Reclaiming Coldwater

BY SUSU JEFFREY

The process of converting Coldwater Spring from a Cold War industrial research site back into prairie oak savanna has moved to the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) point. Since 2003, when former Congressman Martin Sabo landed a $750,000 appropriation to return the 27-acre Mississippi blufftop property to “open green space,” the undertaking has been grinding its way along the federal agency beltway.

There is virtually no opposition to removal of the abandoned buildings with their drug party paraphernalia, asbestos, pigeon guano and graffiti. Trees sprout out of the roofs. In 2001, bringing the main building up to code was priced at $12 million while razing all 11 buildings was priced at $1 million.

The big question is: Who will own Coldwater once it’s cleaned up and replanted?

The “preferred alternative” in gov-lingo is “retention by the federal government”—probably the National Park Service (NPS). Coldwater is already part of the National Park Service’s Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, a 72-mile-long, spaghetti-shaped na-tional park that stretches from the mouth of the Crow River at Dayton to the junction of the Vermillion and St. Croix rivers south of Hastings. It is critical habitat, a continental flyway, a heavy industrial zone, the major metropolitan area of the state, and, at Coldwater, an airport crash zone.

The immediate Coldwater Spring portion of the property cannot be developed by Federal Aviation Agency mandate. Several federally recognized Dakota bands requested exclusive ownership of Coldwater and one mentioned casino development. The local Mendota Dakota Community, which has been working to preserve Coldwater, has no recognized federal standing.

Delegating ownership of Coldwater to any one group would be tantamount to privatizing the commons (water, air, biodiversity). It has proved impossible to keep people out, as well as deer, coyotes, foxes and raccoons.

Coldwater Park not only fulfills the Sabo “open green space” appropriation, it also respects the 1805 Dakota-Pike treaty guaranteeing all Dakota people the right to “to pass, repass, hunt or make other uses of the said districts, as they have formerly done.”

Comments on the FEIS are due at the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area National Park Service offices by 1/11/10.

http://parkplanning.nps.gov/projectHome.cfm?parkID=150&projectId=11443

Susu Jeffrey is the founder of Friends of Coldwater, www.friendsofcoldwater.org.