Across the United States, financially-strapped governments are struggling to make ends meet just as an anti-tax-and-spend, anti-government political tsunami is heading toward the November elections.
As the infrastructure fails on thousands of old dams, the costs to rebuild them are in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Some communities, like Front Royal, Virginia, have abandoned a decades-old structure because the cost of repairs is just too much and the benefits of the dam long ago vanished.
| VIDEO: A view of the Dam |
In other states, the decisions about what to do about the dams is much more complicated. For example, in Minnesota, a crumbling old dam that once provided hydro-electric power has a diverse lobbying group trying to find the funds to fix it. One reason used to justify saving the dam is that it is a defense against the invasive Asian Carp which anglers fear will destroy Minnesota’s legendary native fish population.
But there is another reason this old dam is getting very special attention. If it isn’t repaired, a privileged playground of waterfront houses will see their water views go down the drain along with their real estate values.
In the middle of all of this controversy is a governor with aspirations for national office who embraces the Tea Party mood in the country.
Should Minnesota taxpayers save an old dam that creates scenic riverfront property for high-priced homes? In a complex and evolving episode of public works and public benefit vs. who foots the bill, the answer has yet to emerge.
A Republican governor’s line-item veto in March is the latest twist. Two-term Governor Tim Pawlenty, an undeclared presidential candidate and no-new-taxes believer, removed a stopgap $750,000 that the state Legislature had approved to fix the Coon Rapids Dam on the Mississippi River.
That’s just a drip compared with the other $320 million Pawlenty culled from a $1 billion public-works bill — a bill that convincing majorities had passed in both houses of a Legislature dominated by Democrats.
Pawlenty took it upon himself to close the state’s budget deficit, arguing that the Legislature’s bonding bill shouldn’t “significantly surpass” the $725 million he proposed earlier and should share his own priorities — veterans, military and public safety, according to a March 14 statement.
Moreover, according to the statement, some bonding-bill language doesn’t lend itself to a governor’s line-item vetoes — requiring, in the statement’s words, an “overly blunt manner” of removing entire sections.
SCOUR HOLE
However, the powerful Mississippi is undermining the dam, built in 1913. Experts say the so-called scour hole isn’t a safety issue — but if the dam were to fail, the recreational pool that begins 16 miles northwest of downtown Minneapolis would drain. Goodbye, boating and waterskiing.
Repairs might cost up to $20 million. Who pays? Local officials responsible for the dam aren’t enthusiastic about raising the money. State and local governments have funded fixes since a regional utility gave the 1,000-foot dam to a park district in 1969, along with 225 acres of parkland.
Few if any other such projects in Minnesota’s current bonding bill immediately affect so few property holders — but homeowners on the pool needn’t look far for help in high places. A city council member, county commissioner and state legislator are among their neighbors.
Let dam spending rise to state level, argues Tim Carlson, vice president at a homebuilder and another waterfront property owner. “How are other park areas taken care of?” he asks. “What makes this any different?”
SCHOOLS? FREEWAYS?
Minnesota’s regular bonding bill authorizes the state to guarantee loans to create and maintain public works, including university buildings, cultural centers, and dams.
Why should Minnesota’s taxpayers pay to maintain a local facility? Anoka County Commissioner Dan Erhart owns a 2,200-square-foot home on the recreational pool upstream from the dam. He puts it this way: Some people say, “I don’t have kids in school. Why should I pay for school taxes? I don’t have a freeway close to my land. Why would I pay for a freeway?”
His point is this: Homeowners on the pool aren’t the only dam beneficiaries. The dam anchors 446-acre Coon Rapids Dam Regional Park – popular with picnickers, bicyclists, walkers and runners. Anglers trying for bass and crappies in the river use the park’s boat launch. Park visitors number more than 750,000 annually, the park authority says. A dam walkway connects trail systems on both sides of the Mississippi.
Coon Rapids (Minn.) City Council member Joe Sidoti, also a homeowner on the recreational pool, notes that riverfront property owners already help fund the dam through higher property taxes stemming from their higher home values. “We’re all in this together as taxpayers,” he argues.
Since 1974 the dam has required $11 million in fixes, of which the park district that owns it has paid $4 million, drawing on funding from property owners in Minnesota’s Hennepin County. The rest of the money to fix the dam came from the state of Minnesota and a regional agency.
At one time, the dam generated electricity. A way to help fund the structure might be to recommission its hydroelectric capacity. That, however, would be costly — but, says Erhart, “we’ve subsidized windmills and solar.”
WHAT NEXT?
Watery Minnesota has about 2,000 dams — 500 owned by the state, the rest by other government units, utilities or private groups. Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources estimates those dams at present need $115 million in maintenance. DNR says it always seeks local or federal cost sharing in dam maintenance. Just now, the Coon Rapids Dam is one of state’s biggest needs in terms of its size and maintenance cost, says DNR.
So what happens next? Hennepin County’s Three Rivers Park District, which owns and operates the Coon Rapids Dam, wants the state Legislature to set up a commission to study ownership of the dam and related issues. In fact, the Legislature may actually take up dam funding again before its session ends in May — or it may wait until next year.
Does the state want to own the Coon Rapids Dam? No. “We own enough dams,” says Kent Lokkesmoe, director of DNR’s water division. Moreover, this dam’s inflatable gates have turned out to be “an ongoing maintenance issue” and likely an “expensive fix,” says Lokkesmoe.
The governor’s Coon Rapids Dam veto notwithstanding, Pawlenty approved $1 million to convert a historic but nonfunctioning bridge into a tourist attraction downstream on the Mississippi at Inver Grove Heights, Minn. Charlie Weaver, who once represented the Coon Rapids Dam area in the state Legislature and later served as Pawlenty’s chief of staff, early on e-mailed Pawlenty urging funding for the Coon Rapids Dam. Of the governor, says Weaver — now executive with the influential Minnesota Business Partnership — “I think that he didn’t have enough information.”
In sum, the issue of public works and public policy is a complicated matter that tends to evolve. Who benefits? Who should pay? If a solution plays well on the evening news — what will the next day’s headlines bring? In the case of dam policy, says Commissioner Erhart, “There are a lot of moving parts.”
Here’s one irony: Calling the dam’s recreational pool a playground for the wealthy may be a bit too strong. Sidoti, owner of a home on the pool, lost his job in May 2009 as vice president with a promotional-products firm in May 2009. Only now, nearly a year later, has he found another job.
Here’s another irony: A new public purpose for the Coon Rapids Dam affects nearly all of Minnesota. Asian carp, invasives that escaped an Arkansas fish farm in 1970s flooding, have spread upstream in the Mississippi River to Minnesota — where recreational fishing adds $4.7 billion dollars annually and 43,000 jobs to the state economy, says DNR.
The voracious carp might out eat Minnesota’s walleye and other native species, putting the state’s fabled fisheries at risk — if the invaders can get past the Coon Rapids Dam. The state’s DNR thinks the dam will stop them.
Indeed, Hortman is thinking well beyond her own district. The Mississippi winds from Minnesota’s north. Were the dam to fail, invasives may penetrate to waters where bands of Native American Ojibway harvest walleye. Muses Rep. Hortman: “Should the tribes be part of this?”
State Rep. Denise Dittrich, likewise a Democrat and yet another homeowner on the recreational pool above the dam, thinks the ultimate outcome is clear. “Some way or another,” she says, “it needs to get fixed.”
