By Mark Reilly for Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal
If anyone reading this has any interest at all in the massive lock and dam system that sits on the edge of downtown Minneapolis — a timeless fixture in the region’s geography and business history — please give the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers a call.
The Star Tribune reports that the Army Corps of Engineers, which built the lock and dam system to help generate power and keep the Mississippi River open for commercial shipping, has been looking for years to sell the facility. The locks have been closed since 2014, a step taken to help cut off migration of invasive carp.
But so far, there haven’t been any takers. Not the city of Minneapolis or its Parks Board, which is developing the land around the dam into an urban park. Not Xcel Energy Inc., which owns a nearby hydroelectric plant.
One of the chief roadblocks, apparently, is that the facility is too important to own. It helps provide drinking water for the city, so it’s an asset to Minneapolis. But if something were to go wrong — the St. Anthony Falls nearly collapsed more than a century ago, which is what brought the Army in to begin with — the effects could be felt far downstream in other states, and nobody wants to take on that kind of risk.
Read the full article at BizJournals.com.