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).
From the gathering system, the natural gas moves into the transmission system, which is composed of about 272,000 miles of high-strength steel pipe ranging from 20 inches to 42 inches in diameter. These large transmission lines for natural gas can be compared to the nation's interstate highway system for cars.