Agenda - Council - 03/10/2015 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Implementation Strategies: • With our partners, monitor the quality of regional lakes and rivers and quality and flow of regional streams. • Continue to assess and fill gaps in lake, stream, river, and groundwater data. • Assess and evaluate long-term water quality trends for the region's lakes, streams, and rivers and identify key issues to be addressed. • Maintain a regional database that contains water quality, quantity and other water related information collected as part of the Council's monitoring programs. • Investigate the need to develop and/or recommend water monitoring and assessment protocols, and other standard operating procedures for use by partners to move toward consistent regional approaches. • In partnership with others, complete technical studies to understand the region's long- term water supply availability and demand and to identify water sources for a specific community or subregional area. • Evaluate the potential for enhancement of aquifer recharge, including identification of high -potential areas for recharge. • Assess the use, capacity, quality and vulnerability of the local and subregional water supply systems and identify high -potential areas for recharge. • Convene stakeholders and collaborate with partners to identify water quality improvement implementation paths. Investment Beginning in early 2000, the Council began a major project to reduce phosphorus outputs from our wastewater treatment facilities. Excessive phosphorus causes algal blooms and causes nutrient problems in lakes that negatively affect the ecosystem health and limit recreational opportunities on our lakes and rivers. The Council has installed new technology at the wastewater treatment plants that allows them to capture and remove significant amounts of phosphorus before it enters the rivers (Figure 4). Pollution prevention is a key component to the Council's success in reducing adverse impacts on the region's water resources. Pollution prevention programs, such as the mercury reduction program jointly implemented with the Council and area dentists, have reduced the amount of mercury entering MCES wastewater treatment plants by half, thus reducing MCES emissions to rivers, the atmosphere, biosolids, and incinerator ash. The Council's permitting program for industrial waste discharges also reduces loadings of other metals and toxic chemical, and has contributed to our success in improving water quality in the region. Even with all of the hard work done to protect the region's water resources, some pollutants still make their way to area lakes, rivers, streams, wetlands and groundwater systems from both 25