Pollution from Minnesota's largest dump and sewage plant has seeped into the sediment of Pig's Eye Lake in St. Paul, state environmental officials say, and they want the Metropolitan Council to help clean it up.
The cleanup push comes amid separate efforts to restore habitats and attract park visitors to a remote corner of St. Paul alongside the Mississippi River, where the city once threw its garbage in a massive unprotected pit — an unlined landfill that's the biggest of its kind in the state. Pig's Eye is also where about a third of the state's population still sends its wastewater to one of the nation's largest treatment plants, operated by the Met Council, which historically disposed of ash from sludge incineration on nearby land.
The state covered the dump, removed toxic waste drums and installed a soil barrier to help hold back what one staff member calls "garbage juice" about 20 years ago. And the Met Council stopped dumping its ash on its property in 1985. But the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency says metals remaining in the sediment pose a risk to wormlike organisms there and the animals that eat them.
"We can't go back in time and prevent this. We can try to manage some of it and do the cleanup," said MPCA Assistant Commissioner Kirk Koudelka. "We've learned from our past. And we're going to work to clean this up together with Met Council."
Other plans for the lake, named after early St. Paul settler (and tavern-keeper) Pierre "Pig's Eye" Parrant, are simultaneously taking shape.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers solicited public feedback last week for a project with Ramsey County to build islands in Pig's Eye Lake using materials dredged from the Mississippi River, benefiting migrating birds and reducing erosion. The former dump is now a city park accessible only through a wood-chipping yard, but park planners highlighted long-term hopes to redevelop it in a major riverfront plan released last year.
"It truly is one of the most surreal urban landscapes," said Mary deLaittre, manager of St. Paul's Great River Passage Initiative. "You can see downtown. You can see all the heavy industry and the infrastructure. And then of course, overhead, you're going to see ducks and geese … because it's one of the major flyways in the United States."
The Met Council wants to study the surrounding area further before committing to a cleanup, however. In a 2014 letter, it disputed MPCA's assertions that its ash contributed to contamination and said a survey showed a low risk to the wildlife there. It is now planning to test its land to study what remains of the ash.