Floodplain Casino Opponents Target Gaming Commission at Earth Day

Members of the Save the Confluence Coalition opposing a proposed casino development adjacent to the Columbia Bottom Conservation Area at Spanish Lake will reach out to the 10,000 visitors attending the Earth Day Festival at Forest Park Sunday, April 25, 11am-6pm.

“We invite people to visit our booth at Earth Day and learn more about why saving the Confluence is so important to the region,” said Dora Gianoulakis with the Spanish Lake Community Association.

“We are focused on mobilizing supporters with a message to the Missouri Gaming Commission that the proposed casino at Spanish Lake is the wrong development in the wrong place,” said Kathleen Logan Smith, Executive Director of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment. “We all lose if a casino complex is built in the last remaining undeveloped area on the Mississippi River floodplain in the metro.”

“We want to make it clear that the confluence floodplain is no place for yet another casino,” said Harold Hendrick of the Bott Radio Network, one of the organizations representing more than 100,000 people united in the Save the Confluence Coalition. “People can help by speaking up.”

The Missouri Gaming Commission is accepting proposals through May 1 for the remaining Missouri casino license and will determine where it will go.

The Save the Confluence Coalition consists of over eighty organizations opposing the floodplain casino plan which is proposed adjacent to a wildlife conservation area at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers in one of the most ecologically unique places in North America. North County Development LLC is proposing the casino development on 377 acres even though six casinos already exist within a 30 minute drive. The Save the Confluence campaign aims to save the farmland, wetlands, migratory bird flyway and floodplain adjacent to the Columbia Bottom Conservation area along the Mississippi River in north St. Louis County.