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 a commercial context, natural gas is measured in cubic feet, while gasoline is sold at the pump in gallons. Because of differences in the amount of energy produced from various energy sources and the differences in commercial measurements, comparing two energy sources requires that they both be measured in terms of energy units.