Posted by Boua Xiong

The Knife River draft pollution report is 72 pages long. It's a lengthy report but the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency hopes the community will read it and comment.

"Local citizens of a watershed are often so key to making any changes because a lot times change is essentially a change in land use practices," Greg Johnson, an official with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, said.

At a public meeting Wednesday about a dozen people, some who live near Knife River, came to hear more about the agency's draft pollution report.

"We'll be going over the background of what a TMDL is and then going over the specifics terms of the Knife River TMBL," Nathan Schroeder of the South St. Louis County Soil and Water District said about the meeting.

TMDL, which stands for total maximum daily load, is a process and formula that measures water quality. TMDL makes up the pollution report. According to the report and pollution experts high pollution in the river is coming from many sources including failing clay banks, ditches and roadways. But there's one big source.

"The source of the problem comes from land use, alterations and pasture, forestry practices, things like that that increase the amount of runoff,” Schroeder said.

With the river discharging right into Lake Superior the agency hopes that public meetings will help the agency improve their pollution report and a possible solution to a cleaner Knife River.

The public has until November 11th to submit comments on the report before it is submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency for review.