Mississippi’s muscle

-By Carl Nelson
Independent Staff Writer

MARSHALL — How significant are the rivers and watersheds around us?
For Dr. John Anfinson, a historian and cultural resources specialist with the National Park Service, and Southwest Minnesota State University professor Anthony Amato, they shape and are shaped by human existence.

Anfinson led a discussion at SMSU on Thursday night about agricultural uses of the Mississippi River.

Anfinson said that rivers such as the Redwood near Marshall can be a potential pollution conduit to others. The Redwood drains into the Minnesota River and the Minnesota into the Mississippi.

With pollution, there are other physical problems along these major waterways.
Presently, there are better than 25 locks on the Mississippi between Minneapolis and St. Louis to make it a viable route for barge transportation, he said. These locks do not allow the Mississippi’s waters to recede.

“We are headed toward a silent spring on the Upper Mississippi,” Anfinson said.
The dammed water isn’t allowed to recede naturally and the saturated soil won’t allow plant germination, he added.

Compounding factors include decreased waterfowl numbers because of the lack of food and overall habitat.

Anfinson said areas above and below the locks are often barren which also increases erosion.

In the past, the Mississippi became the domain of the Army Corps of Engineers who dredged the river to make transportation more successful.

When dredging failed, wing-dams were built to redirect the river’s flow. Funneling the water through a narrower area forced the waters to move more swiftly, thereby clearing the sediment.

With locks being used today and existing wing-dams, Anfinson said a 7.5 billion dollar project for longer locks is now under way and 5.2 billion is planned for ecological improvements over a 50-year period.

Following the Louisiana Purchase, Zebulon Pike — an early military explorer — investigated the Mississippi. In a keelboat, he and his men found the sandbars to be a problem for navigation.

“The group had to jump out and pull the boat up river in places,” Anfinson said.
Later, steamboats also succumbed to sandbars and snags that shattered their wooden bows. This brought about a shipping decline in the late 1800s, said Anfinson.

In time, railroads showed promise, but high costs prohibited some grain and other commodity shipping, he added.

In the early 1900s, farmers sought the rivers again for shipping with railroad car shortages — this happened again during the World War I years.
After years of use and abuse, individuals like Will Dilg, a Chicago businessman, realized the need for a wetland refuge in 1922 while fishing on a wing-dam near Wabasha, said Anfinson.

Today, the Mississippi is being sized up by environmental groups as well as commercial shipping.

“As long as the Midwest wants to be an agricultural center, we have to consider the Mississippi River,” Anfinson said.

Amato broadened Anfinson’s discussion of the Mississippi into other waterways both in the United States and overseas.

He cited rivers like the Prut that originates in the Carpathian Mountains as a reflection of the local population. Once it served as a logging river even into the 1930s, but has returned to nature, Amato said.

The “life cycles” of less distant, but ancient waterways like the Glacial River Warren that cut the Minnesota River Valley for what is now the Minnesota River, he also mentioned in detail.

From the Minnesota’s origins, to early and contemporary explorations, the water has shaped the people that have and continue to exist in its proximity, Amato added.

Despite attempts to manipulate its power for electricity, shift its currents to other channels and block its streams, the Minnesota is ultimately in control, he maintained.

Examples like the 1993 flood indicated problems in ecological management, he said.

“It is important to remember that people can destroy a river, but not rivers,” Amato said.

He related one Army engineer’s statements about the Missouri River that applies to other waterways — “in the long run, the river will have it’s way,” he said.