Watershed at a Glance. The Cannon River watershed is located south of the Twin Cities and encompasses areas of Dakota, Goodhue, Le Sueur, Steele, Rice and Waseca counties. The watershed drains approximately 1,460 square miles through two main channels, the Cannon and Straight Rivers, to the Mississippi at Red Wing.
While some large industrial, commercial, and electric generation customers receive natural gas directly from high capacity interstate and intrastate pipelines (usually contracted through natural gas marketing companies), most other users receive natural gas from their local gas utility, also called a local distribution company (LDC).
In fact, from 1991 to 2004, the number of incidents on natural gas distribution pipelines decreased by more than 25 percent, yet the amount of natural gas traveling through the delivery system increased by 30 percent, and an additional 650,000 miles of pipeline were added to the system.