The Mighty Mississippi: Success stories up and down the river.
The Mississippi River is the second longest river in the United States, with a length of 2,340 miles from its source in Lake Itasca in Minnesota to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico. (The longest river, a Mississippi tributary, is the Missouri River, measuring 2,540 miles.) Due to its great length. the river constitutes not one, but two, American Heritage Rivers: The Upper Mississippi, whose Navigator is Deanne Strauser, with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in St. Louis, and the Lower Mississippi, whose Navigator is Joan Exnicios, Chief, Natural and Cultural Resources Analysis Section, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans.
Telling River Stories—from the Twin Cities to New Orleans
The Mississippi flows (north to south) through Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Some 10 million people live along the river in these states, including about 3 million in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul, 1.5 million in St. Louis, 1.5 million in Memphis, and 0.5 million in New Orleans. According to Pat Nunnally, coordinator for the University of Minnesota’s River Life Program, the program’s Telling River Stories project will address the goals of the American Heritage Rivers Alliance (AHRA) for people who live all along the Mississippi.
Nunnally says, “Efforts are now under way along the entire river to revitalize riverfront areas. An interpretive program focusing on the interactions of urban areas and the Mississippi, Telling River Stories will increase the historical understanding and environmental awareness of people who both live along and visit the river.” The stories will be conveyed, and gathered, through a website, www.riverstories.umn.edu; on-ground installations designed to enhance the landscape; and programs, developed in collaboration with community partners, to convey and collect River Stories through tours, brochures, workshops, kiosks and other means. The “virtual Mississippi River” of the web site will be tied together with the installations and other programming.
The program started in 2008 as collaboration between three universities and various river community partners in the Twin Cities, St. Louis, and New Orleans, and will expand to additional areas along the river. Currently, Telling River Stories has a project team of 50 people, representing 20 organizations. “The American Heritage Rivers Alliance has been the fulcrum for getting so many partners together to share our resources and knowledge,” says Nunnally.
To name a few current projects:
In the Twin Cities, “where the Mississippi is the most significant urban economic planning and design corridor in the region,” says Nunnally, Telling River Stories is working with partners including the National Park Service, which collaborates with 25 communities, the Minnesota Historical Society, and the local city governments to find ways of installing interpretive material in parks along the waterfront. “A half dozen stories are in the works, telling how various places went from being the river’s front door to its mudroom and are now becoming a front door again,” says Nunnally. A key focus is the Minneapolis Central Riverfront Park, which has a million visitors a year and a heritage trails that needs updating.
One story that will be told is of the collapse in 2007 of the I-35W bridge, which has been renamed the St. Anthony Falls Bridge. Following the collapse, Telling River Stories convened a series of eight well-attended public lectures at the University of Minnesota, where participants were invited to explore how the tragedy revealed important issues concerning the river and its cities and communities.
In St. Louis, Telling River Stories is working with Confluence Greenway, a collaborative that brings together private and public sector organizations to promote river stewardship, recreation and education, the University of Missouri, and the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, to develop a “mounds trail” at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, a UNESCO World Heritage Site which was the largest population center in pre-Columbian North America north of the Aztecs. Confluence Greenway is building a bike trail from the park into areas of St. Louis proper which contain other mounds. The group has also reopened the Chain of Rocks Bridge (where old Route 66 crossed the Mississippi), making it now one of the longest bridges in the country exclusively for bikes and pedestrians.
In New Orleans, Telling River Stories is working with the Tulane/Xavier Universities’ Center for Bioenvironmental research, which have a joint partnership headed by John McLachlan and Doug Meffert, and with other partners such as the Louisiana State Museum, the University of New Orleans, and the Historic New Orleans Collection. “In New Orleans, as in St. Louis, a lot of our work for the next year will be seeing what local people are doing and how we can assist them by connecting them to our website,” says Nunnally. “The ultimate goal is to increase the sharing of knowledge and resources up and down the river so that all communities can achieve the greatest revitalization.
In Iowa: The National Mississippi River Museum
The opening of the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium in 2003 in Dubuque, Iowa, was the result of more than a decade of research and collaboration with Mississippi River stakeholders from the river basin and across the entire country. Under Development Director Teri Goodman, the Dubuque County Historical Society was the lead American Heritage River Alliance partner in a collaboration that included the City of Dubuque, the State of Iowa, and the Mississippi River Parkway Commission (Great River Road), as well as a host of others. Formerly known as the Mississippi River museum, the museum raised $54 million over the past 25 years to expand and establish the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium.
“As the foremost interpretive center that tells the environmental and cultural story of America’s greatest American Heritage River, the museum has welcomed nearly one and a half million visitors in the past five years,” says Terry Eastin, executive director, Mississippi River Trails, Inc. an American Heritage River Alliance community partner. In 2008, the White House’s Council for Environmental Quality recognized the museum for its leadership in advancing partnerships that help tell the story of rivers in America. The museum is leading efforts to teach Americans and other visitors about the connection of rivers to oceans. Exhibits from the museum will open at the Smithsonian in September and at the Tennessee State Museum in October.
Renewing the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans
As well as being involved in the Telling River Stories project, The Tulane/Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research is working on the Sustainable Lower 9th Ward post-Katrina project, which involves cultural, historic, environmental, recreational, and educational recovery. The Center’s deputy director, Doug Meffert, says, “I can credit the American Heritage Rivers Alliance with creating an alliance among community partners along the Lower Mississippi long before Katrina.”
Currently, the Sustainable Lower 9th Ward project is looking to implement the plan of the Ward’s Holy Cross Neighborhood Association. Developed with a post-Katrina grant from the State Department of Natural Resources, the river-centered plan has set a model for other neighborhoods in New Orleans, says Meffert. He explains: “The river is a guiding influence in the plan for sustainability on every level, including neighborhood design, the use of sustainable architecture principles in mixed use affordable housing, the restoration of marsh and cypress swamps adjacent to the neighborhood for storm surge and stormwater runoff protection, as well as for recreation, and the development of renewable energy. Many private and public, non-profit investments are being made, and it’s all community driven.”
One well-known community source of funding has been Brad Pitt, who owns a house in the French Quarter and has invested and raised funds for the Make It Right Foundation, whose parent company, Cherokee, is based in North Carolina, and Global Green, based in California; both of which are working with the Lower 9th Ward’s Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development. Additional investments have come from Sharp Solar, the Blue Moon Foundation, and Americorps, and through the efforts of countless volunteers.
By the third anniversary of Katrina in August, 2008, the Make It Right Foundation resulted in the completion of the first home in the Holy Cross neighborhood to be rebuilt using green architecture. “Ultimately there will be 150 rebuilt homes incorporating sustainable architecture and technology and made available to their original owners at their pre-Katrina value through subsidized loans,” says Meffert.
Sharp Solar has donated solar panels as a demonstration of renewable energy to the local community center in the Lower 9th Ward and to private homeowners in both historic homes (about 80% of the neighborhood) and non-historic homes. “This project marks the first time that historic homes in New Orleans will be retrofitted for solar power, and the first time the city has had net metering for solar panels. It’s unfortunate it took a disaster to catalyze these demonstrations; but, with disaster, comes opportunity for innovation” says Meffert.
The Center for Bioenvironmental Research is working with Global Green on its construction project, which aims to achieve an 80% reduction in energy by using solar panels and geothermal power. In addition, says Meffert, “we are working to do research on the potential for river turbines in the river that would connect to the Global Green housing units. The turbines would make the units net producers of energy and helping the Holy Cross Neighborhood plan achieve its goal of climate neutrality by 2030.” With an average of one billion liters of water per minute flowing in New Orleans, the river is a tremendous resource for renewable energy, which can be accessed through ecologically benign, hydrokinetic technologies, Meffert points out. “The notion that turbine structures have to be the size of Hoover Dam is antiquated.”
“The American Heritage Rivers Alliance got us connected to the Economic Development Authority, which we are hoping will help us demonstrate the feasibility of hydrokinetic power in the Lower Mississippi River,” he says. In the demonstration, the turbines could be mounted on the bottom of barges. “In the event of a disaster, the turbines could be easily moved to avoid damage. We’re hoping to use them as a model for various hydrokinetic technologies that could be used to increase energy efficiency and environmental security all along the river.” Noting that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will be a partner in the turbine project, he says, “Our Lower Mississippi Navigator, Joan Excinios, and I have been working with the Corps of Engineers for a number of years on promoting coastal restoration strategies. With her background as an archeologist, Joan is also a force within the Corps for projects that deal with cultural, historic, and architectural preservation.”
The Holy Cross Neighborhood Plan has led other neighborhoods in New Orleans to follow suit in terms of building practices and land use choices. “People want to enhance the sustainability of their neighborhoods,” says Meffert. “They are also reexamining how to prioritize land use based on vulnerability to flooding. In areas where industries are not returning post-Katrina, there are proposal for green space and urban farms that would grow plants to produce bio-fuels.”
Overall, Meffert says, there is a move to reconnect neighborhoods to the natural ecosystems that surround them, rather than solely building walls and levees between them. New Orleans is embracing AHRA’s goals by looking toward the past in terms of preserving culture, history and coastal areas, and toward the future in terms of investment in new economies. “Post-Katrina, we are now looking toward the river again instead of away, as a catalyst for economic and environmental recovery.”