Published Monday, May 22, 2000
Star Tribune

Counterpoint: State agencies need to 'think watershed" near Hwy. 55
Jane Ranum

As the Legislature adjourns, Gov. Jesse Ventura can be proud of his accomplishments. Thanks to his leadership, our state is making a historic investment in light-rail transit and our transportation infrastructure. Two of his agencies, however, the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources (BWSR) and the Minnesota Department of Transportation, are about to trample this legacy by failing to assure that state transportation projects do not permanently harm a treasured natural resource.

Camp Coldwater Springs is a unique water resource -- a valuable freshwater spring near Minnehaha Falls that is the site of much Dakota Indian and Minnesota settlement history. The Minnehaha Falls gorge and surrounding Mississippi River bluff are not only the subject of Longfellow's poetry, but also the site of several groundwater-fed seeps and springs that the Department of Natural Resources classifies as a critical area. Minnesota has good reason to be careful here with its construction projects. One local citizen-governed agency charged with the protection of water resources, the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District (MCWD), has learned after a year of intensive study that the Minnesota Transportation Department's Hwy. 55 project poses serious potential risks to the groundwater feeding the Camp Coldwater Springs and nearby seeps.

Overcoming Transportation's initial dismissals of any groundwater concerns and the agency's appalling lack of its own groundwater analysis, the Watershed District placed several important permit requirements on the first phase of Hwy. 55 construction. The MCWD listened carefully to public comments, and required careful monitoring of bedrock excavation, as well as construction changes to minimize risk to groundwater flows to the springs. It also required creation of a pond to treat stormwater runoff and erosion control measures to protect the creek.

While the MCWD never impeded the Hwy. 55 construction, its citizen board has been a beacon of environmental stewardship, consistently asking tough questions of MnDOT and conducting its own hydrogeology research when necessary to get meaningful answers. The MCWD research -- in which Transportation experts now seem belatedly to concur -- reveals deep fractures in the Platteville limestone bedrock which, if disturbed by excavation, could seriously alter groundwater flows to the springs. In response, the agency altered its first phase construction plans to minimize the risk of harm to groundwater resources. Transportation now appears to have tired of the MCWD's watchful eye. It has succeeded in convincing its sister state agency, BWSR, to place the next phases of Hwy. 55 construction in a different watershed district -- the Lower Minnesota River Watershed District -- that just happens to be one of the only watershed districts in Minnesota without rules regulating land use development. In doing so, BWSR is disregarding citizen comments, the Mendota Dakota community, the Minneapolis City Council and area legislators.

Worse yet, while the BWSR should have followed well-established state policy defining watersheds by hydrological rather than political boundaries, it has instead committed the cardinal sin of watershed management: The board has proposed to place the springs in one watershed district, and the Hwy. 55/LRT construction activity in another -- even though both areas lie within the Mississippi River sub-watershed, most of which lies in the MCWD's domain. By divorcing intensive land use from affected water resources within the same water drainage area, BWSR is asking the MCWD to assume responsibility for a resource it would be unable to protect.

Ventura has been a strong proponent of Smart Growth, the promise that transportation infrastructure comes hand-in-hand with sound land use planning and environmental stewardship. His own transportation and water resource officials have picked an ironic place to break that promise. The governor can surely have both a successful LRT system and wise environmental stewardship if he is willing to help his state agencies to "think watershed."
-- Sen. Jane Ranum, DFL-Minneapolis; Rep. Mark Gleason, DFL-Richfield.