Feds buying up land in south metro for refuge

A federal agency is quietly spending tens of millions of dollars to lengthen a swath of publicly owned natural areas up and down the Minnesota River.

It's all possible because of a fund created almost a decade ago when a new runway at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport sent flights over part of the Minnesota Valley Wildlife Refuge for the first time. The Metropolitan Airports Commission agreed to set up the $26 million fund to compensate for its intrusion on the natural area.

The result could be to more than double the number of miles of riverfront included in what is already an unusual asset for any big metropolitan area.

"An urban wildlife refuge is very rare in this country," said Deb Loon, who is overseeing the land buys. "It's a very unique resource."

Since 2004, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has acquired 2,809 acres, of which 1,261 have been added to the refuge. The rest consists of so-called "waterfowl production areas," or wetlands, further south and west.

The refuge was 12,500 acres before the expansion began, and the aim is to acquire more than 4,000 acres, all of it from willing sellers without any condemnation of land.

The federal government's "search area," in which it is seeking landowners willing to sell, overlaps with land that Scott County sees as one of the great potential jewels of the park system it hopes to have decades from now: the Blakely Bluffs area, in the far southwest corner of the county. So the feds could enable a cash-strapped county to get an early start on preserving land.

"Whatever can be done about water quality will be a huge plus for us," said Mark Themig, Scott county's manager for parks and trails.

Officials expect to end up investing quite a bit more than the initial $26 million -- well over $30 million in all -- once supplemental grants from others have been factored in.

Much of the land acquired so far is flood plain, but some of it is cropland that is being returned to its natural state. One parcel was an apple orchard alongside Hwy. 169 between Jordan and Belle Plaine.

A few hard feelings

The refuge's relationship with Scott County has at times been an uneasy one, said Lori Nelson, executive director of Friends of the Minnesota River Valley.

Of the 549 national wildlife refuges, at least one in each state, only four are in urban areas, said Charlie Blair, manager of the refuge. San Francisco, Philadelphia and Denver have the others.

Buying will continue

Along the Minnesota River, buying will continue for the next several years, and advocates hope that a group can be put together to continue them even longer.

The most active land buying at the moment is taking place at the southern end of Scott and northern Le Sueur counties, Loon said. "We have a total of 820 acres on either side of the river where landowners have expressed an interest in selling to us," she said.

The federal acquisitions should dovetail nicely with Scott County's park plans later on, Themig said. The feds "will protect the flood plain, helping with hunting and fishing, while we acquire, eventually, park reserve land that is kept natural for outdoor recreation. It's an area of tremendous beauty, and they have the resources, thankfully, to buy the land at a time when the market should be to their advantage."