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Page 6 WATER TALK Summer/Fall 1995 e Ian for the I a: The igty ississii by Steve Johnson, DNR River Management Superv(sor It was shortly after the 1978 election, and Senator-elect David Durenburger called a meeting of people interested in the Mississippi River in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. It was convened by Durenburger staffer Shirley Hunt (now Shirley Hunt Alexander, married to retired DNR Commissioner Joe Alexander), and it focused on ways to bring a federal presence and federal funding to natural resource protection and parkland acquisition and development in the river corridor. What followed was a federal report, an ad- hoc committee, a study commission, a second federal report, a second ad-hoc committee, and finally Congressional action in 1988 to create the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA--you can. pronounce it MILAN-RAH ), a very urban and very different unit of the National Park System. Ironically, it was a member of Minnesota's Congressional delegation from another party-Representative Bruce Vento of St. Paul-who chaired the right committee at the right time to become the father _ of the MNRRA legislation and a partner with Senator Durenburger in crafting the act to protect 72 miles of urban reach of the largest river in the northern hemisphere. The Mississippi River is 2,320 miles long, but nowhere in its length does it change character as much as it does in the 72 miles between Dayton and Hastings. It enters the metropolitan area as a medium-sized prairie river best suited for canoeing, with an outstanding smallmouth bass population. Its banks are wooded, but not tall, and the land use is primarily suburban residential. It will soon run through the heart of the urban industrial muscle of Minneapolis, where the river plunges over its only. waterfall into a deep, scenic, rock-walled. gorge. In St. Paul the river changes character again when it joins the Minnesota, and at downtown St. Paul the Mississippi becomes the broad floodplain, high- bluffed giant river that cuts south through the heart of the North American continent. Added to the physical diversity of the river are its diverse uses by humansr-water supply, wastewater discharge, commercial navigation, small and large boat recreation, etc.-and we have a complex mix that makes it easy to understand why it took so long to write the comprehensive plan that Secretary Babbitt signed this spring. Now as we enter the plan implementation phase, we face the discovery that writing the plan may have been the easy part. ...continued on page 7 On May 22, 1995, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt stood on a river boat in St. Paul and signed the final Comprehensive Management Plan for MNRRA, closing astart-up chapter that had. begun 17 years before. Since Congress acted in 1988, the National Park Service and the Mississippi River Coordinating Commission. a 22- member group representing diverse interests in the metro- politan river corridor (Ron Nargang is DNR's representative), have been slowly crafting a manage- ment plan for this complex and diverse reach of river. Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of the Interior, signing the Comprehensive Management Plan. Also pictured are Congressmen Bill Luther, Martin Sabo, snd Bruoe Vento, along with St. Paul Mayor Nlck Coleman and Peter Love (Mississippi River Coordinating Comm(ssion Chairman). Photo by Mike Madell.