FRI.6.26:KFAI:COLDWATER CREEK Update/Action

Fri.JUNE 26, 11AM, on CATALYST:politics & culture on KFAI Radio:
Lifelong peace/environmental activist-poet, SUSU JEFFREY updates the struggle to preserve, COLDWATER CREEK, the last natural spring in Hennepin County/Minneapolis, Minnesota.  This struggle has encompassed INdigenous peoples' rights, environmental racism, development and free speech/dissent. Will Coldwater benefit from "shovel ready" project money to expand it as a "Green Museum"--or be further at risk? (More information below). She will also read her poems, born of this struggle. KFAI 90.3 FM Mpls 106.7 FM St.Paul Live-streaming/archived for 2 weeks after broadcast on the CATALYST page at:
http://www.kfai.org

COLDWATER  ALERT  

Funds to return the Coldwater Spring area to "open green space" were dropped from the federal stimulus package. The National Park Service budgeted $3.5-million to remove the old Bureau of Mines buildings and to prepare the 27-acre Mississippi blufftop property for replanting as an oak savanna urban wilderness.

 

There is no opposition to this plan. The project was scheduled to begin next winter, after the ground freezes. The new Coldwater Park was supposed to open in September 2010.

 

Two of the 11 abandoned, graffitied buildings have been discovered by intravenous drug users. Some people argue that erosion is a bigger problem than the junkies.

 

The old Bureau of Mines campus at Coldwater has been shovel-ready since 1995. More money has been spent on security than building removal will cost. Hennepin sheriff's deputies currently patrol Coldwater in trade for bomb squad and canine training space—activities inconsistent with a sacred site.

 

Coldwater is:

—The last natural spring in Hennepin County, at least 10,000-years-old, still flowing at about 90-thousand gallons per day.

—A traditional sacred site for Dakota, Anishinabe, Ho Chunk, Iowa, Sauk and Fox peoples.

—The Birthplace of Minnesota, where the soldiers lived who built Fort Snelling and a civilian community developed to service the Fort. Dred Scott was stationed at the Fort between 1836-40 and based his case for freedom from slavery in part on his residency in the free then-Wisconsin Territory.

—A winter jobs program for construction workers.

 

Please phone our U.S. Congress members to ask that the $3.5-million Coldwater project funds be reinstated.

Congresswoman Betty McCollum (who is on the Appropriations Committee) 651-224-9191

Congressman Keith Ellison 612-522-1212    

Senator Amy Klobuchar 612-727-5220

(Photo, more info & direct email link to Congress people at www.FriendsofColdwater.org)

 

What happens to the water happens to the people.