Archive for August, 2009

The Mississippi River and America’s Pioneering Spirit

Monday, August 24th, 2009

Today I return to the northern part of the Mississippi River. Last week, I looked at the Mississippi River from its middle section. The River looks very different physically in these two locations. But one thing that Minnesota, Illinois and Missouri share when they look out at the Mississippi River is their tie to America’s pioneering experience.

The Missourians take a more overt approach to this. The museum at the base of St. Louis’ arch celebrates the role this community played in the westward expansion of the United States. The exhibit pays homage to the explorers, both Native and European, who risked life and limb to explore uncharted territories. While not overtly about the Mississippi, you understand that this region of the country is intensely proud of the gumption and guts it took to make the westward trek. It is part of America’s character and it started — or so they claim — here on the banks of the Mississippi.

Today that pioneering spirit is being carried forward by local institutions like the Lewis and Clark Community College - aptly named for renowned American explorers - as it works with other research and education institutions as a part of the National Great Rivers Research and Education Center.

And in the northern section, those of us who have known this River for decades are familiar with its tales of exploration by voyageurs and Native Americans. We know its tie to our development first as a source of timber for urban expansion in the 19th century and then as a vehicle for commerce as the nation expanded.

In festivals all along the watery artery, the riverboat days are celebrated for their tie to a bygone era. Some times we forget that that this was not only a poetic era in terms of travel, but a way for a nation to link itself across a broad territory. Some times the links were short - as from St. Paul to Des Moines. Other times, the connection went throughout the ten state corridor. But this became an avenue of ideas and trade not unlike the connectedness of the Internet today. And certainly, no less pioneering.

So as we work together to discern a vision for the future of America’s Waterway, the Mississippi River, I hope we will include the link the River provides to an element of the American spirit we still appreciate today. Let’s hold on to and update that part of America’s character that’s associated with discovery, meeting challenges and linking communities -  and celebrate it as inherently a part of the Mississippi River today as well as its past.

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Reflections on a Confluence

Sunday, August 16th, 2009

Confluence can mean a couple different things.  It often pertains to a literal flowing together from several sources. Then it can mean the coming together of  people as in an assemblage or congress. And in the case of rivers, it’s used to pertain to the merging of more than one tributary in such a way that they become one physically and take on new characteristics.

Interestingly, last week’s Visions of a Sustainable Mississippi River Conference took place near the great confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri and Illinois rivers being celebrated and documented with a new  National Great Rivers Research and Education Center. At the same time, the conference itself was a confluence —  bringing together people from different locations and vantage points — to  share ideas about the Mississippi River, its ecological, economic and cultural values.

The people at the NGRREC, including the partner institutions of Lewis and Clark Community College, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne and the Illinois Natural History Survey were great at the confluence thing. They appear to be used to partnering, so bringing together many people with a wide variety of expertise was executed professionally. Even more important, the process maximized the sharing of ideas and the written delivery of those ideas to a panel of policy makers at the conference’s conclusion.

However, the vision part of the conference was more complicated.  As one who has helped numerous organizations struggle with their vision, either to accomodate a new direction or to transition an organization, I knew it wouldn’t be easy.  And the conference seemed to agree because after an hour and a half of trying to state a vision, one of the participants voiced the obvious, “Visions are better left to a long-term, deliberative process. We can’t do this in a morning or with just these people in the room.”

That’s why it was heartening to hear Brigadier General Michael Walsh, head of the Mississippi River Commission and head of the Army Corps of Engineers Mississippi River Valley state his view that the Mississippi River needs a 200-year, unified and multigenerational vision. What I didn’t hear was how he plans to secure that vision. An op-ed in this morning’s New York Times  by James Fishkin makes the case for deliberative processes that ensure that all interested parties are in the room.  I would add the involvement of river residents on a representative basis to ensure not only a vision, but the development of an involved and engaged constituency. 

No one seemed to dispute the need for a Mississippi River Vision. Granted, it would be hard to argue with someone like a Brigadier General when he says he thinks something’s needed. But I don’t think he’s alone. Let us know what you think by commenting here.

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Making Mississippi River Sausage

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

Participants in the Visions of a Sustainable Mississippi River got a taste of sausage making on the second day of the conference when the focus turned to policy recommendations for the future of the River. While it wasn’t pretty, as with sausage making, the outcome offers public policy approaches to managing the Mississippi River as a whole — environmentally, economically and culturally.

Today, the conference turns its attention to those policy recommendations. A panel that includes representatives from congress, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency will hear the collective suggestions of the panels and participants here at the conference. I don’t expect it will be as exciting as the town hall forums on health care, but there is reason to hope the proposals from the panels on the Economic Value of the Mississipppi River, Flood Management, Ethanol Prodution and Water Quality will feed into a growing momentum for wholistic approaches to the River in the future.

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Ever Think of the Mississippi River as an Orphan?

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Several speakers the first day of the Visions of a Sustainable Mississippi River Conference used the word “orphan” to describe the Mississippi River. If you think about it, the Mississippi River is just that: an orphaned national resource and monument, in spite of public acknowledgement of its value to the nation.

How is this so? Some of it’s due to the role the Mississippi River plays as a border to states. It’s easy for state regulators and tourism officials to not see what goes on at the fringe of their state, unless a major city or population center abuts it.

Then there’s the issue of multiple jurisdictions. The Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency,  and other regional and federal agencies are divided into districts. They tend to divide the Mississippi River for practical management reasons that made sense in an era when communication was more difficult and expensive. The natural topographical  differences of the River contribute to this approach as well.

From my perspective, the answer to the Mississippi River’s “orphan status” is its lack of a constituency willing to advocate on its behalf.  When you’re on the East Coast, you see active support for the Chesapeake Bay. Powerful Washington and state officials lend their support to local efforts, and residents sport bumper stickers and Save-the-Bay license plates. The Great Lakes, through a multi-year process to write and pass the Great Lakes Compact, have built a constituency largely because threats from other regions of the country highlighted the value of the lakes as a system.

We can end the orphan status of the Mississippi River. America’s Waterway embodies a plan to build that constituency and engage it via the internet and shared goals and objectives. The process takes all aspects of the River into account. It’s not just about clean water or preserved wetlands, our process seeks to take cultural heritage as well as community development  into account. In today’s social networking environment, that engagement can be maintained using the connectivity of the Internet.

The Mississppi River doesn’t have to be an orphan and this conference is demonstrating that there are a lot of people committed to ending that status. Today’s sessions will engage participants as well as experts to explore options for advocacy for the River. Tomorrow, a public policy panel will hear from the conference participants. It is a worthy introduction to a much needed effort.

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t.s.eliot’s Mississippi River Vision Not Far Off

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

Paul DuBowy, environmental program manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, shared this vision of the Mississippi River from t.s. eliot’s poetry. Eliot knew the River from his days growing up near St. Louis: 

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.

Ironically, this passage does paint a common vision of the Mississippi and yet DuBowy contends that there are really five rivers. DuBowy’s presentation this morning at the Visions of a Sustainable Mississippi River Conference matched those of  Gerry Galloway, Steven Kraft and Ken Lubinski in their calls for taking a longer vision and getting involved.

DuBowy says the Army Corps of Engineers is charged with creating a two hundred year vision for the Mississippi. Lubinski asked whether we all value the same ecosystem attributes.  And Galloway stressed that there are new Principles and Guidelines  and an Executive Order on Floodplain Management in the works right now.

Perhaps some of what we value and much of what we share about the Mississippi River can not be measured in engineering or economic models. Perhaps t.s. eliot has the more accurate measure of a River that means so much to the nation. Perhaps his words more accurately reflect what we all know about the Mississippi River and what we value.  Perhaps the secret to the long vision is in what people feel, and we should spend more time talking to the people of the River to find the long vision for its future.

 

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The Mississippi River’s Ancient City

Monday, August 10th, 2009

To reach the site of this week’s Visions of a Sustainable Mississippi River Conference, you pass a graphic reminder of the enduring power the River has had throughout not just the history of America, but the world.  A new book by Timothy Pauketat, “Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi” has just been published to remind us that the history of the River goes back well beyond its introduction to Western civilization by European explorers. In a most understated way, the interstate slides by what was the 12th century’s economic, cultural and religious center of the continent. It’s thought to have been home to 20,000 people and was larger than London at that time. Its central plaza covered 50 acres and housed the third largest pyramid in the New World. An article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch bemoaned the effects of the state budget crisis in relation to the significance of the state park commemorating Cahokia: 

Last year, an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch explained that Illinois’s budgetary problems were leading to neglect at Cahokia Mounds, a state park. But as Timothy R. Pauketat’s new book makes clear, Cahokia Mounds is not just of state importance (it is also a U.S. World Heritage Site). The great mounds built across the Mississippi River from St. Louis were quite influential, believes Pauketat, an anthropology professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: “The people of this North American city seem to have created their own culture, then proceeded to spread it across the Midwest and into the South and Plains with a religious fervor.” In other words, Cahokia was the mother of North American mound mania, whose beginnings go back a thousand years.
Mound-building flourished in a culture that made much of the planet Venus, exacted human sacrifice and ate a diet heavy on maize. Some archaeologists believe that there are links between Cahokia and the great civilizations of pre-Columbian Mexico, to which Cahokian residents may well have traveled and from which they may have brought back stories and images that figure in Cahokian mythology, such as “the cult of a Corn Mother or of twin Thunderers.” Pauketat’s book, which summarizes these and other theories as to what the Cahokia site means, is part of the Penguin Library of American Indian History.  — Dennis Drabelle

As we consider visions of a sustainable Mississippi River, it would be good to remind ourselves that this River is one of the great marine wonders of this world and has been for centuries. Its significance goes beyond our time and our ability to address its current issues. But an appreciation for its history can help us understand the importance of efforts to ensure its future.

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