St. Paul District Uses Federal Beneficial Use Program to Study Island Creation in Upper Mississippi

摘要

In March 2018, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers St. Paul District released the Draft Feasibility Study Report and Integrated Environmental Assessment for the Pigs Eye Lake project in Ramsey County, Minnesota. For the last two years, under the Continuing Authorities Program (CAP) Section 204, the Corps has studied the beneficial use of dredged material to improve aquatic habitat, create wetlands and slow shoreline erosion at the shallow backwater lake. The tentatively selected plan calls for a complex of seven islands with approximately 16.3 acres of floodplain forest and wet prairie habitat and 17.6 acres of marsh habitat. Pigs Eye Lake is a 638-acre lake, southeast of St. Paul, Minnesota, within Pool 2 of the Mississippi River. Although Pigs Eye is called a lake, it is technically a large riverine open-water flood-plain. "It used to be marsh before the impoundment. Over the course of many years, a lot of what used to be vegetation is receding back to the shoreline and continuing to do so under the pressures of the wind fetch. That shallow nature of the depth makes that worse," said Aaron McFarlane, biologist with the Corps St. Paul District. Wind fetch is a measure of the distance wind can travel in a constant direction across water without encountering an obstacle.