MNRRA (minn-rah!) & the 50-Acre Green Museum
by Susu Jeffery
October 24, 2008
(Coldwater) As you cross over the Mississippi look for new green signs: Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA). We almost live in a national park.
For 72 miles the Mississippi River is federal parkland-from the mouth of the Crow River at Dayton downstream to the junction of the Vermillion and St. Croix rivers south of Hastings.
MNRRA is also critical habitat, a flyway for migrating birds, a commercial and recreational transportation lane, a dump channel for agricultural and storm runoff, and the location of Pig's Eye sewage treatment plant for the Twin Cities. There are four dams along MNRRA for boats and barges to step up or down the liquid road dredged to a 9-foot depth.
MNRRA was (in places still is) bordered by oak savanna, an edge landscape where the prairie from the west meets the hardwood forest of the east. Although MNRRA was founded in 1988, only now in its 20th year is the National Park Service (NPS) moving to publicize the Mississippi landscape for locals and tourists.
Coldwater, last natural spring in Hennepin County, is part of MNRRA and should benefit from future plans and legal muscle the NPS has for protection and preservation of the Upper Mississippi.
Friends of Coldwater envisions a 50-acre national park from the south end of Minnehaha Regional Park to Fort Snelling State Park. The land is currently fenced, the land is not maintained, buckthorn and garlic mustard are killing native plants. Returning this 50-acre strip of Mississippi blufftop to public parkland would complete a contiguous green buffer from the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers upstream through central Minneapolis.
All 50-acres are owned by the US Department of the Interior-27-Coldwater acres that used to be the Bureau of Mines (slated to go to the National Park Service according the Sen. Amy Klobuchar's office) and 23-Veterans Administration acres. The VA land could be transferred to the National Park Service on paper, no money involved.
Only at the federal level are Native Americans recognized. The NPS is currently the strongest agency for protecting the flow of (under)ground water to this 10,000-year-old spring. In the next 20-years MnDOT might decide to make a freeway out of Highway 55 from I-94 to 62-Crosstown.
The vision is Coldwater Park, 50-acres, an urban wilderness designated as a Green Museum, a place where the land is the museum.
We'd like to see Coldwater secured before President Bush leaves office. It is so close to happening.
Please contact (write or call):
Dirk Kempthorne, Secretary of the Department of the Interior
via email or phone 202-208-7351 (email preferred).
And consider calling or copying your email to:
Congressman Keith Ellison: 612-522-1212 or online
Senator Amy Klobuchar: 612-727-5220 or online
Senator Norm Coleman: 651-645-0323 or online
Interactive MNRRA map - click here
~ What happens to the water happens to the people.~
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