What projects are on the front burner for the District now?

Len Kremer, President of the Board of Managers

As everyone who went on the river tour with us, in August, knows, the District is negotiating purchase of a couple of sites for depositing dredge materials. One of these places is under the 494 bridge across the river, which Steve Tapp pointed out in his presentation. The other is on the Cargill site in Savage.

The 494 site is owned by MnDOT, with whom we're in discussions now. The Cargill site, which sits next to the company's storage facilities, is at the Cargill terminal, near the Cenex Harvest States slip from which our tour departed.

The private dredging companies that the Corps of Engineers hires to do the dredging curently have no legal right to dispose of these materials on public sites. But we hope to have a bill very soon in the state legislature, sponsored by Mike McGinn (R-Eagan), who was one of our guests on the tour, so that private dredgers can indeed dump dredge materials on our public sites.

The cost of purchasing these two sites would be borne by the District, from normal revenues — that is, our annual levy.

What are some other priority projects?

Other pressing projects that we're working on this year include ongoing efforts to preserve Seminary Fen and Assumption Creek.

First, it's a very high priority for us to work with the Minnesota DNR to figure out whether or not we can purchase the fen property or buy an easement on it. We have been negotiating with the private owners, but these are sometimes difficult and delicate processes.

Second, we are working currently with MnDOT to sponsor a study that will determine what effect the new proposed Highway 41 river crossing would have on the fen and Assumption Creek. MnDOT, one way or the other, will have to build their project, if they build it at all, so they can demonstrate it will have no adverse impact on the fen.

Third, we've started a project, with the aid of our engineer consultants, Bonestroo Rosene Anderlik & Associates, to determine whether we should install additional shallow groundwater monitoring wells. We need to know just how water use in the areas around the fens (Seminary and Savage) and the trout streams is affecting groundwater level, incl fens and trout streams. Our consultant is collecting data now to to see if there is adequate groundwater monitoring; once they identify where there isn’t adequate monitoring, then we will probably install additional wells.

The District and MnDOT are now installing wells at Seminary Fen to collect data on groundwater, part of the proposed Highway 41 project. The District will be responsible for monitoring these wells as well as some at Savage Fen that we took over from the state DNR about nine months ago.

So why should you care about such esoteric stuff?

Yes, groundwater monitoring may sound mysterious and technical to the lay person. But it's absolutely essential if we are to preserve such unique ecosystems as the fens and trout streams in the Minnesota River Valley.

The only way to get this across to a lay audience is to point to some of the specific unique characteristics of these places. How rare some of those plants are! How bad we all would feel if some groundwater appropriation somewhere dried it up! This was one of the sites sacred to the Dakotas; we learned about others on our tour from Leonard Wabasha, who was wonderfully enthusiastic about teaching people about such sites.

We don't have to think, necessarily, in terms of the sacred to realize the unique value of these sites. But it wouldn't hurt, from time to time, to take a few moments to realize, as we hurry by, how sustaining and long term such sites are if we only them be.

Unfortunately — it's an irony, for sure — we can't encourage people to go tromping through the fens. They're simply much too delicate for that. But we can (and probably should) take them, some day, on a systematic photographic tour of Seminary Fen.

A lot of stuff has been published about both Seminary and Savage fens by entities like the DNR and the USGS. Still, it's one of our special missions, in the District, to impart such information to our stakeholders, especially students, our youth, our future, so they can learn how unique these resources are are come to honor them.