconfined. If water in a well is under pressure and rises above the level of the aquifer, the aquifer is confined. Confined aquifers exist when there is an aquitard overlying the aquifer, such as a clay layer over a sand aquifer or a shale layer over a limestone aquifer. Illustration Courtesy of Pennsylvania League of Women’s Voters, Water Resources Education Network Ground water flows from recharge areas at high elevations to discharge areas at low elevations Unconfined sand aquifers occur in the eastern part of the watershed and near Lake Minnetonka. These aquifers were once important sources of drinking water because they are easily accessible with a well. But they are easily contaminated and are now rarely used for drinking water. Confined sand aquifers occur throughout the watershed and are used for drinking water in the western part of the watershed. They are protected by the aquitard that overlies them. Several bedrock aquifers underlie the glacial deposits. The most important are the Prairie du Chien aquifer, consisting of limestone and dolomite, and the Jordan sandstone aquifer. These aquifers can be more than 100 feet thick and yield large quantities of water. They are generally confined and therefore protected from contamination. The Platteville limestone and St. Peter sandstone occur closer to the land surface than the Prairie du Chien and Jordan, but they are less reliable sources of water and may be vulnerable to 5 contamination. Below the Jordan lies the Franconia aquifer, which yields large quantities of water. The natural water quality of the Franconia, however, is not as good as that of the Prairie du Chien and Jordan, and it is expensive to drill deep wells. The Mt. Simon aquifer lies below the Franconia. The Mt. Simon is potentially an important source of water. In an effort to maintain the quality of water in this aquifer, drilling into the aquifer has been limited. Illustration Courtesy of Metropolitan Council This slice of the land shows the glacial and bedrock formations found in the Watershed. Hydrology – Ground Water in the Water Cycle Ground water is an important part of the water cycle (find out more at http://www.issaquah.org/COMORG/gwac/Hydro.htm). About 33 percent of the world’s freshwater and nearly all the world’s available freshwater exists as ground water. Aquifers receive their water from infiltration and deep percolation of precipitation.
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