At a public meeting on Feb. 21, the Cottage Grove City Council and Mayor Bailey voted unanimously to approve a controversial development on the river bluffs at the site of the former golf course known as Mississippi Dunes. Rachel Development's proposed 377-unit housing development would destroy one of the last intact, open stretches along the Mississippi. This beautiful land, of rare rolling dunes and oak savannah, falls completely within the Mississippi River Critical Corridor, Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, and Mississippi Flyway (a globally important bird area.) In addition, it is surrounded by places of great cultural significance including Native American burial mounds, and the historic Cowan House that has stood since before the Civil War. Many red flags have been raised by numerous experts regarding this proposed project and the implications it would have for federally threatened and endangered species, for water quality, for light and noise pollution of the surrounding community, among other concerns.
The area has also, for the last many years, acted as a buffer of protection for the Grey Cloud Dunes Scientific and Natural Area, a place of international importance for its biodiversity and natural beauty. Development already threatens to strangle this SNA, and Cottage Grove's Mayor and Council seem only too glad to let it go.
Friends of Grey Cloud with website at https://friendsofgreycloud.org is the local citizens’ group working to protect the Dunes property. They’ve had the support of hundreds of residents, and an increasing number of people outside the city, who want this beautiful and rare area to remain available to wildlife and to the public. Their main point has been: This is the wrong place for development.
I believe it would be a huge loss for the people of Cottage Grove, and for the Region, if the Mississippi Dunes property is swallowed up by houses, its rare quiet and open space, so necessary for us all, sacrificed for the few instead of preserved for the many. I wonder why, when serious questions remain about this proposal, the Council and Mayor have been so bent on giving the developers the green light? They've gone through the motions to hold public hearings, then seemingly dismissed their own constituents' impassioned opposition. Before the bulldozers roll, Rachel Development could still make the choice to withdraw and build elsewhere. The landowner could also make a choice: to protect, rather than to destroy, the Dunes.
Kim Sonderegger
Volunteer Co-Site Steward, Grey Cloud Dunes SNA
Minneapolis
