Barr is leading the planning effort to develop a 10-year comprehensive watershed-management plan for the Cedar River watershed that is in compliance with the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources’ (BWSR) One Watershed, One Plan requirements. The watershed, located in southern Minnesota, is 722 square miles and includes areas that are tributary to the Cedar River in Minnesota, as well as five additional watersheds that drain to the Cedar River south of the Minnesota-Iowa border.
The Cedar River Partnership includes four counties and soil and water conservation districts, two watershed districts, and the City of Austin. Barr worked with the advisory and policy committees to identify and prioritize issues and resources of concern into a three-tiered priority framework and to establish long-term and short-term (10-year) measurable goals to address each priority issue.
Barr used watershed-wide digital-terrain mapping, water-quality modeling results, and hydrologic and hydraulic modeling results to identify target areas for best management practice implementation. We helped develop an implementation program that includes prioritized capital improvements as well as non-structural practices that will yield measurable progress toward achieving the goals of the partnership.
After compiling a complete draft plan, Barr helped guide it through a formal review process. We worked with the partnership to respond to comments from local and state agencies and to revise the plan, which was approved by BWSR in fall 2019 and subsequently adopted.