The Mississippi River Winona/La Crescent watershed (WinLaC) is in southeastern Minnesota where it drains about 750 square miles within four counties (Houston, Olmsted, Wabasha, and Winona). The watershed is home to around 60,000 people, many of whom reside in the cities of Winona, La Crescent, Lewiston, Saint Charles, Eyota, and Wabasha.
The WinLaC watershed is in the driftless ecoregion and the Lower Mississippi River Basin. The watershed consists of cropland, forest, and grassland and supports trout streams. For planning purposes, the watershed plan boundaries cover two USGS HUC-08 watersheds: portions of the Mississippi River-Winona watershed and the Mississippi River-La Crescent watershed located in Minnesota. The majority of the HUC-08s are in Wisconsin, but One Watershed One Plans do not cross state boundaries.
Sub-watersheds within the WinLaC Planning Area have varying land use and topology which makes prioritizing issues uniformly across the planning area difficult. “Planning Regions” were identified to allow the WinLaC Partnership the ability to focus on unique issues present within each sub-watershed. The WinLaC Watershed has been divided into four planning regions around subwatershed (HUC-10) boundaries: Whitewater, Garvin Brook, Mississippi River-La Crescent, and Small Tributaries. Each planning region focuses on different issues and uses a unique approach to meet goals.
The WinLaC watershed plan is a 10-year plan, but not all issues can be addressed within that timeframe. In recognition of this, the WinLaC Partnership prioritized the most pressing issues within the watershed that are within control of a local water plan. Feasibility and cost were also taken into consideration when prioritizing issues. Issues were placed into one of three categories: Priority A, Priority B, and Priority C.
Priority A Issues the plan is to address include increased field management practices, elevated levels of nitrates, excess nutrient loading, excess sediment loading, failing or noncompliant septic systems, increased annual precipitation and the need to plan for resiliency, protection of wellhead/source water areas, urban stormwater runoff, and upland/overland sediment loading.
Priority B Issues the plan is to address are forest, native prairie and pollinator habitats, and unsealed or poorly constructed wells, nutrient runoff, loss of natural wetlands, excess sediment from near-channel and in-channel sources, pasture runoff, flooding, high levels of E. coli, tile networks and drainage ditches, terrestrial invasive species, trout fisheries, aquatic invasive species.
