The MPCA employs a watershed approach to restoring and protecting Minnesota’s rivers, lakes, and wetlands. Money to accelerate efforts to monitor, assess, and restore impaired waters, and to protect unimpaired waters was funded by the Minnesota’s Clean Water Legacy Act.

There are 80 major watersheds in Minnesota. Intensive water quality monitoring and assessments will be conducted in each of these watersheds every 10 years.

During the 10-year cycle, the MPCA and its partner organizations work on each of the state’s 80 major watersheds to evaluate water conditions, establish priorities and goals for improvement, and take actions designed to restore or protect water quality. When a watershed’s 10-year cycle is completed, a new cycle begins.

The primary feature of the watershed approach is that it focuses on the watershed’s condition as the starting point for water quality assessment, planning, implementation, and measurement of results. This approach may be modified to meet local conditions, based on factors such as watershed size, landscape diversity, and geographic complexity (e.g., Twin Cities metro area).

Text from MPCA