LITTLE COTTONWOOD RIVER
RESTORATION PROJECT
A Clean Water Partnership
Diagnostic Study Final Report


Project Overview
The Little Cottonwood River Watershed is a long narrow area spanning three counties and covering 108,757 acres or 170 sq. miles. It is apart of the Middle Minnesota Major Watershed of the MN River Basin. Between 1989 and 1994, the upper reaches of the watershed were monitored as part of a groundwater study in Brown Nicollet and Cottonwood Counties. Results indicated groundwater and surface water were connected and poor quality surface water maybe contributing to the groundwater in this area.
In the spring of 1996, monitoring began to intensify as part of a resource investigation project titled Middle/Lower Minnesota Assessment Project (MLAP). The main purpose was to identify which surface waters were negatively affecting the Minnesota River.

In 1997 a Clean Water Partnership (CWP) was created to further study the watershed and soon after four water quality monitoring stations were established in the watershed. Due to setbacks from a tornado, which struck parts of the watershed in the spring of 1998, the project was put on hold for one year. Results from the three-year study (1997-2000) indicated reduction in sediment, nitrate, and phosphorus throughout the watershed would contribute to improvements in the main stem of the Little Cottonwood and Minnesota River. Although water quality was a concern, flooding was found to be the biggest water resource issue for the watershed. The technical committee identified several actions, which would help lower the non-point sources of pollution in the watershed and remediate flooding concerns. In 2001 the project received funding from the CWP program to help accelerate the adoption of voluntary practices to restore the watershed.

In 2001, the watershed project began to work with landowners and farmers to help them make their property and land use practices "watershed friendly" by helping them enroll some of their land into conservation programs. Two very popular programs that were used were the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) and the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). Between CRP and CREP over 4,000 acres have been enrolled by an estimated 150 landowners within the 170 square-mile watershed. This conserves about 16,000 tons of soil, and helps prevent an estimated 4,500 pounds of phosphorus and 80,000 pounds of nitrates from entering the river each year!

Download Report
The Little Cottonwood River Restoration Project is available in sections as listed below. The report may be viewed or printed by choosing from the list of pdf files. Download time increases with file size. The complete report file may take over 30 minutes to download when using a modem. Viewing and printing time may be decreased by saving the pdf file to your computer's hard drive.

Netscape: Save to your computer's hard drive by holding the shift key down while clicking on the desired pdf file.

Internet Explorer: Save to your computer's hard drive by clicking on the pdf file using the right mouse button to bring up the menu choices. Select 'Save Target As...'

The 'Save As...' window will appear that allows you to choose a directory to save to and to rename the pdf file. To download Adobe Reader or for more help see How to download Adobe Reader to view pdf files.

Little Cottonwood River Restoration Project
Cover and Index (pdf 187 k)
Tables, Figures and Map List (pdf 54 k)
Chapter 1 Introduction and Project Background, pages 1-11 (pdf 157 k)
Chapter 2 Project Area Description, pages 12-53 (pdf 2,318 k)
Chapter 3 Approach and Method, pages 54-68 (pdf 903 k)
Chapter 4 Watershed Assessments and Techniques, pages 69-78 (pdf 256 k)
Chapter 5 Results and Discussion, pages 79-127 (pdf 4,126 k)
Chapter 6 Conclusions and Goals, pages 135-140 (pdf 149 k)
Chapter 7 Implementation Plan, pages, 141-163 (pdf 220 k)