August 1994
the monthly newsletter for people who live, work or play on the Upper Mississippi River
Untangling Business, the Environment and History in Prairie du Chien By Tim Steller
A tangled, 12-year dispute over two barge harbors, one endangered species of mussel and four historic sites at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, may be close to a resolution. "This is the most difficult problem you'll deal with in your life," said Dennis Leong, a Wisconsin Department of Development official who has mediated the dispute for four years. St. Feriole Island, which is separated from Prairie du Chien by a narrow backwater, contains four of the 20 National Historic Landmarks in Wisconsin. The East Channel, which runs along the west shore of the island, is home to at least 30 freshwater mussel species, including one on the endangered list. Two harbors on the island provide jobs and serve as important transportation hubs linking barges, railroads and trucks. Prairie du Chien, which has a population of about 5,700, is a couple of miles upstream from the point at which the Wisconsin River flows into the Mississippi. Leong's work edged toward closure in February when, after six years of discussions, the owners of the two companies that load barges at separate harbors agreed to consolidate their operations at one site. This satisfied the disparate desires of all the businesses, environmental advocates and myriad government agencies involved in the dispute, except one: Wisconsin's State Historical Society. The consolidation would allow commerce in grain, gravel, coal and other materials to continue at St. Feriole Island. It would also offer some protection to the Higgins eye pearly mussel (lampsilis higginsi), an endangered spe(St. Feriole lsla11d co11tinued on page 4)
Vol. 2, No. 8
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International River Scientists (and a Few River Gladiators) Meet in La Crosse By Pamela Eyden
Concern for the world's rivers brought hundreds of river scientists to the banks of the Mississippi for an international conference in La Crosse this summer. Participants in the "Sustaining Ecological Integrity on Large Floodplain Rivers" conference came bearing scientific studies about floodplain development, water quality, salmon and the effects of dams. The news was not all bad. Many rivers are recovering health and resilience. But encouraging news is also a challenge to take action - sometimes politically difficult action - and that's where the conference itself became like a braided and meandering river making its way slowly to its conclusions. Here is some news from rivers around the world: •The Amazon River drains as much water per year as the next six largest floodplain rivers in the world combined. It's in pretty good shape, despite the mining and logging operations along the banks of its tributaries. (World's Rivers continued on page 2)
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(World's Rivers continued from page 1)
• People have been building, channeling and interrupting the flow of the River Kent in England for so long that no one knows what "normal" is. It used to freeze over every winter, but it has not done so since the late 1800s. • Scientists know what's normal for the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers, because they have hydrographs from the 1800s. Left to its own devices, the Illinois River floods once a year, the Mississippi floods twice - in the spring and in the fall. Dams on both rivers interrupt and buffer this cycle in order to stabilize water levels for navigation. Fish, plants, birds and wildlife have paid a big price in lost food and habitat. • Park managers in Beatrice, Nebraska, built recreational green ways on nearby floodplains, but they can't keep them green because so much atrazine, an herbicide commonly used on corn, washes down the river. • The Middle Oconee River in Georgia has improved in the last 30 years. Scientists find more forms of life and a greater variety of long-lived species in the river now, which corresponds to agricultural changes in the region. Farmers no longer cultivate either cotton o r corn. • Salmon used to be abundant in the Rhine River. By the 1950s there were no salmon. A major chemical spill spurred a campaign to clean up the river. By 1995 participating nations aim to reduce 50 chemical emissions by 50 percent. The Jong-term goal is to see the return of the salmon . •The Missouri River carries 80 percent less sediment than it did before 1954, when dams were built. Big Muddy isn't so muddy anymore, which means that the plants and animals that used to thrive in the turbid river are in trouble now. Fisheries collapsed in 1972. Despite small remedial projects, 40 species of fish are still in desperate trouble. • The backwaters on the Upper Mississippi River are filling up with sediment, while the bayous and islands off
August 1994
turns out people who are not environmentally literate. "Society must understand principles of ecological integrity, or people will not agree with applying them," he said. Most people don't understand the idea of ecosystems. They think of them as either irrelevant mathematical models or as the basis for a preservationist land grab.
Focusing on the Mississippi A two-day workshop on applying principles of ecological integrity to the Mississippi River followed the conference. Participants came from federal, state and local agencies, from environmental, tribal and citizens groups. The President's Council on Sustainable Development listened in. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt capped the event with a brief talk. The workshop was more informal, but it still wasn't particularly feisty or vociferous, considering the significance of what people were saying. In fact, those who voiced most of the questions and challenges were independents people from environmental groups, dairy farms, consulting firms and Native American tribal groups. Perhaps this is because they are more free to be what Pam Thiel, of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, called "river gladiators." After all, science has known nearly this much about rivers since the turn of the century. Industrial needs came first then and might again, unless there is enough political will to turn knowledge about ecosystems into action. Can we: take out at least some of the locks and dams? remove levees and move people from floodplains? let the river flood in both spring and fall, the way it used to, which is what native plants and animals depend on? let the river move sediment downstream? practice sustainable farming and forestry techniques so less topsoil washes into rivers? learn how to protect the watersheds we live in? $ Pamela Eyden is assistant editor of Big River.
Salmon used to be abundant in the Rhine River. the shore of Louisiana are eroding for lack of it. This process started when dams and levies were built. Fish, birds, mussels, clams, plants and shrimp have been declining since. The conference focused on science, but there was talk of politics and the need for social change, too. Ted Strong, a Native American representing the four Columbia River treaty tribes on the President's Council for Sustainable Development, said that people today have much to learn about how to live in the natural world . "Indian people are taught very early that you can't take without giving back," he said. "We are not children playing in the Creator's garden." Keynote speaker John Cairns, from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, pointed out tha t our educational system
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August 1994
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1993 Record Floods in the Midwest
By far the greatest flood damage in the summer of 1993 was
........-:. Record Flooding
in states that had drained the most wetlands - Iowa, Illinois and Missouri. Iowa, for example, has drained or otherwise lost 94 percent of its original wetlands.
Major Flooding (Map from the National Weather Service.)
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August 1994
(St. Feriole Island continued from page 1)
cies whose main habitat is slightly downstream from the proposed consolidated harbor site. However, the agreement would allow trains to continue rumbling by on tracks that lie within 20 feet of two National Historic Landmarks, within a block of two others and on top of three archeological sites something the historical society says it will not accept.
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St. Feriole Island It might be easier to separate the conflicting activities if they weren't all taking place on St. Feriole Island, which is one and a half miles long and a half mile wide at its broadest. Near the south end of the island a handful of employees of Didion, Inc., of Johnson Creek, Wisconsin, load grain at the City Dock. When grain-filled trains or trucks arrive, they fill up barges stationed in the East Channel, one at a time, up to the government-imposed limit of 135 per year. A couple of trailers and a conveyor barge-loading structure constitute Didion's operation there. Permanent structures cannot be built, because the island sits in the flood plain. The railroad tracks run straight north from the City Dock along Water Street. On the west side of the street, along the East Channel, a narrow lawn shaded by elms and cottonwoods stretches for blocks - the city's Lawler Park. Mussel shells of all sizes lie scattered in mounds and patches along the strip of sandy shore. Inland, across Water Street, stand St. Feriole Island's historic buildings, visited by over 20,000 people every year. The railroad tracks pass within 20 feet of the Brisbois House and the Astor Fur Warehouse. Fastidious gardens and a pond separate the resplendent Villa Louis, a 140-year-old mansion, from the tracks. Beyond Villa Louis to the east stretch blocks of vacant lots bounded by little-used roads. It proved cheaper to move the neighborhood than to protect the island from floods. The state historical society owns 24 acres in the center of the island. Farther to the north, beyond a line of trees, the railroad tracks end at the docks of Prairie Sand & Gravel, amid mounds of gravel, coal, sand and other materials.
What's to be permitted? All of the players in this dispute must await completion of an environmental impact statement on Prairie Sand & Gravel's request for permission to load an unlimited number of barges at its harbor. Most are ready to accept the compromises and call the deal done. "It's really hard to get all of the agencies to agree on anything," said Gary Koch, Prairie du Chien's city administrator. "We've been to Madison several times and had everybody sit down and say we all have to give something." Now many people think it's the historical society's turn to give, by allowing freight trains to pass next to the Villa Louis, the Astor Fur Warehouse and other relics of the era
when Prairie du Chien was a fur trading center. "All sides but the historical society can be accommodated," Leong said. "I think the state historical society played unfair here," said Ingle Jerde, a member of Prairie du Chien's Harbor Commission. "As soon as everything is over, they object." Richard Dexter, a compliance officer for the Wisconsin Historic Preservation Office, disputes these interpretations. "We've been involved in this process all along, and we've had the same objections all along." Now the society is marshalling its friends in the federal government, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and the National Park Service, to put pressure on the agencies that are authoring the impact statement - the Army Corps of Engineers and Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Because the society's historic sites are registered as National Historic Landmarks, any impacts on them must meet the advisory council's strict standards. The National Park Service may object to the barge traffic at the north end of St. Feriole Island, which is visible from the high bluffs at Effigy Mounds National Monument, across the river in Iowa. These maneuvers may allow the society to leverage friendlier terms, perhaps load and speed limits, in an eventual agreement with the railroad, the Wisconsin & Calumet.
Higgins eye Although the historic structures have asserted their importance in recent months, the Higgins eye pearly mussel remains the driving force behind this dispute. In 1983, following pressure from the DNR and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a proposal was made to consolidate the City Dock and Prairie Sand & Gravel's docks at a site on the Prairie du Chien mainland, across the backwater from St. Feriole Island. But in a referendum voters rejected
August 1994
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the proposal, apparently because they feared truck traffic would increase in that part of the city. Such a move would have relieved the pressure on the Higgins eye pearly mussel, because its chief habitat is in the East Channel of the river downstream from Prairie Sand & Gravel's site, including the river bottom adjacent to the present City Dock. The East Channel's moderate to high flow, stable bottom, aquatic vegetation and clean water make it ideal habitat for mussels . About 30 species live there, at a population density of around 20 per square meter. A small proportion of those mussels are Higgins eyes. "Everybody who has ever looked at it has come up with the same conclusion - about a half a percent of the mussels are Higgins eye," said Marian Havlik, a malacologist (mussel expert) who has been the mussel's most active advocate throughout the dispute (see Big River, August 1993). "The closer you get [to Prairie Sand & Gravel], the fewer you're going to see." Prairie Sand & Gravel has mined the river bottom near its harbor for sand and gravel, and the Corps of Engineers has dredged a path and turning basin for barges. The path, last dredged in 1976, reaches downstream to the City Dock and represents the greatest threat to the Higgins eye pearly mussel, according to Bill Tans, an environmental specialist forthe DNR. "Dredging is the death knell to mussels," Tans said. "If you have a river bottom and you deepen it five feet, you dig out all the mussels along with the sand." Barges may also hit mussels when they dock, and tug boats may stir them out with their propellers. In fact, all barge activity in the East Channel threatens the Higgins eye, according to Havlik. "If you keep adding impacts of unlimited barges in there, churning up the bottom, the same thing is going to happen that happened in the Main Channel -you're going to find very few mussels," Havlik said. "My final goal would be to get all commercial barging out of the East Channel." But she has compromised by supporting the consolidation of harbors at the Prairie Sand & Gravel site. "The practical reality is that it probably would not happen," she said.
Hurdles for river transport To load barges or build anything at these floodplain sites, the companies need permits from both the Army Corps of Engineers and the DNR. Since Didion began operating at the City Dock, in 1988, permits limited the number of barges it could load each year. The government has not yet limited the number of barges that Prairie Sand & Gravel can load, but it has operated under one-year permits since asking for permission to expand its operation in 1991. The pressure to expand barge traffic came when more and more farmers began exporting their grain during the
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1980s, said Paul Heitman of the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (DOT). To encourage the export of Wisconsin grain, the DOT poured over $30 million into the renovation of the rail line that crosses southern Wisconsin and ends at Prairie du Chien. The increased traffic at the City Dock provoked the only lawsuit of the lengthy controversy. That year, the DNR issued Didion a permit without having a public hearing. Marian Havlik, the Sierra Club and the Public Intervenor,
We didn't want to go to court because somebody's got to lose and somebody's got to win, and nobody felt strong enough about winning." 11
Tom Dawson, an attorney who works as an environmental advocate within state government, asked for a hearing but came to a settlement with the state before the hearing. Dawson says that legal action kept the assorted businesses and government agencies honest."It showed.that the environmentalists were willing to take the case to court," Dawson said. "In other words, we weren't bluffing." Chuck Piper, the terminal manager for Didion at the City Dock, says the continuing threat of a lawsuit has kept all sides, including environmental advocates, honest. "We didn't want to go to court because somebody's got to lose and somebody's got to win, and nobody felt strong enough about winning."
The last step? Representatives of all the government, private and nonprofit interests met repeatedly, with Leong mediating. Initially, the principle problem was convincing the owners of the two companies, John Didion and Blair Dillman, to consolidate their sites. Not only were their two companies competing, but "you had two very strong personalities in conflict," recalled Marian Havlik. Now that they have found common ground, the historical society's objections loom as the largest obstacle. Leong believes this last hurdle could have been reached sooner if local officials had offered more leadership, instead of letting others battle the issues out. "A Mississippi River town is slow moving, very parochial, very conservative," Leong said. "Things move because they move. You can't move it faster, and you can't move it slower." m
Tim Steller is a journalist and graduate student in geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He grew up on the Mississippi River in Minneapolis .
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CURRENT EVENTS By Reggie McLeod
Invasive Species with Teeth
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kinny dippers take heed! This year the new world-record piranha was caught in Wisconsin and a giant beaver was spotted on the Mississippi in the Quad Cities (see Big River, June 1994). Now the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is investigating sightings of a six-foot crocodile or alligator near Bemidji, according to the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune (7-19-94).
Dueling Excursion Boats
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inona lost its excursion boat, the Jollie Ollie, when its owner found himself in troubled financial waters. Then Mike Rivers, a local developer announced that a new boat, the Princess Winona, would operate from Levee Park. Now Richard E.Harris,Jr., who owns three river-related businesses, says he will operate an excursion boat from Levee Park, according to The Winona Daily News (7-29-94). The city may be asked to grant exclusive docking rights to one of the boats. Harris says he will dock his boat elsewhere in town if he cannot dock at Levee Park.
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Bald Eagles Rebound
he national symbol has made a come back. In 1963, the lower 48 states were home to 417 nesting pairs of bald eagles. Last year biologists estimated that more than 4,000 pairs and between 5,000 and 6,000 juveniles lived in the lower 48. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has asked that the eagles "endangered" species status be lowered to "threatened" in 39 states. They are already listed as threatened in Minnesota, Michigan, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin. A cleaner environment, habitat protection, strict law enforcement, active management and public awareness have all contributed to the return of the bald eagle, according to Mollie Beattie, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service.
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Toll-free Boat Info
oat owners or people thinking about purchasing a new boat can get answers to questions about registration, regulations and boat safety classes by dialing a toll-free number. Callers need a touch-tone phone to use the automated service at 1-800-970BOAT (2628). Marilyn Davis, chief of the DNR's Licensing and Registration Section, explained the system is designed to provide callers with consistent and convenient information. The system operates 24 hours a day. The pilot project will last through September. It includes a user survey that asks some callers to rate the system's value and effectiveness.
Fish Parasites Harmless to Humans
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nglers in Wisconsin are finding more parasites in panfish, according to an article in the Prairie du Chien Courier Press (7-13-94). "Black spot" looks like a black freckle on the body and fins of fish . "Yellow grub" looks like a grain of rice embedded in the muscle of fish. Both parasites are being found in perch, bluegills and crappies. Most of the parasites are removed during normal preparation for cooking. They do not infect humans and are killed by cooking. The life cycle of both parasites include living in a bird, such as a kingfisher or great blue heron, then a snail, then a fish. When a bird eats an infected fish the cycle starts again.
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$100 Bluegill
here haven't been any recent reports of fish offering three wishes, but Ivan Roberts, of Altura, Minn., is $100 richer thanks to a tagged bluegill he caught in the Mississippi backwaters below Lock and Dam 4, near Kellogg. Roberts reported the tag number to
August 1994
the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Each year the DNR randomly selects one of the people reporting a tag number for a $100 reward . The reports help river researchers gather information about the movements and survival of fish.
Volunteers to Monitor River Quality
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new water monitoring program will gather detailed information about water quality in the Mississippi River downstream from the Twin Cities. Twice each week ten volunteers will head fortherivertocollect water samples and record their observations of water quality at 13 sites in Lake Pepin and three in Spring Lake, just upriver from Hastings, Minn. During the drought year of 1988, the people who lived near Lake Pepin reported offensive odors, fish kills and large algae blooms. Many olamed the¡ Twin Cities Metro WastewaterTreatmentPlant on Pigs Eye Lake in St. Paul. At that time there was no limit on the quantities of phosphorus the plant could discharge into the Mississippi. In 1993, the plant's new permit included phosphorus limits, and committed it to a $300-million upgrade to eliminate all but a fraction of the phosphorus releases. The Minnesota-Wisconsin Boundary Area Commission, which initiated the monitoring project, will issue annual reports on the findings .
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Awash in Recommendations
nlike a hurricane or an earthquake, which comes and goes quickly, the Flood of 1993 visited us for months. We had plenty of time observe and speculate about cause and effect. People in the path of the flood often had time to buy flood insurance before they got soaked. With a similar deliberateness, the lnteragency Floodplain Management Review Committee studied the effects of the flood and the costs of deaning up after it. The committee's 285-page report, Sharing the Challenge: Floodplain Manage-
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Power Raptors By Alan K. Lohman
What do osprey, peregrine falcons and eagles have in common with power plants? More than you might think. Several Northern States Power Company (NSP) power plants are home to the rare birds. Osprey nest on a platform along the St. Croix river at NSP's Allen S. King plant, while peregrines have been attracted to stacks at four plants. In addition, dozens of bald eagles spend the winter near the open waters on the Mississippi River below the Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant. NSP, in consort with the non-profit Raptor Resource Project, is supporting efforts to reintroduce the rare raptors to the Upper Midwest. Osprey are fish-eating hawks that prefer elevated locations near water. Peregrines are wondrous avian hunters, capable of dive speeds up to 200 mph, whose ranks were decimated in the 1950s by pesticides. Both are making a comeback with the help of habitat provided by humans. NSP crews erected the first release structures for the peregrine restoration effort in 1982 on the Weaver Dunes near Kellogg, Minn. Plant employees have been providing nesting locations since the late 1980s. Plant stacks are, in some ways, like the peregrines' original cliff dwellings. Employees have built and placed nesting platforms on stacks at three NSP fossil-fuel plants - King, located near Stillwater; Sherco, near St. Cloud; Black Dog, on the Minnesota River in Burnsville - and the Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant. Peregrine falcons have nested at all four sites. In fact, four of 12 known productive pairs of peregrines in Minnesota nest on power plants, according to Bob Anderson. a Hugo, Minn., naturalist and founder of the Raptor Resource Project. A nesting platform was added this spring to a fifth
ment into the 21th Century, reviews the
effects of the flood and offers detailed recommendations for the future . It recommends that the government acquire flood prone land; that the various agencies better coordinate their activities; and that more attention be paid to the environmental impact of floodplain activities. The report also suggests cost-cutting measures, such as adding a surcharge to flood insurance policies for property that has suffered flood damage in the past; creating more accurate and up-to-date flood insurance maps; and increasing the activation period for new flood insurance policies from five to 15 days.
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A peregrine falcon perches on a nesting platform at the Allen S. King plant, near Stillwater, Minn.
site - the Unit 1 reactor dome at Prairie Island. Prairie Island employees also support raptor reintroduction efforts in other ways. Last summer, plant employees Jim Hill and John McCall swam across Lake Pepin to raise funds for the Raptor Resource Project. "I felt a swimming fundraiser was the least we could do to repay Bob [Anderson] for his personal devotion to bringing the peregrine back to the Upper Midwest," Hill said.
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Alan K. Lohman is the communications coordinator for Northern States Power.
Zebras May Deplete Oxygen
ebra mussels may pose a new threat to sewage treatment plants as well as to other river life, becau se they deplete oxygen in the water, according to an article in Zebra Mussel Update (6-24-94). Oxygen levels as low as 3.2 parts per million (ppm) were found in parts of the. Illinois River heavily infested with the invasive mussels. Fish and other aquatic life suffer stress when there is Jess than 5 ppm of oxygen in the water. Richard Sparks, an aquatic ecologist with the Illi11ois Natural History Survey, summarized his research in the March 4, 1994, issue of Science.
Besides harming other animals, the lack of oxygen could make it necessary to reduce the discharge of oxygen-depleting organic wastes from sewage treatment plants. Zebra mussels may spread from one body of water to another largely on aquatic weeds on trailers and boats, according to an article in the Spring 1993 issue of Seiche . A recent of survey found up to a quarter of all boats coming out of Lake St. Clair, which connects Lake Huron to Lake Erie, were trailing weeds with zebra mussels attached. =
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RIVER CALENDAR AUGUST 3-5 American Indian Pow Wow, Fur Trade Rendezvous, Fort Snelling State Park, St. Paul. 3-6 Sixth International Symposium on Regulated Streams, sixth in a series of international symposia on rivers modified by large dams, weirs, channelization and flow diversion schemes, University of South Bohemia, Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic. Contact Prof C. E. Petts, Dept. of Geography, University of Technology, Loughborough, Leicestershire, LEII 3TU, UK; or Dr. K. Prach, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Jihoceska Univerzita, Branisovska 31, 37005, CESKE BUDEJOVICE, Czech Republic. 6 Prairie Walk on the La Crosse River State Trail, 9:30 a.m. -11:30 a.m., Rockland, Wis. For reservations (limited to 30) call Natural Resources Foundation (608) 266-1430. 7 Ol' Man River Cleanup of the Mississippi River, Minnehaha Park, Minneapolis, 1 p .m . Call Mike Hipps, (612) 938-5575. 7 Midwest Mountaineering Cleanup of Pike Island in Fort Snelling, St. Paul. Call (612) 339-4912. 8 Migratory Game Bird Hunting Season, public hearing on revisions to Wisconsin rules, 7 p.m., Basement Auditorium, La Crosse County Courthouse. 12 The Minnesota River: Our Past Actions, Present Uses, and Future Responsibilities, Mankato, Minn., 4 p.m. - 8 p.m., $25 fee. Call Ciaran Mannion, (612) 334-3388. 12-14 & 19-21 Game Fair, Anoka, Minn. 13 Fountain City (Wis.) Service Base Centennial Open House, tours and historical displays at the Army Corps of Engineers boatyard, 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. 21 Wildlife Film Festival, Lake Maria State Park, Monticello, Minn . 27 National Radioactive Waste Day, Vigil for Survival, potluck lunch, water ceremony, march, rally, 11 :30 a.m., Prairie Island boat landing, near NSP Nuclear Plant, Red Wing, Minn. Those who plan to take non-violent direct action should arrive by 10:30 a.m. Call Prairie Island Coalition Against Nuclear Storage, (612) 770-3861, or Joe Morse, (507) 894-4779.
SEPTEMBER 16-17 Sons and Daughters of Pioneer Rivermen, annual meeting, Hotel Lafayette, Mariette, Ohio. Write J.W. Rutter, 126 Seneca Dr., Mariette, Ohio 45750. 21-23 National Waterways Conference, annual meeting, Hotel Inter-Continental, New Orleans, Call Verna M. Boucher, (202) 296-4415. 30 Upper Mississippi River/Illinois River Environmental Management Program, tour the Environmental Manage-
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ment Technical Center, Onalaska, Wis., 1:30 p.m . - 2:30 p.m. For reservations (limited to 24) call Natural Resources Foundation (608) 266-1430. August 9 to February 14 Magnificent River: The Mississippi from Minnesota to Missouri, exhibit includes photographs, artifacts, interactive exhibits, live animals, videos and two full-sized boats, Putnam Museum of History and Natural Science, Davenport, Iowa. The Zebra Mussel Menace: Leadership Training for Educators and Natural Resource Professionals, 9:30 a.m. - 3:30 p .m., $40 fee covers workshop, materials and lunch. Representatives of environmental, boating and shoreline property owners are also invited to attend. Sept. 15 Days Inn, La Crosse. Sept. 16 Duck Creek Park Lodge, Davenport, Iowa. Stonefield, a museum of agricultural history and village life, Cassville, Wis., (608) 725-5210. August 13 Thresheree, threshing demonstrations trace evolution of grain threshing (rain date Aug. 14). Sept. 24-25 Harvest Celebrations, turn-of-the-century music, hay rides, games, displays. Villa Louis, Prairie du Chien, Wis., (608) 326-2721. Aug. 13 Victorian Picnic, banquet of typical picnic foods of the 1890s, 5 p.m.-9 p.m. By reservation only. Sept. 10-11 Villa Louis Carriage Classic, Wisconsin's largest and most stylish carriage driving event. Minn.-Wis. Boundary Area Commission meetings. For information call (612) 436-7131 or (715) 386-9444. August 11 Full commission. Sept. 6 St. Croix River Regional Committee. Sept. 8 Miss. River Regional Committee, Prairie du Chien. Sierra Club, Coulee Region, meetings, 7 p.m., Trane Employees Credit Union, La Crosse. Sept. 27 Ken Tschumper, sustainable farming and environmental effects of next farm bill. Sierra Club's St. Croix Valley Interstate Group, monthly meetings, 6:30 p .m., Stillwater (Minn.) Public Library. August 8 monthlÂĽ meeting, Rob Chambers, from the Kinnickinnic River Land Trust, Mark Warhol, on endangered species. Sept. 12 monthly meeting. Lower Wisconsin State Riverway Board meetings, 5 p .m. Call 1-800-221-3792 or (608) 739-3188. August 11 monthly meeting, Boscobel, Wis . Sept. 8 monthly meeting, Mazomanie, Wis. -