We are asking those who oppose the proposed casino at the Confluence (next to Columbia Bottom Conservation Area) to send emails and/or letters to the Gaming Commission to let them know how many people think that giving a license to a casino at the Confluence in North St. Louis County is a terrible idea.

Please aim to submit your emails/letters to the Gaming Commission by May 1!

Send your letters/emails to:
Leann McCarthy
Missouri Gaming Commission
3417 Knipp Drive
P.O. Box 1847
Jefferson City, MO 65102
leann.mccarthy@mgc.dps.mo.gov

Thanks so much for your support.

The Confluence floodplain represents a unique opportunity to restore needed public open space, and important migratory bird habitat at a very important mid-migrational point in the flyway. The Riverlands Migratory Bird Sanctuary, which I helped design and manage for 20 years, is located in the Confluence Proper and reclaimed and protected 4,000 acres of important habitat in 1990. The site now hosts 200,000 visitors annually and has become an anchor for nature based tourism and a leisure travel destination for birders, hikers, bikers, and kayakers. When taken together with the more recent addition of the Columbia Bottom Conservation Area, the Confluence State Park, and the Cora Island Unit of the Big Muddy National Wildlife Refuge, the Lewis and Clark Historic Park and Visitor Center across the River, the National Lewis and Clark Trail, and the ongoing restoration of of 1,500 acres of Corps of Engineers managed lands in the American Bottoms near the Chain of Rocks you have a scalable effort underway that is bringing our area to a ‘tipping point’ as being recognized as a regionally important restoration footprint celebrating the heritage of an iconic midwestern natural feature, the Mississippi River, that is becoming a destination for domestic and international travelers.

Add to the above the value that this green space has for raising the awareness of the 500,000 student population of the greater St. Louis Metro area and you have a living classroom where our students can experience an in-context reconnection to the river that will hopefully move the next generation from being water users to water stewards, raising water awareness at a time when water resource stewardship has become a matter of national security.

Lets not slip the bar so low as to sacrifice a regionally unique opportunity for the immediate self serving interests of those who would place more infrastructure in the floodplain to be protected from floods at taxpayers expense. We need to turn the corner and begin to remove the incentives that continue to invest and reinvest millions of taxpayers dollars in making the floodplain save for development. Only 5% of the continental U.S. lies within the 100 year floodplain. Lets keep new development in the 95% of our nation that is out of harms way and cut the taxpayers a break and in so doing also protect our special floodplain areas to improve our quality of life, diversify our economy by building up compatible, sustainable forms of tourism, while augmenting a holistic approach to flood reduction and stormwater retention, and safeguard our nation’s natural heritage. There is only one Mississippi River and its floodplain has been abused for unintended and financially unsustainable uses for too long. Lets finally turn the page. Didn’t the ’93 flood teach us anything?