The Mississippi River near St. Paul is the stretch of the river that starts where the Minnesota River enters into the Mississippi River, travels through downtown St. Paul, and ends just before the effluent channel of the Metro Wastewater Treatment Facility. This area is highly urban so there are many stormwater outlets entering into the river. The St. Paul Downtown Airport lies along this stretch of the Mississippi River. Additionally and the Beltline Interceptor, which is the outlet of several lakes and their watersheds in the east of St. Paul, enters into the Mississippi River just across from the airport. Despite being in a highly urban area, many parks lie along this stretch of the river, including Fort Snelling State Park, Lilydale Regional Park, Cherokee Regional Park, and Battle Creek Regional Park. Also it is part of the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area. This section of the river is channelized as part of USACE's 9-Foot Channel Navigation Project and there is a lot of commercial traffic that passes through. It lies in Navigation Pool 2 of the Upper Mississippi River.Mississippi River at St. Paul, River Mile 839.1 is the main monitoring station on this stretch of the river. Is measures the water quality of the Mississippi River passing through downtown St. Paul, which is below the confluence of the Minnesota River and upstream from the effluent of the Metro Wastewater Treatment Facility. USGS station 05331000 is located near this water quality monitoring station and measures hydrological data of the river.The Mississippi River upstream of Metro WWTP, River Mile 836.8 station has automatic monitoring equipment which takes measurements every 15 minutes. This continuous data can be found under the "Time Series" dropdown in the "Data Collected" section located farther down on this webpage.The Mississippi River is one of the world's largest rivers, flowing over 2,300 miles through the center of the United States. It begins at Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota and ends at the Gulf of Mexico, where pollutants carried by the river contribute to the Gulf's Dead Zone. Millions of people rely on the Mississippi River as a source of drinking water, and the river is also an important waterway for shipment of commodities. The Mississippi River watershed is the 4th largest in the world at about 1.2 million square miles. The section of the watershed in and upstream of the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area has a mix of several types of land including forests, wetlands, agriculture, and developed areas.