Below are a couple of links we came across recently. The first one was posted to Facebook by the Friends of the Minnesota River Valley. The second was another article found within that original link. The Friends of the Minnesota River Valley are part of the group proposing a paved trail in the valley. They are both short articles and worth your time to read if you are one with this effort to protect the Minnesota River Valley from overdevelopment. If you don't have the time, here are a few quotes from those stories that should hit home: From: Made to Wash Away. The Minnesota River now meanders down the bottom of this valley, a trickle in comparison. Despite its mild gradient, this gentle prairie river has some of the highest erosion rates in the world. Its waters often run brown with silt and clay. The rapidity with which the sand is accumulating is affecting ecosystems and more immediately, it is inconvenient and costing taxpayers money. It has the potential to affect commercial barge traffic to the Port of Savage; it is using more taxpayer dollars as dredging tries to keep up with the river-filling sand; and it will spread sand on a proposed paved bike trail that would run along the levee from the Bloomington Ferry Bridge to Ft. Snelling. (Fat-tire bikers and mountain bikers may be happy to hear this. They would like to keep this part of the river wild.) From: Why So Much Sand in the Lower Minnesota River? Anything placed on the floodplain here will be slowly smothered with sand, as the buried root crowns of the floodplain trees attest. Modeled projections are for more intense April-June storms and an overall increase in annual ­­precipitation. The precipitation patterns are shifting, too, with more rain falling in the Minnesota River basin. So even if we do nothing, the flows in the river will continue to increase, resulting in increased flooding, erosion, and sediment transport. https://www.smm.org/scwrs/fieldnotes/made-wash-away-minnesota-rivers-geologic-challenges http://openrivers.umn.edu/article/why-so-much-sand-in-the-lower-minnesota-river/ Thank you for taking the time to read and share this post if you are so willing. Together we continue the effort to preserve one of the last wild spaces in the Twin Cities Metro. #Savetheriverbottoms