St. Louis
River
The most
unique feature of this WOW site is that it is not a lake. WOW has chosen
the lower reaches of the St. Louis River for a number of reasons, the
proximity to Lake Superior Technical College and Duluth area high schools,
UMD, NRRI, MN Sea Grant, and the Lake Superior Center of the new Great
Lakes Aquarium in Duluth and more importantly, the placement of RUSS
in a riverine system will allow our curriculum team to explore water
quality issues in a different type of system. The site is also unique
because it is influenced not only by river water flowing downstream
but also occasionally by Lake Superior water flowing upstream due to
the lake's seiche.
The St.
Louis River, the largest U.S. tributary to Lake Superior, drains 3,634
square miles, entering the southwestern corner of the lake between Duluth,
MN and Superior, WI. The river flows 179 miles through three distinct
areas; coarse soils, glacial till and outwash deposits at its headwaters;
a deep narrow gorge at Jay Cooke State Park; and red clay deposits at
its lower reaches. As the river approaches Duluth and Superior it takes
on the characteristics of a 12,000 acre (4856 hectare) freshwater estuary.
While the upper part of the estuary has some wilderness-like qualities,
the lower portion is decidedly urban. The RUSS will be located in this
lower urban portion.
The lower
St. Louis River is one of 42 Areas of Concern (AOC) in the Lake Superior
basin. An AOC is a site that has serious environmental pollution problems
that require remedial action and the development of a Remedial Action
Plan (RAP) to outline ways to restore the area. See EPA
GLNPO for more information on the Great Lakes AOCs. The Minnesota
Pollution Control Agency has a web page that discusses contaminated
sediments within the St
Louis River.
A large
publically owned wastewater treatment plant (Western
Lake Superior Sanitary District, WLSSD) discharges below the potential
RUSS site and the river carries a heavy load of suspended sediments
from non-point sources. The river also has a number of sites known to
contain contaminated sediments.
The lower
St Louis provides good fish habitat and is an excellent warm water fishery.
However, the recent invasion of exotic fish (Eurasian ruffe and round
goby) may threaten native fish populations (see MN
Sea Grant exotic species ).
11/26/01-We
have just installed the unit at the Duluth Ship Canal downstream (lakeside)
from the Duluth lift bridge. The unit consists of a PVC pipe mounted
behind one of the safety ladders built into the sea wall and a YSI 6820
sonde and cable. The cable runs underground into the Army Corps of Engineers
building adjacent to the site. We share a phone line with the USGS (station
464646092052900) which operates an acoustical velocity meter (AVM) system
with a two-path transducer installation. The USGS
supplies real-time gage height and stream velocity on their web site
and we soon hope to use these data to present flow based water quality
graphs on WOW.
Click on any of
the thumbnails below to see how we installed the unit.
