The Common Sense Coalition is opposing a plan to convert 400 acres of Mississippi River floodplain, wetlands, and farmland next to the Columbia Bottom Conservation Area in Spanish Lake into a massive casino complex.
The casino project proposed by North County Development LLC is simply the wrong development in the wrong place.
A Winning Plan for Missouri
Instead of 8,000 parking places and a casino complex, we should develop this land to build on the natural beauty of the area and to support the growing number of visitors to this unique natural area at the confluence of our great rivers, but with fewer negative impacts.
The Common Sense Coalition supports economic development in North St. Louis County that makes sense … both for today and tomorrow. The floodplain casino project is simply the wrong development in the wrong place!
The Coalition includes twenty organizations representing more than 15,000 members who are against the irresponsible development of this natural floodplain and wetland area approximately one mile from one of the nation’s greatest natural treasures … the confluence of the mighty Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.
Once this natural area is gone … it is gone forever, not only for this generation but for generations to come. If it is destroyed, there will be no opportunity to look at better alternatives that create businesses and jobs while sustaining our local communities and celebrating our natural treasures.
Can’t we count on help from the MO Dept of Conservation and DNR?
I am a retired Wildlife Biologist with 30 plus years of experience as a River Ecologist.
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?