Mississippi River Critical Area stakeholder report now available

This fall, FMR organized and facilitated a series of stakeholder meetings designed to assist the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources in responding to a mandate from the state legislature. The DNR is required to report on the status of the state Critical Area program for the Mississippi River corridor in the Twin Cities region.

The goal of the stakeholder process was to gather and document input from corridor cities, river businesses and developers, and environmental, civic and neighborhood groups about the strengths and weaknesses of the Mississippi River Critical Area program and possible solutions to ensure protection of this local, state and national resource.

Sixty stakeholders participated in the three input meetings organized by stakeholder group (Business: 12, Government: 24, Citizen: 24), and 24 returned for the all-stakeholder meeting held in early November.

There was a surprising amount of agreement and overlap among stakeholder groups with regard to the strengths and weaknesses of the program, but there was less agreement about how and what potential solutions would best address protecting corridor resources. In spite of some differences, several options proposed had general agreement from all groups, including maintaining a unique state management framework for a significant resource, strengthening the partnership with the National Park Service, increasing interagency coordination, establishing a process for early input by the DNR and other stakeholders, and providing outreach and technical assistance to corridor communities.

Detailed descriptions and discussion of each of the proposed options is included in a final report to the DNR (1.1 MB PDF). The report documents the stakeholder engagement process facilitated by FMR, catalogues the opinions and observations of meeting participants, summarizes the identified strengths and weaknesses, and analyzes management options developed in the stakeholder engagement process. It also contains as appendices a comprehensive set of materials associated with the process, including meeting attendees, meeting summaries, and other items.

The DNR will incorporate portions of this report into their report to the state legislature, which is due on February 1, 2008.