A Brief History of the Water Resources Conference
The current Minnesota Water Resources Conference was created from the merger in 2005 of two separate water conferences—the Annual Water Resources Conference and the Minnesota Water Conference.
The annual Minnesota Water Resources Conference dates to 1968, when a seminar on flood plain management was held at the University of Minnesota. A similar seminar was held in each of the following years on various water resource topics. These annual one-day events assumed the Annual Water Resources Conference title starting in 1984 and continued under that name through 2004. Sponsorship varied, but most commonly included the Minnesota Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the University of Minnesota Water Resources Center, and the University of Minnesota College of Continuing Education (now CCAPS). One-day pre- or post-conference workshop was also frequently held.
Minnesota Water was held nine times on a biennial basis, in the spring of even-numbered years, from 1988 to 2004. Sponsors varied over time, but the event was always led by the University of Minnesota Water Resources Center. Minnesota Water was meant to reach a somewhat broader audience than the Annual Water Resources Conference and usually included nationally known speakers.
In 2005, the two conferences were combined and renamed Minnesota Water 2005 and Annual Water Resources Joint Conference. Beginning in 2007, the conference title was shortened to the Minnesota Water Resources Conference. In 2005–2006, the conference was held at the Earle Brown Heritage Center in Brooklyn Center; starting in 2008, the conference moved to its current location at the Saint Paul RiverCentre. All conferences since 2005 have been two-day events held in mid- to late-October. Registration has grown steadily, exceeding 800 participants in 2018. Exhibitors have been invited to the conference since 2014, adding 25–32 participants each year.
Story Collection
Thanks to the efforts of many in the water resources community, we have been able to assemble a complete historical collection of conference brochures from the separate conferences as well as the current Minnesota Water Resources Conference. Like any other scientific collection, there are insights to be gleaned from these brochures. How have critical water issues changed over time? How have policies and approaches changed? Has the slate of presenters become more diverse and equitable? It is our hope that the brochure collection will allow present and future water professionals to browse for insights into Minnesota’s evolving water issues and solutions.
Past Programs
2024
2024 Presentations
Listed below in alphabetical order. Only presentations with permission to post have been listed here.
- 20 Years of Lake Nutrient Impairment Delistings in Minnesota
- 35W Stormwater Storage Facility Design, Construction and SWPPP Implementation
- A Blueprint for Flood-Resilient Communities: Using Modern Tools to Identify and Prioritize Solutions
- A Deeper Dive into PFAS in Sediments of the Great Lakes: Lake Superior and Lake Huron
- A DEIA Lens to Environmental Work
- A Review of Private Well Sampling in Dakota County
- A Study of Organic Contaminant and Escherichia Coli Levels in Stormwater Runoff and Their Removal via Biochar-Amended Treatment Systems
- A Ten-Year Update to Minnesota's Nutrient Reduction Strategy: The Underlying Science
- Adopt-a-Drain K–12: Empowering Educators to Reduce Water Pollution
- Agricultural Drainage Water Recycling: Momentum Toward a Win-Win Solution for Water Quantity and Quality Challenges
- Agriculture and Septic Systems Influence Rural Groundwater Across the Border: Nitrate, Pathogen, and Fecal Contamination of Private Wells in Western Wisconsin’s Karst Aquifer
- Analysis of Microplastic Concentrations in Sediments from Minnesota Lakes
- Are There Viable Solutions For Chloride Pollution: Parkers Lake Study Advances Options for Chloride Source Assessment and Treatment
- Balancing Markley Lake: Using Current and Future Conditions to Identify Potential Solutions to High Water Levels
- Bioretention Basins and Retired Residents: A Pilot Project
- Brightstorm—Advancing Stormwater Management and Climate Resiliency Through Technology and Partnerships
- Building Watershed Awareness Through Artistic Investment
- Campus Greening: Bringing Natural Processes Back for Water, Habitat, and Education
- Can Downscaled Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE-TWS) by Knowledge-Guided Machine Learning Improve Streamflow Prediction Model? An Experiment at Central Minnesota, MN
- Changes in Stormwater Basin Infiltration Rates with Age
- Characterizing Hydrological Transport Pathways of Chronic Wasting Disease in Minnesota Watersheds
- Clean Water Council's New Strategic Direction for the Clean Water Fund
- Climate Resiliency Plans: Small, Medium, and Large Scales
- Complex River Bridge Hydraulic Design – A Team Effort
- Connecting Lakeshore Health to Biological Impairments on High-Quality Lakes: Quantifying Current Lakeshore Conditions
- Conservation Pays: Economics of Agricultural Water Quality Practices
- Continuous Flow In-Liquid Plasma Discharge for PFAS Destruction in Water
- Contrasting Patterns of Algal, Cyanobacterial, and Cyanotoxin Production in Lake of the Woods and Upper and Lower Red Lake
- Creating New Pond Vegetation Management Standards
- Creating with and for Water: An Artist-Led Drinking Water Community Engagement Effort in Little Falls
- Development of Watershed Scale Real-Time Control Systems
- Drainage Ditches: A Potential Water Storage Option for Minnesota
- Ecosystem Health Action Plan for Riley Purgatory Bluff Creek Watershed District
- Enhanced Street Sweeping for Water Quality: A Watershed-Based Approach
- Establishing a Collaborative Vision for Regional Stormwater Management at 325 Blake Road
- Evaluating Cost-Effective Stormwater Pond BMPs in Woodbury, MN, Using Barley Straw, Fish Biomanipulations, or Water Column Nano-Iron Media
- Evaluating State Policies Aimed at Reducing Nonpoint Source Pollution—Results of Interviews with Agency Professionals
- Evaluating the Effectiveness of Carp Management in 14-Lake System in Minnesota
- Evaluation and Use of a Novel Tool for Microplastic Sediment Extraction in Minnesota Lakes and Rivers
- Exploring Technostress Among Local Aquatic Resource Managers: Facilitators and Inhibitors in a Minnesota Sample
- Fate and Transport of Lead in Urban Stormwater Catchment Ponds
- Flood Resiliency, Water Quality, and Play: Reconfiguring a Landlocked Low Point with 7.4 Acre-Feet of Underground Infiltration
- Green Stormwater Infrastructure: Roadside Rain Gardens and Employment Pathways
- Groundwater Conflict at the Edge the Minneapolis–Saint Paul Metropolitan Area: When High-Volume Pumping puts Private Well Owners Out of Water
- HEC-RAS Development Updates
- HEC-RAS Developments: What's New & What's Coming
- How Lakeshore Monitoring Efforts Are Informing Local Partnerships and Engagement Efforts
- Identifying Sediment Sources in the Forested Little Fork Watershed with Sediment Fingerprinting and Sediment Budget Methods
- Improving Wilmes Lake, One Dose at a Time
- Increasing Resiliency of Brown's Creek Headwaters with County Road Improvements
- Insights from of 11 Years of Stormwater Training Evaluation Data
- Inspecting and Maintaining Active Stormwater Filtration Media
- Inundated by Flood Data: MnDOT’s Approach to Capturing, Storing, and Using Flood Documentation
- Investigating Resident Water-Related Concerns in Urban Lake Nokomis Area
- Lake of the Woods: Southern Shore Barrier Island Erosion Investigation – Phase I
- Leveraging Long-Term Monitoring Data to Assess the Impact of Urbanization and Management on Nutrients in Lakes Across the Twin Cities
- LOMRs and Turtles and Riffles, Oh My! Fourteen Years of Elm Creek Restoration Benefits to the City of Champlin
- Management Frameworks: A New Template for Successful Adaptive Management
- Maplewood Mall Stormwater Features: 15 Years of Lessons Learned
- MDH Investigative Monitoring for Lithium and other Unregulated Contaminants in Drinking Water
- Methane Emissions in Urban Lakes Across Salinity and Productivity Gradients
- Navigating Salinity Shifts: A Multifaceted Approach to Understanding Freshwater Salinization in Urban Lakes
- Paleolimnological Indicators of Eutrophication in Remote, Low-Nutrient Lakes in the Superior National Forest, Minnesota
- Partnering with Local Governments to Optimize Stormwater Management Outcomes Through Code and Ordinance Reviews
- Patterns in Minnesota’s Lake User Perception, Eutrophication, and Lake Assessment Datasets: A 35-Year “Big Data” Retrospective
- PFAS in Wet Deposition and Sediments from the Western Great Lakes Region: Insights into the Profile of Atmospherically Deposited PFAs
- Phosphorus Removal Performance at Rosland Park’s Active Stormwater Filtration System
- Protecting Drinking Water with Rural Best Management Practices: Case Study of Martin County Ditch No. 28
- Raising Awareness About Watershed Health and Conservation Careers
- Reimagining Tax-Forfeited Lots for Green Stormwater Initiatives and Community-Focused Urban Agriculture
- Removal of PFAS from Stormwater: Sorption to Biochars, Activated Carbons, and Ion Exchange Resins
- Riverine Scour and Riprap in HEC-RAS
- Robots in Our Waters: Preferences and Policy Priorities Among Local Aquatic Resource Managers
- RWMWD Street Sweeping Prioritization and Implementation of Grant Program
- Showcasing Water Quality Through Park Design: Hasenbank Stormwater Park
- Six Years Later: Results of a Multiyear, Innovative Carp Management Program
- Small Cities, Big Challenges: Climate Resiliency Modeling Approaches for Populations Under 10,000
- Solving an Ongoing Flooding Problem to Avoid the Need to Rescuing Drivers – Centerville-Edgerton Road Flood Study
- Spatiotemporal Evaluation of PFAS Concentrations and Partitioning in Mississippi River
- Status of the BMP Science Review
- Stormwater Management: A Four-State Comparison
- Stormwater Pipes in HEC-RAS 6.6 [Pipes : Beta Release]
- Stormwater Pipes in RAS 6.6: A Stormwater Modeling Perspective
- Stormwater Reuse for Irrigation: From Planning to Implementation
- Teamwork Makes the Dream Work – A Whiskey Creek Funding Story
- Ten Years of Community Engagement and Storm Drain Cleaning with Adopt-a-Drain.org
- The Challenges of Managing High Water Levels on Landlocked Basins: A Story from the VBWD
- The History of Minnesota’s Public Waters Inventory
- The Importance of Setting Appropriate Goals for Alum Treatments in Lakes
- The Science of Managing Minnesota’s Diverse Fish Communities and Their Habitat
- Thinking Outside the Box (Literally): The Solution to Hillsboro’s Flooding Concerns
- Too Much Water: Understanding Minnesota’s Flood Risk and Management Strategies for Today and Tomorrow
- Tools Work! Boat Cleaning Tools Increase Removal of AIS from the Interior of Boats
- Understanding and Improving Minnesota's Lake Water Quality in a Changing Climate
- Understanding Controls of Stormwater Pond Dynamics to Guide Water Quality Management
- Updating Pollutant Trends for Streams in the Twin Cities Metro Area
- Using Historical Rainfall to Predict Future Precipitation Extremes in the Midwest
- Using Natural Channel Tendencies to Inform Future Drainage Management
- Visitor Perception of Lake Water Quality in Highly Managed Urban Lakes in the Twin Cities
- Water Quality Analysis: Development of Nutrient and Heavy Metal Sensors
- Which Water Bodies in the Upper Mississippi River Basin Are Prone to Invasion
- Why Has the North Shore of Lake Superior Become a Hotspot for the Nuisance Alga Didymosphenia Geminata
- Will We Have Safe Drinking Water in 2034?
2023
2023 Presentations
Listed below in alphabetical order. Only presentations with permission to post have been listed here.
- Antibiotics in Minnesota’s Surface Water
- Can Nutrient TMDLS Restore Nutrient Impaired Lakes
- Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) in Remote Lakes Require Management Strategies Beyond Watershed Nutrient Reductions
- Should We Be Putting Greater Emphasis on Source Reduction?
- Patterns in Stormwater Pond Sediment Chemistry in the TCMA
- Wisconsin-Minnesota Wetland Functional Assessment Initiative
- Burnsville Resiliency: From Study to Implementation
- English Coulee Renewal
- Designing GSI to Adapt with a Changing Climate
- Piloting an Enhanced E.coli Source Assessment on Five Impaired Lake Superior Beaches
- Recent Advances in Groundwater Flow Modeling for Aquifer Protection in Minnesota
- Impacts of Gross Solids in Stormwater and the Associated Nutrient Loading to Receiving Waters
- Climate-Ready Stormwater Ponds in Hennepin County
- How Well are Stormwater Ponds Working?
- Introducing a Tool for Assessing Phosphorus in Stormwater Ponds
- Minnesota Statutes 103E Drainage
- A New Aquatic Invasive in Minnesota?! The Diatom Didymosphenia Along Lake Superior’s North Shore
- A historic look: Zebra mussel induced mercury concentration increases in Minnesota fish
- Wetland Banking in Minnesota 2023 Snapshot
- MnDOT Road to Resiliency
- Stormwater Treatment with a Manufacturing Byproduct (Tire Derived Aggregate)
- Surface Water and Ocean Topography Satellite and MN
- Introducing the Low Salt, No Salt Minnesota Program
- HOLD THE SALT: A GIS Tool to Help Winter Maintenance Salt Reduction
- Otsego Stormwater Masterplan
- Examining Chloride in an Agricultural Watershed Using a Chloride Balance Model
- Restorable Peatlands Mapping Tool and Easement Program Planning
- Plants for Stormwater Design
- DAVENPORT’S FLOOD RESILIENCY PLAN
- RCWD Climate Change & Floodplain Resiliency Project
- RWMWD: Targeted Retrofit Program
- Translating Successful Reservoir Restoration Methods to Lakes in Minnesota
- Targeting interventions to protect private well users’ health using data visualization
- Sustainable aquaculture to prevent invasive species and increase local food security
- Mercury Transport Modeling for the St. Louis River Watershed TMDL Analysis
- Mercury Transport Modeling for the St. Louis River Watershed TMDL Analysis
- Standardizing Back-up Connections for Stormwater Reuse Irrigation to Lower Risk
- Top 10 Things to Consider When Instituting a Stormwater Utility
- Benefits of a residential stormwater management grant program
- Wetland Restoration Effectiveness Tool (WRET) in Minnesota
- Groundwater age distributions in drinking water supply management areas
- Potential Hydrologic Impacts from Trends in Intense Rainfall and Antecedent Moisture in Minnesota Watersheds Since 1950
- Changes in the magnitude and timing of nutrient loads in the Upper Mississippi River
- Reducing Chloride Through Infrastructure Design
- Assessing the Effects of Agricultural Management Systems on Soil Architecture and Soil Moisture in Southern Minnesota
- Water Quality Drivers of Harmful Algal Blooms in Cedar Lake and Lake Nokomis
- Cover Crops and Living Mulches Effects on Irrigated Corn-Soybean Production Systems
- Total Maximum Daily Load Studies in Minnesota
- Statewide PFAS Monitoring at MDH
- Adapting Stormwater Infrastructure in the face of Climate Change
- Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategies (WRAPS) – What has been accomplished and where are we going?
- Morningside Flood Infrastructure Project Diving into a new era of stormwater management projects
- Street trees are conduits for a high proportion of stormwater nutrients
- BMP Mosaic: Meeting Standards with Multiple BMP Types and Reuse
- Strategies for Managing a Stormwater Utility
- Agricultural Drainage Projects
- The Minneapolis Pathogen Toolbox
- Upper Harbor District System
- Development of a non-City owned stormwater infrastructure assets inventory and inspection program
- Brownfield to Headwaters: Comprehensive District Stormwater Analysis and Planning for the Highland Bridge Development
- Brownfield to Headwaters: Implementation of the Highland Bridge District Stormwater System
- Evaluating Aquatic Organism Passage at Stream Crossings
- Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge
- RWMWD: Storing Water in the Lake Flood-Risk Reduction on the Phalen Chain of Lakes
- RWMWD: Lessons Learned Operating Adjustable Lake Outlet Control Structures
- Adequacy of Outlet
- Safe Drinking Water for Everyone, Everywhere in Minnesota
- Findings from the First Minnesota Private Well Forum
- Permanent BMP Maintenance:
- A Successful Approach to Floodplain Management
- Priority Lakes in the Upper Mississippi Basin
- Low-Cost Diagnostic Monitoring
- IRON ENHANCED SAND FILTER MONITORING AND ASSESSMENT CHALLENGES
- Satellite-Derived Water Quality Data from an Automated High-Performance Computing Environment for 10,000+ Minnesota Lakes
- Biochar as Filtration Media Amendment— What’s the Verdict?
- A Novel Suspended-Sediment Sampling Method: Depth-Integrated Grab (DIG)
- How to be everywhere at once
- Constructing linear GSI: What’s working, what’s not, and what might be
- This looks different because it should: Community-driven GI that considers environmental equity in Minneapolis
- Maintenance-Informed Green Infrastructure Design
- Trace Organic Contaminants in Wastewater Effluent
- Simulating Agricultural BMP Pollutant Removal with the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT)
- Saving Lily Lake
- Quaternary ammonium compounds (QACs) in wastewater influent, effluent and biosolids: Removal effectiveness and routes to the environment
- How to Explain Storage-Discharge Hysteresis: An Experimental Design at Rum River Watershed, MN
- Can Nutrient TMDLs Restore Nutrient Impaired Lakes
- Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the occurrence and removal of antibiotics during wastewater treatment
- New Tools for Data-Driven Lake Management
- Restablishing Como Lake's Aquatic Plant Community
- Sulfate Removal with Chemical Precipitation Technology
- Evaluation of Neonicotinoids in Minnesota Surface Water
- Integration of Multiple Watershed-Based Models and Tools to Address Water Quality Impacts
- Persistence Pays Off: Route to Sweeney Lake Delisting
- Minnesota Drinking Water_ A Governance Assessment Framework
- Development of a Channel Stabilization Project