STATE GIVES UP ON CLEANING PARK HARBOR

Seventeen years after the Trail of Tears State Park Marina on the Mississippi River was completed, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources is giving up its attempt to maintain the $1.5 million marina as a slackwater harbor.

Actually, the DNR officially abandoned the idea of making it a marina for pleasure craft in April 1980, when it moved a large boat dock from the park to the Harry S. Truman State Park and Lake near Warsaw.

The DNR notified the Corps of Engineers in May that it will sacrifice the concept of a slackwater harbor so improvements can be made that will allow the continued operation of a boat ramp for access to the river.

"It's a major change in philosophy for the DNR," said Claude Strauser, chief of the potamology branch of the Corps' St. Louis district office. "Until now the DNR wanted to maintain a quiet water harbor that would provide shelter to boats from wavewash from passing towboats, debris, and ice during the winter.

"Now they have changed their goal and are willing to sacrifice the slackwater concept so improvements can be made that will reduce the problem of sedimentation accumulation on the boat ramp, and still maintain some protection to boats from wavewash and debris in the river," said Strauser.

The marina was constructed in 1974-75 at a cost of $1,511,074. The cost was shared by the DNR and the Corps.

The marina was scheduled to officially open in spring 1975; however, flooding that year left several feet of mud and sediment in the marina, making it impossible for most boats to use.

In 1980, state officials said it would have cost another $650,000 to make the marina operable again, and there would still be the continued expense of cleaning up after floods.

"The problem out there is that there is an equivalent of a 1,000-acre farm that passes the boat ramp every day in the form of suspended sediments in the water," Strauser explained. "If just 1 percent of that 1,000-acre farm decides to drop out and visit the marina, it's a real problem keeping the harbor open."

After the sedimentation problem was discovered in 1975, a study was conducted by the Corps' waterways experiment station at Vicksburg, Miss. It concluded the problem was caused by the varying height of the dikes that surround the marina on the upstream and riverward side of the harbor area.

In an attempt to solve the problem, the Corps agreed to shave five feet off the top of the rock spur dike that extends from the bank into the river at the upper end of the marina. The work was done in 1987, and was followed by a $200,000 dredging project to remove the accumulated sediment from the mouth and floor of the marina harbor.

In February 1991, following a series of minor floods, the Corps conducted sediment soundings in the marina. The soundings indicated it would still require frequent and expensive dredging to maintain an open channel into the marina and keep the marina free of sediment.

The Corps wants to make changes to the spur dike to increase the flow of water into the upstream side of the harbor. Strauser said by taking out a large section of the spur dike down to the river bed, it's hoped the swift water will reduce the amount of sediment that drops to the bottom as it flows through the harbor. That would mean less maintenance dredging of the harbor, which the Corps has agreed to continue to do for the DNR.

"You have to remember that you're never going to eliminate the sediment problem entirely," said Strauser. "It's just the nature of the beast. The Mississippi is a fast-moving, silt-laden river, not a currentless body of impounded water such as a large lake."

Strauser said work on the spur dike is scheduled to begin in fall 1993, and should take about a week to complete. "After the work is done by a private contractor, we'll stand back and let Mother Nature and the river do their thing," he said. "If there is enough current moving through the dike into the harbor to reduce sedimentation, we'll leave well enough alone; if not, we have some other ideas that we'll try, but we have to wait and evaluate our effort before going on."

Denny Bopp, regional supervisor of the DNR's Parks, Recreation and Historic Sites regional office at Festus, said he's delighted at the prospect of less sediment being removed from the boat ramp after each flood.

"There have been times when I had to bring in my heavy stuff such as a front-end loader, or even rent a big, expensive `trackscavator' to take out all of the sediment," he said. "Sometimes we have had to clear as much as 60 to 100 feet of sediment from the ramp just to get to the edge of the water. It costs lots of money to do this.

"I would like to think when the dike work is done it will reduce the number of expensive clean-up visits that I will have to make each time the river floods at the park."

Bopp said a decision on installing a courtesy boat ramp for boaters to tie to when putting in or taking their boats out of the river will not be made for at least two years after the dike work is done.

"We're not going to gamble with the taxpayers' money. Before we put something in there we're going to wait a couple of seasons to see if it would be washed away by the current," he said.

Although it no longer serves as a marina, Assistant Trail of Tears Park Superintendent Greg Henson said the boat ramp has become an important part of the park.

In addition to commercial fishermen using the access ramp on a regular basis, Henson said the ramp is also used by duck hunters, recreational boaters and other boaters.

He said several barge lines also use the boat ramp to make crew changes. A small boat brings the off-duty crewmen to the ramp and picks up crew members for the return trip to the passing towboat.