Call it symmetry of purpose: The Saint Paul Port Authority has managed river terminals on the Mississippi River since 1932. It has cleaned up and redeveloped land inland since the mid-1950s. Yet last year, for the first time, the Port used a portion of soil dredged from the river as backfill in one of its redevelopment projects.
This step, although perfectly reasonable for this 78-year-old redevelopment organization, was a footnote on line 15 of the Port Authority’s 2009 “Annual Dredged Material Report” to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency: 15,418 cubic yards of river-dredge silt and sand deposited at the Port’s Southport River Terminal was reused as backfill at the Port’s $6 million Minnehaha Lanes redevelopment project in Frogtown.
“We will be reusing this material in future projects because it’s green and that’s what we’re all about here at the Port Authority,” said Kelly Warden, the Port’s Vice President of Property Development and the Minnehaha project manager. “Reusing this material saved – and will continue to save – us money on redevelopment projects.”
Warden, who also is the Port’s project manager on the $5 million Southport River Terminal redevelopment project, said it made perfect sense to use the dredge material as fill. The dredge material from efforts to keep the river channel open to barge and boat traffic, is deposited at Southport by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other private contractors.
Eric Hesse, of Liesch Associates, the Port’s consultant on the Minnehaha redevelopment project, said that while not all dredge material is suitable for the geotechnical support for buildings, the particular material used at the Minnehaha site is highly organic and can sustain vegetative growth that buffers the property against erosion. The material has been used in other Minnesota cities and throughout the country for similar purposes.
The symmetry of mixing environmentally friendly projects is not lost on Warden, who is used to breaking ground in her work at the Port Authority. Just last year, her Minnehaha redevelopment project was the first in the nation to land U.S. Environmental Protection Agency stimulus funding to help demolish a building to make way for a new development.
