08-23-2023 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Transportation seems to have given up on Savage Lake. It’s significant that the lake no longer appears on official state highway maps even though other lakes in the area of comparable size are shown. I sometimes wonder what might have been if Little Canada’s segment of I-35E had been built ten to twenty years later than it was? I expect that residents and environmental advocates might then have resisted the highway department’s plan to run over the lake and a way might have been found to route the Interstate around it, as was done for Blackhawk Lake in Dakota County. This does seem to be a case where the early bird got the worm, but that worm turned out to be a bitter one. The bird might have been much better off going hungry a little longer. ****** We live in a house that God built but that the former tenants remodeled—blew up, it looks like—before we arrived. —Terry and Renny Russell from On the Loose (1967) Earlier efforts have been made to raise awareness of the plight of Savage Lake. A Lillie Newspaper article in 2009 highlighted its degraded condition and quoted former Little Canada City Council member (and current State Representative), Bev Scalze, as she reflected upon the condition of the lake before the Interstate was built: “There was a lake, and it was a complete lake. It didn’t have ten lanes of asphalt running through it.” When I was in my early twenties, I developed a heightened awareness of the environment. This was aided by a book I was given then, written by Terry and Renny Russell, who spent much of their spare time in the 1960s exploring wilderness areas of the Western United States. One of the observations in their book still resonates for me as I consider the overall condition of my watershed and of Savage Lake—of my place. The former tenants have indeed remodeled my place, and from an ecological perspective, it also appears they may have blown it up. Few, if any, of the watershed’s lakes and streams today are as they once were when it functioned as a natural ecosystem. Ironically, the best place to see Savage Lake is from the Interstate highway as it crosses through the lake, but considering how busy that highway is today, one had better not dally to take in the view. With the poor condition of the current lake, the thousands of people who cross it each day readily see it degraded state. I suppose some who travel that highway have no idea they are crossing a lake at all. For instance, one friend of mine recently told me that she and her daughter assumed the portion of the lake east of the highway was an artificial pond that had been built to reflect the bell tower of St. John’s Church.