when the white man came to Minnesota He found the Mississippi River to be a braided stream. And that it had many channels flowing through. A floodplain that was predominantly sand and some salt. And then they the Corps of Engineers put in their channels Asian structures that Wing dams and they're closing dams made a rock and a modified the river greatly and all those dams made the river go down a single-channel. They even had some beneficial impacts like providing better habitat for Smallmouth bass, for example, because of the deep water well because of the rock structure anytime you have current flowing over Rock, you've made usually smallmouth bass habitat and later on though the Corps of Engineers had to defend the river to 9 feet of depth and they did this by building the the big dams which made the river into a series of ponds or lakes. So essentially we've taken An Old free-flowing River and made it into a series of Lakes by the Damned through which a current flows down through the links and this is had some beneficial effects for a man and it's decidedly had some detrimental effects from it. The Beneficial effects being we made more River so there's more water for people to enjoy and we've deepened it so that bigger boats can use the river we certainly made better duck hunting habitat. Because we provided more water and Waters that weren't there prior to impoundment or damming it up. But the the detrimental impacts are beginning to show very rapidly where sand deposits are showing in areas that they just did not occur before is this from the dredging that's done to clear up at the bottom to make a deeper. Well, the dredging aggravates the problem in some circumstances certainly the sand would accumulate if the Corps of Engineers didn't do any dredging at all. The tributary streams of the Mississippi bringing more sand than the Mississippi can remove. So the sand would accumulate but if you impound a river make it into a series of pools then the sand accumulates faster in the slack water. So they make the sand stay there where maybe it would have been carried to the gulf ultimately but also by taking sand out of the main channel of the Mississippi and piling it along the edges and big piles. Then this sand is very vulnerable to being washed by floods at right angles to the main Channel way out into the back Waters the physical act of dredging. Doesn't hurt a fish. I don't think or a duck and the actual physical digging up the river bottom and I don't think it hurts many aquatic insects either but will dredge spoil the sand along the edge of the river there. Are you are creating the possibility for damage to occur. If you replace water if you fell Marsh widths, and obviously the marsh is Dead Forever. The chance of digging a sand out again. It's pretty remote and if you pile of sand in a place where floods can very slowly imperceptibly Drupal us and and or the wind can blow it into the marsh the same thing happened the corps of engineer made Corps of Engineers. I should say made most of the marshes but many of us feel that they're dredging activity is hastening the death of those marshes, but I do feel strongly than in the next few years. We're going to develop ways to handle that dredge spoil so that we treated as dredged material rather than dredge spoil will find beneficial uses for it for making wildlife habitat for making beaches for people to use and We're working on that now and in a demonstration area near Winona of actually using it to fill areas. That should be filled. What are some of the effects of the sewage runoff and the different runoffs in the nutrients that we've come through as waste through the storm sewers and into the river. What effect does that have on on the natural habitat, the the nutrients that are contained in a sewage could even have beneficial Effects by algae in the river are the beginning of the food chain for most species of fish and they have the same requirements that corn has in that they need nitrogen and phosphorus and potassium. And if you fertilize a river you make more algae and if you make more algae and keep the river well oxygenated, you could probably have more pounds of fish per acre than if you didn't realize it but People don't like that much algae. They find an unsightly and makes the water look like pea soup when that's a definite disadvantage also the algae and dying requires a lot of oxygen to be consumed by bacteria that digest the LG and if all that dead algae and the organic material from the sewage itself wash is off into a Backwater Lake. It settles to the bottom Rob's the lake of oxygen and makes the bottom of the lake lifeless so that it can be very bad that way and I feel very strong waiting on it while there's that I feel strongly that. just the idea of putting sewage into the river is a is a terrible thing for people who live down river in that no matter how how insignificant amount of raw sewage you put in a river to a bypass for example, like for sewage inspection and we're talking about a bypass. That's probably going to be crying later on this spring when we go past the main storm sewers, I think next spring and the water level will be high enough until then to do it. But the people Downstream just knowing that someone is putting raw sewage into the Mississippi River are very much upset and rightfully. So most almost every city Downstream for the next hundred miles has primary treatment secondary treatment and they have separated there storm sewer. I live in Winona and Winona has had separated sewer systems for over 30 years. Meaning that are rain water doesn't go through our sewers treatment meaning that we don't have to run raw sewage into the river every time it rains. In the Twin Cities though. A lot of sewage is in Combined sewers and everytime it rains. The sewage treatment plant can handle all the rain water in the sewer. So it's dump right straight into the river and going down the river with that sewage, then it's not only the excrement of people. It's also blood you want to think of it as perhaps or blood from hospitals or all kinds of things like that. But in addition to that things that don't even decompose disposable diapers everywhere. And the sight of one Pamper hanging in a tree is enough to turn most people off from using the river. Is there an alternative to this bypass there there is a viable alternative in it and it will be done. I'm sure instead of putting all of they doing all the bypassing and one one. Of time. I think the Minnesota Pollution Control agency will will dictate. To the Metropolitan Waste Control Commission. This is my opinion that they would segment their sewers so that they'd Run part of it in this week part of the next week and part of it in the week after reading all in one big shot. What's more they could be inspected on a 24 hour a day basis. So they wouldn't have to be bypassed so long and they could be inspected on weekends to when my industrial flow into those sewage sewer is minimum. What kind of effect is this bypass going to have on the life-system of the river here and in the metropolitan area as well as down river towards Winona with a bypass. And if they do it during high water, I don't think it's going to have a measurable effect on the river has an aquatic biologist. 50 miles south of here would have no way to detect that you didn't. But the detrimental effect might be more of an aesthetic one and you may not even see it because it takes place during the only people out on the river during that exceedingly high for fishermen. You may not even see it. But yet, you know that someone did it and that's hard to measure but you know that it's even more sad is that most of the people Downriver think that this is something unusual that the Metro is going to buy a pass into the river. But the truth is that Metro bypasses every time that there's a good thunderstorm because their combined sewer system will not handle that rainwater nav to bypass the plant. Why is that how are major source systems set up in the area? Well, they the cheap way to go in the old days was to build one sewer system that handled stormwater runoff and melted water and sanitary sewage. That was the cheap way to go because you were going to run it off into the river anyway, but then when people became Khan, Kiss of sewage and rivers they demanded it that you treated so you build a sewage treatment plant, but now I'm going through your combined sewers. You have all that rain water and when it rains is there sewage treatment plant can handle and maybe it brings in a lot of sand to and you can't handle that. So you bypass it into the river and the sewer is designed with a little partition in the end and drinkable flow that moved a more partition Sims the sewage water to the treatment plant, but if you get too much rain water at overtops the little partition and it goes out into the river, that would be a simple way to do it. It appears that has the metropolitan area has grown up or do rather quickly in the late 19th century that there wasn't much thought given to the environmental aspects of growth and the river in particular. I think it's typical the way I don't think the people in the metropolitan area are any different than they were in any City on the river most cities on the river didn't clean up because he had such a conscious because they were told to clean up by Big Brother and big brother referring to the federal and it's sad but true that if we had to rely on the American conscience to clean our River. The individual conscience of the people the river would become a sewer again or yet have the various federal and state agencies have had a positive effect enough of an effects that we're restoring the river to what it once was I think so clean environment. I think things are looking up and I look for some dramatic things to happen in the Twin Cities area like in the next 10 years, but when you talk about separating the sewers in the Twin Cities, you're talking about a Monumental task that I don't think they could do and do economically there has to be another solution and it's very likely will be one after the hearings that the pollution control agency not long ago Professor bacon. Who was the consultant for the Minnesota Pollution Control agency. Explain what is being done and other large metropolitan areas like Mike Chicago, they're planning to put huge Subterranean reservoirs big tunnel storage tunnels under the city and during periods of high rainfall the sewage overflow goes down into those storage tunnels. And then when the rain is past its pump backup into the sewers and it would go to the sewage treatment plant you can think of it like these has been capacitors are condensers in a suit in a electrical circuit that they'd handle the load and then even it out and probably that's what has to be done in the Twin Cities. Ultimately. I know one thing that the people down river will not tolerate Continue bypassing into the Mississippi River. They will not tolerate it. I know that. So I thought but we're talking about millions and millions of dollars here or change the sewage maybe billion. That would be extremely expensive. In Chicago, they're talking about having storage tunnels, perhaps underlay under part of Lake, Michigan even. What is the price that has to be paid to if Sweetwater clean River? Yes.