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).
Unlike petroleum, most of the natural gas consumed in the United States is produced here too. A small amount is imported, mostly from Canada, which provided nearly 88 percent of imported gas in 2010. Trinidad, Tobago, Egypt, Norway, Nigeria, and Qatar also provide a small amount of the natural gas supply in the form of shipped liquefied natural gas.