River Story: Life Thrives Amidst The Poisoned Trash of Industrial Civilization

In my photo of Pig's Eye Lake that's seagulls — that white patch over to the left of the picture. On the right there's the downtown of Saint Paul and left of that the spire of the Saint Paul Cathedral.

I'd been worried about the environment since I was a child. Early on it was topsoil loss and groundwater pollution. I left graduate school in the '70s to be an activist and by the '80s I was dangerously burned out.

I moved to St Paul for love, and fell in love with the river as well. I named my motor scooter the “Mississippi Booker” and traveled up and down both sides, poking into all the gravel roads and admiring the combination of trash and nature I found all along the river.

The backwater named Pig's Eye Lake had it all in spades. The area between the camera and downtown in the photo contains a Minnesota Superfund Site of known toxics like PCBs. Leaking. There's also a century of household and industrial trash there, dumped into the wetland at the bottom of the city.

“Industrial” is the word to describe Pigs Eye's surroundings. There's a railroad switching yard along Route 61 just to the East that screeches piercingly when it's in operation. The backwater is directly under the Flyway for St. Paul's downtown Airport. There are several huge barge-loading facilities at the South end of the lake. The lake is just downstream from the St. Paul sewage treatment plant. Stacked crushed auto bodies wait their turn at the Gerdau steel plant. I was aghast to see any part of the river overcome by such a level of industry and industrial waste. Sunken barges break the surface of the water at different points. In my burnout I was appalled. It seemed nothing could stop the direction of my Beloved Land toward ruin.

And yet I discovered nature thrives here! There's a heron rookery with about 90 nests of egrets and great blue herons. At most fall equinoxes I see migrating white pelicans. There's fox, turkey, raccoons, coyotes, deer. Huge carp roil the muddy waters and leap above it's surface. In addition to herons and eagles, I've seen and heard many different kinds of birds like ducks and cormorants.

During the flood of '92(?) I took my little styrofoam boat up Battle Creek, which flows into the lake, and discovered beaver had made a dam across it, where the creek had cut through the dump. As I looked up toward the water cresting over the top of the dam, below that I could see a huge sheet of plastic flapping out of the middle of the layers of soil.

Nature is thriving here, perhaps poisoned but not dead, still going from one generation to the next unstopped.

In the darkness of my depression I was stunned with hope. Things would not be getting better on my timeline but the wildlife was not going away. Life Goes On. Sick as it may be with toxins, it does not stop. It may mutate and some of those mutations may be wonderful new embellishments on the already magnificent stream of life.

I may be down. I may quit. I will die. But the River of Life continues to flow vibrantly in and along the river.

I Hope.

by Richard Fuller, Minneapolis

 

The River Story Map

Created and coordinated by volunteer extraordinaire Michael Bischoff, the River Story Map kicks off FMR's silver anniversary year with 25+ stories of friendship with and connection to the metro Mississippi.  These honest and personal reflections portray the river as a source of intrigue and adventure, a beloved date night venue, and even an unlikely partner in tales of loss and healing. We hope you enjoy them and consider adding your personal story of friendship with the Mississippi River.