Big River - August 1993

August 1993

the monthly newsletter for people who live, work or play on the Upper Mississippi River

Bluegills, Silver Maples and Civil Engineers Cope with a Bigger River

By ReggiÂŁ McLeod

.

The banks of the Middle Mississippi are still a battleground, but on the upper river folks are tallying up the damage and looking to the future.

- ¡oams and Levees The flood waters will probably rewrite civil engineering manuals. Engineers design dams, culverts, levees and other structures based on estimates of the heaviest rainfall or flood likely in a 100-year or 500-year period. Because weather records cover less than 200 years in most of the Midwest, these numbers might be low and many structures under-built.

Big engineering projects have become harder to fund. It's often cheaper to move a neighborhood or town than to build a dike system to protect it. Many of the dikes and levees that were weakened or destroyed, especially in the middle section of the river, probably won't be replaced or repaired.

Shipping The barge industry is having a tough season. A few months ago it was arguing to get more water released from low reservoirs into the dwindling Missouri. It was fighting the Clinton Administration over a dollar-a-gallon tax on fuel.

The Army Corps of Engineers faced criticism of a long-range planning study that seemed to be a justification for expanding the system to support more river shipping.

Locks 16, 17, 18, 20, 21and22 were shut down in midApril, blocking shipping from Muscatine, Iowa, to Hannibal, Mo., and separating the upper river from the lower river.

That setback looked temporary, but wasn't. We may end the season with almost no shipping season at all.

(Flood, continued on page 8)

Vol. 1. No. 8

$2

Half-Buried Treasure What Will Become of the Higgin's Eye and Fat Pocketbook?

By Pamela Eyden

If you see mussels stranded in two or three inches of water, or in places that will dry up when flood waters go down, do them a favor - toss them back into deeper water.

Mussels can sense when conditions are changing, but they cannot move fast. They also have an unfortunate tendency to go the wrong way. ''The flood will have brought a lot of mussels inland, and they won't survive when water levels go down," said Marian Havlik, freshwater mussel expert and owner of Malacological Consultants, Inc., of La Crosse. "It's better to move them this way than to do nothing."

Freshwater mussels are having enough trouble these days, without being penalized for lacking a sense of direction.

Mussels spend most of their lives half-buried in the river bottom, with just the tips of their shells emerging to suck in water, food and oxygen. They are vulnerable to whatever comes downriver - pesticides, herbicides, heavy metals, silt - and to careless construction projects, dredging and improper barge tie-ups that can tear up whole colonies at once. The newest and biggest threat to native mussels may be zebra mussels.

The zebra mussel is a small, exotic species with no natural predators in North American waters. They What's inside. . . reproduce in great number and cluster densely on every MNRRA 2 available surface, including Current Events 6 othermussels, smothering River Calendar 8 them and preventing them (Mussels, continued on page 4)

BIG RlvER

2

August 1993

Summary of Alternatives """J "

___.._,,.,.

.... ___

Issue

Proposed Plan

Altemaflve A

Altemaflve B

Alfemaflve C

General Concept

Balance use and preservation needs

No action

Emphasize more resource preservation

Emphasize visitor use and development

Land Use/Landscape Character Concept

Preserve and restore natural appearance of shorelines and bluffs; protect historic areas; preserve economic resources; provide setbacks and screen new uses with vegetation

Continue existing land use trends and landscape character mixture

Stress protection of natural, cultural and existing economic resources and open space preservation; minimize new uses

Encourage new highquality development; add new uses with design excellence stimulating tourism

Riverfront Area Land Use (within 300 feet of shore)

Emphasize river-related and river enhancing uses; no change to existing development

No new policy on riverrelated uses near the river

Strictly river-related uses; phase out inconsistent uses

No new policy

Barge FleeHng Areas

Monitor effects; expanded activity would balance desired resource characteristics and river system capacity

No additional management action

Freeze existing areas pending additional research on impacts and alternatives; map all potential new areas

Add fleeting areas per demand while protecting significant sensitive resources

Open Space

Provide a continuous linear open space where feasible; acquire threatened sensitive resources

Add some additional park land per existing local plans

Provide maximum open space protecting sensitive areas and emphasizing resource protection

Acquire some park land for recreation and tourism needs

...

-

-

Park Land Ownership

Minimal Park Service land; additional local park land

No additional Park Service land; additional local parks per existing plans

Significant park service land ownership, including transferring major parks to park service

No additional Park Service land; additional local parks per existing plans plus some additional lands

Resource Management

Balanced resource protection and use; increase pollution reduction efforts; protect cultural and economic resources; coordinate research

No additional action; monitor corridor activities

Stress resource protection and pollution reduction; extensive research efforts

Promote greater use of corridor resources with protection under existing laws and regulations

Visitor Use

Provide broad range of activities In appropriate areas

Continue existing types of use with no coordinoted management

Emphasize passive visitor use activities

Emphasize active recreation use

Park Service Develop¡ ment/CooperaHve lnterpreHve FaciliHes

Park Service interpretive/ administrative facility in St. Paul and cooperative Interpretive center in Minneapolis; cooperative contact stations near north and south ends of corridor

No Park Service facilities

Similar to proposal but more extensive park service interpretive and recreational facilities

No Park Service facilities: extensive local recreation facilities

Management Concept

Extensive partnerships

Existing programs; may lead to Park Service deauthorization

Stronger Park Service role In corridor management

Minimal Park Service role in corridor management

Land Use Management/ Monitoring OpHon

Park Service develops agreements with Metro Council and DNR to review . local plans and actions for conformance to MNRRA plan

No additional monitoring

Park Service/local partnership to monitor plans and actions for plan

Metropolitan Council provides all local land use monitoring services for plan

.

,

August 1993

BIG RlvER

Some Assembly Required - Planning the Metro Area's River and Recreation Area

3

Dayton

By Bill McAuliffe

No one really got to choose how the banks of the metropolitan Mississippi River look. As a result, the corridor from Hastings upstream through St. Paul and Minneapolis to Dayton is a jumble of industrial sites, parks, transportation nodes, wild places, warehouses and historical grottoes. As the earliest European settlers might have said, "Que sera, sera."

People may soon be taking a more deliberate approach.

Recent public hearings and written comments on the future of the metro river corridor offer the public a chance to determine, how the urban Mississippi shore might look a generation from now.

A proposed plan and three detailed alternatives were presented in The Draft Comprehensive Management Plan Environmental Impact Statement, a 249-page report available in metro area public libraries. The report is the product of more than three years' work by the National Park Service and a citizens' group known as the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA) Commission.

The 72-mile stretch of river through the Twin Cities metro area received the MNRRA designation in 1988, by an act of Congress. It was established as a unit of the National Park System in order to increase appreciation of the river. Not surprisingly, the draft plan proposes a new version of the ugly duckling story.

The proposal acknowledges that the metro Mississippi is a "working river," but emphasizes a long-term restoration of continuous green space on its banks through the entire corridor. More immediately, the plan proposes that only river-dependent commercial uses be allowed in the corridor, and that decisions on barge fleeting activities be framed by considerations for aquatic life. But it also proposes a range of setback requirements and encourages a variety of visitor uses, including interpretive centers in downtown St. Paul and Minneapolis.

The proposed plan is decidedly middle-of-the-river, even though it is weighted toward a more natural corridor in the next millennium. The alternatives offer more distinct, and, in two cases, more extreme scenarios. (See Summary on opposite page.)

Alternative A offers essentially a "do-nothing" approach, leaving the future of the corridor to current and emerging forces. Alternative B would turn the riverfront more dramati-

cally toward park and passive recreational uses, emphasizing resource protection, more restrictive land uses and only selective new development.

Alternative C would swing the opposite way, encouraging expanded tourism, and commercial and industrial development, with relatively less land management by the Park Service. At the same time, there would be no park service interpretive centers under this alternative - ironically for St. Paul, whose leaders expect a MNRRA interpretive center on Harriet Island to lead the city into the promised land of riverfront development.

The public is invited to study and comment on the plan during the review period, which ends September 10. Park Service officials have indicated that the final management plan for MNRRA, scheduled for final approval in 1994, will likely be a blend of the proposed plan and the three alternatives. Some as-yet-unheard ideas might also find their way into the plan.+

Bill McAuliffe is a staff writer for the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune.

Big River is published monthly lly Big River, 267 E. Sanborn, Winona, MN 55987, (507) 454-6758.

Reggie McLeod editor/publisher Pamela Eyden assistant editor

Subscriptions are $20 for one year, $36 for two years or $2 per single issue. Send subscriptions, single copy orders and change-of-address requests to Big River, PO Box 741, Winona, MN 55987.

Application to mail at second-class postage rates is pending at Winona, MN. POSTMASTER: send change-of-address requests to Big River, PO Box 741, Winona, MN 55987.

Big River, Volume 1, Number 8, copyright e August 1993.

Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is prohibited.

Printed on recycled paper.

4

August 1993

BIG RlvER

(Mussels, continued from front page) from opening or closing their shells.

"I think within five years you won't see anything but zebra mussels living here," Havlik said. "There are so many variables, it's scary. But if they do as much damage as they have in Lake Erie, chances are freshwater mussels will never recover their losses."

"I think within five years you won't see anything but zebra mussels living here."

Right now, 40 species of freshwater mussels live in the Upper Mississippi River. Most of the creatures Midwesterners call "clams" are actually mussels. They may look alike to the casual eye, but some shells are round, others are elliptical; some are flat, some are fat; some have bumps, others have ridges; some have rays, some don't. They have folksy names - monkeyhead, pigtoe and flat floater - and different preferences when it comes to habitat. You won't find pocketbooks in muddy channels, for example - they like the sandy edges of islands. Threeridge, deertoe and pimpleback seem to be the most common. Monkeyface and wartyback are endangered in Wisconsin. Higgins eye and fat pocketbook are on the federal endangered species list.

The river is big. It's hard to know how many mussels there are. But in Havlik's estimation, no mussels are doing well in the Upper Mississippi River.

"We don't find as many juveniles as we think we should, both live ones in our samples and dead ones on the shore.

This has always been the case, historically, but my guess is that mortality is exceeding recruitment."

Finding mussels and moving them when necessary is Marian Havlik's business. Her business card reads, "Naiad mollusks: Research, surveys, lectures, specimens and scuba diving." Last year she surveyed mussels in the St. Croix River for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and in the Ohio River for the Army Corps of Engineers. She also transplanted 8,000 mussels on the Wolf River for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. Late this summer, as floodwaters recede, Havlik will hook up her 18-foot bass boat, hire a scuba-diving team and head out for projects on the Wisconsin River, the Wolf River and the Elkhorn River in Nebraska.

She spends winters writing up technical field reports.

"My rule of thumb is that every day in the field means five pages of reporting," she said. '1 say everything that needs to be said, even if it's not required, because if I don't say it no one will."

Havlik, a sturdy, clear-eyed, energetic woman in her SOs, took an interest in Mississippi mussels after helping her daughter with a science project. They found information

.· -""?-:··--

(~~~i: about pearls and the mother-of-pearl button industry in the early 1900s, but little about Mississippi mussels. Havlik began studying in earnest while working as a registered nurse on the night shift at a local hospital. Then she applied for and received a Bush Foundation grant to study with David Stansbery of Ohio State University, who remains her mentor.

She is now a professional malacologist and field biologist, but has kept an amateur's passionate personal interest. She leads workshop participants out to check up on specific mussel beds. On her vacation she insists on camping near the water, not up on the bluffs or inland. During the drought a few years ago, she and a friend spent an afternoon tossing 1,000 stranded mussels into deeper water.

"You don' t know how many a thousand is until you throw them," she laughed.

One of the richest mussel beds around is in the east channel of the Mississippi River near Prairie du Chien. As many as 35 different species are found in this one area. Why are there so many different kinds here? Havlik has a theory:

Amazing Mussel Facts • Individual mussel shells are unique. One half of a shell will fit only its other half. The hinges of wrongly paired shells won't match up.

•To get away from their parents and establish new colonies, young mussels, called glochidia, hitchhike in the gills of host fish. They get nutrients and oxygen from their hosts, but cause no damage. Eventually they drop off and settle in new territory.

• Male mussels release sperm into the water, where it moves with the current. Females take it in through their water siphons. Too few mussels, too far apart will diminish the chances of females finding sperm.

•As mussels grow, their shells grow yearly rings, like trees.

Each major ridge/hump represents a year. They grow fastest when they're young. They reach sexual maturity in about five years.•

August 1993

BIG RlvER

Before the 1970s professional dammers used to drag crowfoot bars over the mussel beds, causing mussels to "clam up" and grab onto the prongs. At the end of the day clammers would return to Prairie du Chien and sit sorting the day's catch. By throwing back into the water everything that was too small, they were, in a casual way, seeding the channel.

"I think you could say that transplanting mussels can be successful, just looking at what happened over all those years in Prairie du Chien," Havlik said.

Professional clammers today use scuba diving equipment, which is less damaging to mussel beds than the old crowfoots. It's too dark to see anything 10to14 feet underwater, so clammers work by feel, and they don't take smooth shelled mussels or small ones.

A lot has changed since the 1970s, when Havlik first set up shop as a malacological consultant.

"In those days nobody thought twice about mussels, or anything besides fish and ducks," she said. "Professional clammers were starting to say, 'Hey, something' s going wrong. We aren't finding mussels in the same numbers we always used to.' But no one listened to them. That made me mad . These people may not talk about mussels in scientific terms, but they are out on the river all the time and they know what they see. It turned out they were right."

The decline in the number of freshwater mussels throughout North America has now registered as an ecological, scientific and political concern. But some people still think bridge construction, barge operations and dredging should not be limited just to protect creatures as lowly as freshwater mussels. Havlik has confronted more than a few of these people in her time - on paper, in the media and in court.

"I'm a pretty good expert witness in court," she said. "I don't get intimidated very easily. I don't back down about things."

She is fiercely protective of Higgins eye mussels, which are endangered and no longer found in the stretch of the Mississippi River from the Twin Cities to the Trempealeau River.

She is fiercely protective of Higgins eye mussels, which are endangered and no longer found in the stretch of the Mississippi River from the Twin Cities to the Trempealeau River. Varying in color from dark brown to tan or even yellow, with interiors ranging from cream through rose, salmon and orange, Higgins eye is a puzzle to identify.

Havlik has probably identified more of them - about 2,500 - and she's certainly aged more than anyone else. To age a mussel you count the rings on its shell, a task Havlik sometimes performs while sitting on an upturned bucket in her boat, hurrying to get live animals back in the water as quickly as possible.

5

Higgins eye pearly mussel

Another part of Havlik's work is telling people about the importance of mussels and their role in the complicated ecosystem of the Upper Mississippi River. Mussels help filter and clear the water. They provide food for muskrats, racoons, minks, otters and sheepshead. And they serve as an environmental barometer.

"If you have diverse mussel fauna, you have good water quality and a good fish population. The reverse is not always true, though. The Twin Cities has a good fish population again, but they don't have any mussels at all anymore."+

Pamela Eyden is assistant editor of Big River.

Lend a Mussel a Hand • Toss them out into deeper water, if you see mussels stranded in shallows (2" - 3" deep) as flood waters recede.

• Boaters, take care that propellers do not tear up mussel beds in shallow waters.

• Shell collectors, take only shells of animals that are already dead .

• Pearl lovers, go buy one. A pearl is found in only one out of about 10,000 mussels.

• Don't uproot mussels for fun. If you want to look at a live mussel, be careful and put it back where you found it as soon as possible.

• Learn more from two free booklets: Freshwater Mussels of the Upper Mississippi River, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Winged Maple Leaf Mussel and Higgins Eye Pearly Mussel Freshwater Mussels Threatened with Extinction, Lisa Mueller, Minnesota Department of Agriculture, (612)297-7279.+

BIG RlvER

8

By Reggie McLeod

Cooking Zebras A new weapon in the war against zebra mussels kills them with heat.

First Thermal Systems, Inc., a manufacturerof thermal fluid systems and vaporizers in Chattanooga, Tenn., recently announced Zietren, a "heat sourcing process" that can be installed on trailers, barges or floated . The system heats and circulates a thermal fluid in a coil heater, which then heats the water to a temperature lethal to zebra mussels. First Thermal says its units can eliminate zebra infestations of intake pipes, locks and river vessels, according to an articlein The Waterways Journal(7-19-93).+

Fowl Season Approaches In late summer wildlife managers from the U.S. and Canada compare notes to decide how much hunting pressure migrating ducks and geese can take.

Mallards, which make up about a third of Minnesota's breeding ducks, number 30 percent higher than their 10-year population average.

"While the mallard breeding population declined from 1992, this is still the second highest population since the current survey began in 1968," said Jeff Lawrence, waterfowl researcher for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

Blue-wing teal, which make up another third of the duck population, declined by 27 percent since last year, but their population is near its 10-year average.

Canada geese increased 29 percent since last year, increasing the population to 38 percent above the 10-year average, in Minnesota.

The Canada geese are not doing as well in Canada this year.

The "eastern prairie population," which breeds in northern Manitoba and migrates through western Minnesota, declined substantially. The "Mississippi Valley population," which nests along the coast of Hudson Bay in Ontario, declined by about 30 percent.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is studying the survival of mallard ducklings in Pools 7 and 8 (Trempealeau to Genoa, Wis.). Researchers are monitoring 56 ducklings equipped with radio collars. So, far the survival rate looks better than last year's study, but the results won't be final until the ducks leave.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is seeking comment on three proposals that would affect waterfowl hunters: • The length of shells would be limited to 3.5 inches, the largest currently available, to discourage long-range shooting that can cripple birds.

• Shot size would be limited to No. T (0.20 inch), also to

August 1993

reduce crippling losses. A grace period would allow hunters to use up supplies of larger, No. F, shot.

• The service would require manufacturers to get its approval for anti-corrosive coatings on nontoxic shot pellets, to be certain coatings are not toxic if swallowed by birds.

The comment period lasts until the first week of November.

For more information, write or call: DirectorI MBMO, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 4401 N . Fairfax Dr., Mail Stop 634, Arlington, VA 22203; (703) 358-1714.+

No Appeal for NSP The Minnesota Legislature, not the Minnesota Supreme Court, will decide the fate of a plan to store spent nuclear fuel in metal casks on Prairie Island. The court turned down Northern State Power Company's (NSP) request for an appeal of a Minnesota Court of Appeals decision that overturned a decision by the Minnesota Public Utility Commission (see Big River, March 93 and July 93).

NSP operates two pressurized water nuclear reactors on Prairie Island, which represent about 20 percent of the utility's electrical generating capacity. The facility's indoor storage pool is nearly full. Prairie Island is upriver from Red Wing.

The Prairie Island Mdewakanton Dakota Community, which is near the nuclear plant and the proposed storage site, oppose the storage. Several antinuclear and environmental groups also oppose it.+

River Has New Friends Friends of the Mississippi River, a new, nonprofit, environmental organization will focus on the section of the river in the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (see story on page 2). The St. Paul-based organization is "dedicated to protecting, restoring, and enhancing the Mississippi River within the State of Minnesota, with a primary focus on the Mississippi River segment within the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area."

Friends of the Mississippi River is looking for an executive director - application deadline August 16.

For more information write or call Friends of the Mississippi River, 26 E. Exchange St., Suite 215, St. Paul, MN 551012264; (612) 222-2193.+

Limit Corridor Authority The Mississippi River Parkway Commission of Minnesota doesn't want a Mississippi River National Heritage Corridor to add another layer of bureaucracy to management of the river.

Minnesota is one of 10 river states with a parkway commission. Jointly they constitute the Mississippi River Parkway Commission, which, among other duties, promotes and administers the Great River Road program (see Big River, May 1993).

Representatives from each state commission and five federal offices makeup a 15-member Mississippi River Heritage Corridor Study Commission, which may ask Congress to d esignate the river as a national heritage corridor (see Big River, June 1993).

The definition a "heritage corridor" is ambiguous, but it

August 1993

BIG RlvER

would probably be used to research and publicize the culture and history of the river valley.

Two Wisconsin-based, property-rights groups, PLOW and Citizens for Responsible Zoning and Landowner Rights, have campaigned against the corridor, claiming it is an attempt by the National Park Service to seize private property and land owner's rights (see Big River, July 1993).

The Parkway Commission of Minnesota recently passed a resolution aimed at limiting the scope of the Heritage Corridor, supporting the designation only "to achieve national and international awareness of the resource opportunities of the Mississippi River corridor;" and to not supporting "any further national management, regulatory, or land acquisition action, policy or recommendation beyond this, our original goal . .."

Copies of the resolution were sent to the National Park Service, the Corridor Study Commission, Parkway Commission Board, and local and state officials in Minnesota's river communities.+

7

legislative groundwork for the bill. It has been endorsed by at least nine environmental and sporting organizations, including the Izaak Walton League of America, American Fishing Tackle Manufacturer's Association, American Rivers Association and Trout Unlimited.+

Volunteers Fight Exotics Friendly, energetic volunteers are needed to work at public water accesses in the Mississippi and St. Croix river valleys in a program to educate boaters about stopping the spread of exotic species.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Exotic Species Monitoring Program is targeting mainly zebra mussels and Eurasian watermilfoil. Volunteers will tell boaters about state laws that prohibit the transportation of these invasive species and will show them how to inspect boats and equipment to limit their spread.

New Marina Proposed Jack Neitzke, Fountain City, Wis., has asked the Army Corps of Engineers for a permit to build a 100-slip marina just downriver from Lock and Dam SA, on the Wisconsin side of the Mississippi River. Construction would require dredging a 300foot channel from an existing marina to a shallow pond area to the southeast and dredging the pond.+

Interstate Fish Management Bill Fish don't read maps, so state boundaries don't matter much to a fish. Fisheries managers, on the other hand, do read maps, becausethewatertheymanageisoften carved up by state lines and other jurisdictional borders.

The "Cooperative Interjurisdictional Rivers Fisheries Resources Act of 1993," introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in June, aims to make cooperative agreements between state and federal fisheries managers easier to write and implement, according to a special report from River Crossings, which is published by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The bill, H .R. 2500, provides a mechanism for identifying 10 rivers with the greatest need for cooperative fisheries management and developing comprehensive fishery plans for the five with the highest priority.

The bill allows the directors of state fish and wildlife agencies to decide whether a strategy developed by national groups will apply to their state.

The bill includes $2 million a year for a period of three years to fund a pilot test of the Mississippi Interstate Cooperative Resource Agreement (MICRA), a plan developed by 28 states in the Mississippi River basin and various other entities. It includes specific plans for cooperative management of paddlefish and sturgeon species. Fisheries managers in the basin have identified 80 riverine species in 90 major rivers that require immediate attention.

Congressman Steve Gunderson, R-Wis., did much of the

., . ~

For more information contact: Nicole Nelson, volunteer coordinator, Minn. DNR Exotic Species Monitoring Program, 500 Lafayette Rd., St. Paul, MN 55155-4025; (612) 297-4891or1800-766-6000 (ask for Ecological Services).+

Reggie McLeod is editor of Big River.

Do you have river information to share?

Let Big River help. Send press releases, letters to the editor, news clippings and meeting notices to Big River, PO Box 741, Winona, MN 55987.

And remember, the deadline for calendar information is the 15th of the month before the meeting or event.

8

BIG RlvER

August 1993

(Flood, continued from front page)

Aquatic Plants It will probably take a year or two to get a clear picture of how the high water affected wildlife. A lot depends on weather yet to come, according to John Sullivan, water quality specialist for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources' La Crosse office.

Many water plants disappeared from the river during the droughts of the late 1980s, taking with them food and habitat that fish and birds depended on. This spring Sullivan and others found more plants in the river and backwaters than they had seen in years. But floodwaters may scour out beds of plants and block sunlight to plants.

"We started turning the corner last year in some areas. In Pool 7 some of the wild celery was starting to come back," said Carl Korschgen, wildlife biologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center, in La Crosse.

Researchers will sample the wild celery in Lake Onalaska in mid-August. Sago pondweed and other species in the lake appear to have survived. Arrowhead plants were covered with silt and algae in late July. If they are robust enough, river plants should begin producing seeds and tubers in fall.

Floods fill in some channels and scour out others. They wash a lot of sediment into the river system, but they also carry a lot of it away.

"We don't think there will be any serious changes of sediment quality," Sullivan said.

In mid-July Sullivan canoed the lower La Crosse River, which was backed up into the marshes. Sediment in the backed up river had settled out in the marsh.

"It was the cleanest I've ever seen it," he recalled. ''You can get sites where the tributary streams are running clearer than the Mississippi River. That's the opposite of what you usually see."

Ducks, Fish and Trees A study of duckling survival in Pool 7 and Pool 8 shows that, so far, survival appears to be much higher than it was during the last two years.

The La Crosse District of the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge, listed other effects: Northern pike, walleyes and catfish do well in high water. They spawn in shallows and their eggs have a better chance of hatching when the water stays high. The fry also have more protection and time to grow before they move into the deeper channels.

Bluegills and bass, both lake fish, don't fare as well during floods because silt can smother their eggs.

Silver maples are used to wet conditions and a week or two of high water, but many appear to be suffering now.

Some are losing leaves and a fungus caused by high humidity is attacking others. If they are not anchored firmly enough in the saturated earth, they may be toppled by high winds.+

AUGUST 3-5 Wetlands Engineering Workshop, Adams Mark Hotel, St. Louis, Mo. Contact Chery Lloyd, (601) 634-3711.

4 Mississippi Stewardship Coalition meeting, to plan Sept. clean up, 7:30 p.m., First United Methodist Church basement, Red Wing.

4 Conservation Congress District 5 meeting, Buffalo County Courthouse, 3rd floor meeting room, Alma, Wis., 7:30 p.m.

4-6 Mississippi Water Resources Assn. annual meeting, Grande Beach Resort, Biloxi, Miss. Call (601) 957-6536 6-10 Mississippi River Parkway Commission annual meeting, Natchez, Miss. Call (612) 224-9903.

10 Migratory Game Bird Season public hearing, La Crosse County Courthouse basement, La Crosse, 7:30. Call Jon Bergquist, Wis. DNR (608) 266-8841.

12 Minnesota-Wisconsin Boundary Area Commission meeting. Call (612) 436-7131 or (715) 386-9444.

12 Lower Wisconsin State Riverway Board meeting, Boscobel.

Call 1-800-221-3792 or (608) 739-3188.

14 Minnesota Prairie Days, Red Wing.

14-15 Prairie Day, O.L. Kipp State Park, Dakota, Minn.

18 Mississippi River Parkway Commission of Minn., community involvement meeting, St. Cloud. Call (612) 224-9903.

19 Mississippi River Parkway Commission of Minn., community involvement meeting, St. Paul. Call (612) 224-9903.

20-22 Earth Sports Expo, environmental recreation, National Sports Center, Blaine, Minn. Call (612) 378-7717.

21 River Clean-up, Mississippi River Revival, Winona Chapter, Latsch Island, 9 a.m. - 4 p.m. Bring boats and work gloves if you can. Another group leaves Fountain City at 10:30 a.m. Kids events, 4 p.m. - 6 p.m., music 6 p.m. - 8 p.m.

31 Environmental Management Program Coordinating Committee meeting, Upper Mississippi River Basin Association, Radisson Hotel, La Crosse. Call (612) 224-2880.

SEPTEMBER 1 Upper Mississippi River Basin Association Quarterly Meeting, Radisson Hotel, La Crosse. Call (612) 224-2880.

3-6 American Indian Pow Wow, Ft. Snelling State Park, St. Paul.

8-10 Status and Management of UMRS Nongame Wildlife Focusing on the Future, Upper Mississippi River Conservation Committee, Radisson Hotel, La Crosse. Call Craig Thompson, Wis. DNR, (608) 785-9014.

9 Minnesota-Wisconsin Boundary Area Commission committee meetings. Call (612) 436-7131 or (715) 386-9444.+