How would you like a sand pile? Corp of Engineers Release

ST. PAUL DISTRICT
News Release
Aug. 22, 2018
MVP-PA-2018-042
George Stringham: 651-290-5201, 651-262-6804, [email protected]
Patrick Moes: 651-290-5202, 651-366-7539, [email protected]
Patrick Loch: 651-315-3887, 651-290-5679, [email protected]

Corps of Engineers seeks land from willing land owners near Mississippi River

ST. PAUL, Minn. –The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, continues seeking land from willing landowners near the Mississippi River.

The Corps is actively seeking land suitable for use as a permanent dredged material placement site. On average, the St. Paul District dredges 1 million cubic yards of material each year. This is roughly enough material to fill up US Bank Stadium or Lambeau Field.

In order to ensure the navigation channel remains open for commerce, the Corps needs to find permanent placement sites. To keep costs down for the tax payer, the Corps looks for sites that are in close proximity to where they are dredging (to save in transportation costs) and are environmentally suitable.

Corps staff are also reaching out to agency and community partners to assist them in identifying suitable options. If you are, or know of anyone, interested in working with the Corps to sell or otherwise make land available for placement purposes, which is close to the Mississippi River between St. Paul, Minnesota, and Guttenberg, Iowa, please contact Paul Machajewski, dredged material manager, at your convenience. He can be reached at 651-290-5866 or by email at [email protected].

The nearly 600 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, employees working at more than 40 sites in five upper-Midwest states serve the American public in the areas of environmental enhancement, navigation, flood damage reduction, water and wetlands regulation, recreation sites and disaster response. Through the St. Paul District Fiscal Year 2016 $78 million budget, nearly 1,250 non-Corps jobs were added to the regional economy as well as $120 million to the national economy. For more information, see http://www.mvp.usace.army.mil.

Sign me up! No more lawn to mow!

It doesn’t sound like they’re interested in paying for this land. Between the disposition study and this, the corps sure is on a roll right now.

The answer is right there in their release, Lambeau field seems like a perfect location.

Wasn’t there just a post about a guy getting the prior home owners mail and bills? Sign him up!

They’re taking our dunes!!

Dump it along the shores of Minnetonka. Good for beaching yachts.

You’d think there would be government project use for sand, then I suppose sand mines wouldn’t get paid.

Good one Logan!

Johnie Birkel wrote:

Wasn’t there just a post about a guy getting the prior home owners mail and bills? Sign him up!

To be more serious, as long as my tax dollars helped pay/subsize to get the sand down river to the Mississippi and then next to be dredged out I wish they would just continue to use them to send the sand back up river to where it came from! Just my uneducated opinion…

Why not just keep creating sand bars/islands? Those places are magnets for recreational boaters.

Boy this is a no brainer. Put the sand back on the thousands of islands and shoreline where it came from. Duh

Build lots and lots of volleyball courts. The world needs more misty may dancing

Haul it to the areas along the MN River where it came from. If businesses or agricultural operations violate buffer laws or things of that type, “fine” them by bringing back their sediment.

I think the Corp would like it that easy.

In talking with some of the Corp folks, the old timers that retired talked about the days when if it made sense, they could just do it (with funding of course).

Now a day if something makes sense, they have to do a
Feasibility study
Environmental impact study
One or two DNR permits
A state permit
A number of public meetings
Stay 660 yards away from a bald eagles nest…
Funding
Armchair Biologist like me.
Well, that’s all I can remember off the top of my head.

There are times during some of the meetings I’ve attended that I’ll wake up and think that it’s a wonder anything ever gets done.
That’s a rip on the “system” and not anyone agency.

Brian Klawitter wrote:

There are times during some of the meetings I’ve attended that I’ll wake up and think that it’s a wonder anything ever gets done.
That’s a rip on the “system” and not anyone agency.

But isn’t that “system” in place to protect the resource we all love BK?

That system gave us the river we have today. Up until the 1970s it was basically a thoroughfare for sewage. No eagles, no fish, no life. I’ll take over-regulation of our waters -vs- under-regulation 10 times outta 10.

Brian Klawitter wrote:

In talking with some of the Corp folks, the old timers that retired talked about the days when if it made sense, they could just do it (with funding of course).

Sorry, but I don’t implicitly trust engineers to make decisions in the best interest of our natural resources. What’s easy and convenient and efficient from an engineer’s perspective (“makes sense”) could be disastrous for the river.

FishBlood&RiverMud wrote:

You’d think there would be government project use for sand, then I suppose sand mines wouldn’t get paid.

I could be wayyy wrong, but it could possibly not be suitable for most projects due to contamination? I thought I read something about the toxins inside dredge sand in the ole miss at one point in time.

nhamm wrote:

Build lots and lots of volleyball courts. The world needs more misty may dancing

Nick, you da’ man. Answer to all of life’s problems.

404 ERROR wrote:

not be suitable for most projects due to contamination? I thought I read something about the toxins inside dredge >sand<

I heard that a long while ago too.

It was explained to me the the “sand” is relatively free of pollution. Silt and mud on the other hand have been seen to hold the worst.

Fool, I can’t say I would disagree with you. It would be interesting to know how long it took to enact the CWA(?)

The Clean Water Act (CWA) is the primary federal law in the United States governing water pollution. … The first FWPCA was enacted in 1948, but took on its modern form when completely rewritten in 1972 in an act entitled the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972.

You Would think they would have a ready market for FRACK sand, it is “mined” all along the lower the bluffs of the river in Minnesota where the counties allow.

Brian Klawitter wrote:

There are times during some of the meetings I’ve attended that I’ll wake up and think that it’s a wonder anything ever gets done.
That’s a rip on the “system” and not anyone agency.

We are drowning in bureaucracy, and yet people still scream for more. It boggles my mind. The Little Rock Lake drawdown is another prime example.

https://www.sctimes.com/story/news/2018/07/24/mississippi-river-drawdown-delayed-little-rock-lake-sartell-dam/830334002/

pool2fool wrote:

But isn’t that “system” in place to protect the resource we all love BK?
That system gave us the river we have today. Up until the 1970s it was basically a thoroughfare for sewage. No eagles, no fish, no life. I’ll take over-regulation of our waters -vs- under-regulation 10 times outta 10.

I’d agree with you P2F if the “system” as a whole, actually worked. Gov’t involvement is a major factor in why the river was a thoroughfare for sewage. The CWA has been around for decades yet you still couldn’t pay me to swim in the Minnesota river. And the “system”, aka Govt, still subsidizes (aka incentivises) farmers to drain marginal land and over fertilize. Look at what’s happening in Florida with the Red Tide right now, it’s crazy and even crazier to think some bureaucrat hundreds of miles away will know how to fix it.

slawrenz wrote:

You Would think they would have a ready market for FRACK sand, it is “mined” all along the lower the bluffs of the river in Minnesota where the counties allow.

This isn’t that kind of sand. Frac sand has to be almost pure quartz and have a round grain. River sand contains some sand, but it is not pure enough for the drilling companies to use.

When I was growing up in Wabasha back in the 1970s, we kids used to love to watch the dredging and they pumped the sand wherever they wanted to back then. I remember one year they filled a whole little gorge behind the marina in Wabasha with dredge sand, it must have been 100k yards or more. Obviously, they can no longer do this for environmental reasons.

Grouse

BigWerm wrote:

I’d agree with you P2F if the “system” as a whole, actually worked. Gov’t involvement is a major factor in why the river was a thoroughfare for sewage. The CWA has been around for decades yet you still couldn’t pay me to swim in the Minnesota river. And the “system”, aka Govt, still subsidizes (aka incentivises) farmers to drain marginal land and over fertilize. Look at what’s happening in Florida with the Red Tide right now, it’s crazy and even crazier to think some bureaucrat hundreds of miles away will know how to fix it.

I didn’t say it was a perfect system or a perfect government. But I don’t see how anyone can argue that the Mississippi would have been better off without the Clean Water Act — much of which can be attributed to a Minnesotan, Jim Oberstar. Not my idea of some far-removed Washington bureaucrat.

Just my 2 cents. I’m no expert.