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Summer/Fall 1995 WATER TALK Page 7 ~~ ».~ntinued from page B The DNR has worked closely with the commission and the National Park Service throughout the plan preparation process, and we will be much involved in implementation, as well. Plan implementation focuses in a very general way in four areas: interpretation, land use, water use, and. public use (especially open. space and trails). Another element of the MNRRA planning process is to sort out competing uses of the water's surface. Should there be more recreational facilities, like marinas? If so, where? .How do we handle recreational boat crowding? Should there be a river-wide speed limit? Where should additional barge fleeting be installed? What about additional commercial docks and terminals? Where should they be built? These discussions will be complex and interesting, and are only just beginning. Interpretation will involve cooperative development of small interpretive facilities at Coon Rapids. Dam and at Hastings, a larger facility at St. Anthony Falls, and a major National Park Service visitor center at Harriet Island.. In recent months; the National Park Service has been discussing its visitor center plans with the Science Museum of Minnesota, which has plans of its own for the riverfront; some collaborative effort may come from those talks. The service is also working closely with the DNR as we prepare to build a new visitor facility at Fort Snelling State Park. Managing land use in such diverse corridor is a challenge already facing the Division of Waters as we look at community shoreland and floodplain programs. One recommendation of the MNRRA plan was that the Mississippi River Critical Area program be administratively transferred from EgB (which has neither the staff nor the regular local government contacts to do the job right) to the DNR. That administrative transfer took effect Sept. 1. The DNR is working cooperatively with the National Park Service and the Metropolitan Council to ensure all communities have a functioning,. properly enforced Mississippi River Critical Area ordinance. For those communities that wish to, there is a second tier of land use control (more protective) that the three agencies will help local governments adopt and implement. Local governments aren't required to go to that higher level of control, but the National Park Service has the authority to award grant funds for local parkland acquisition and development for those communities that do adopt the higher standards. MNRRA implementation will also bring us more public use facilities, including parks and open space, but especially trails. The plan recommends construction of a continuous trail on both sides of the river, connecting at every bridgehead. Obviously, the trail couldn't run right along the river everywhere (would you want to bike through the Pig's Eye wastewater treatment. plant, or through the middle of somebody's backyard barbeque in Coon Rapids?), but the concept of trails that parallel the river and run along it where possible is enticing to a metropolitan community that has taken to its biking/hiking/skating paths in a very big way. Managing any river is a complex business, since rivers are usually borders for states, counties and cities, and there are so many competing uses. That is doubly true in the metropolitan Mississippi corridor, where we are dealing with millions of people and with North America's largest, most-loved and most-abused river. For more information, or to obtain a copy of the plan, call the National Park Service at (612) 290-4160.