Ways of Crossing: The (In)Visibility of Human Intervention on the Mississippi River
I cross the Mississippi nearly every morning on bike or bus, traveling across the Wabasha Street Bridge to arrive at my office across the river from where I live. On clear autumn days, I glide down Kellogg Boulevard in downtown St. Paul and watch the trees turn from green, watch the sun reflect off the water below, watch the American flags that sit atop the bridge blow in the wind. The flags, the bridge, and, indeed, the very act of crossing the Mississippi River serve as reminders of human dominance and intervention over nature. In part due to the natural border of a river and in part due to the inconvenience of crossing, the Mississippi once served as the boundary between territories. The 1763 Treaty of Paris drew a line along the middle of the Mississippi River, which became the border between British and French territories. Over time, these borders have shifted, yet the river remains a symbol of human progress and productivity. Human intervention on the natural environment of the Mississippi River through the act of crossing is both a visible and an invisible process, intimately tied to notions of state and industry. I argue that the paradox of the seen and the unseen in the crossing of the river lies in that human action makes water systems invisible, as with sewage systems and pipelines, yet is also required in making those same systems visible again, through art, mapping, and activism. By creating a map to expose the pipelines that cross the Mississippi River in the Twin Cities, human design again acts upon our perception of our built and natural environment.
Crossing and Visibility
In the 1700s, farmers relied on the rivers for the fish that would feed their families, yet by the next century, owners of blast furnaces, textile mills, and other factories began damming rivers to power their factories and mills, negatively impacting fish populations (Steinberg 59). Where water was once used by anyone at will, it quickly became commodified. Through companies’ “quest for greater production and profit, [these enterprises] eventually transformed water itself into a commodity” (Steinberg 59), raising questions about who could control nature and for what purposes. The rise of dams and canals allowed factories to work year round, with companies controlling the distribution of water. The “natural-flow rule,” stating that the customary flow of water could not be altered, was brought into question and deemed “flexible,” meaning that companies were allowed to use the river for their own means as long as their actions accompanied economic growth (Steinberg 61). As industrialization increased, fish spawning grounds and even the natural flow of rivers were altered as companies gained control over a part of nature that had become commodity.
Assembled in the name of industry, trains crossed the first railroad bridge over the Mississippi River in April of 1856, connecting the agriculture and factory hubs of the Midwest to the economic center of the United States, New York City. In 1856 and today, bridges connect people and business through the built environment. Some of the most visible signs of human interaction with the river, bridges like the Stone Arch Bridge, a former railroad bridge that crosses the Mississippi at Saint Anthony Falls, have become symbols of manmade prosperity, commerce, and success.
Now, we cross the Mississippi by foot, bike, car, bus, train, plane, and so on. For the most part, these methods are visible acts of crossing, carried out by humans to further transportation, access, and economy. As a caveat, although the Metro Transit System is visible, the pursuit of transportation equity is less so. In the Twin Cities, the initial proposal for the new light rail train system did not include stops that would be accessible to the low-income and minority communities that live along East University Avenue. Cutting through traditionally under-served communities, the new transit system drew comparisons to the construction of the I-94 highway, which deliberately cut through the historically black Rondo neighborhood. Awarded the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2010 National Environmental Justice Award, the Stops for Us! Coalition helped add three new light rail stops to ensure that systems of public transportation would serve all communities. Even visible systems that cross the Mississippi River, like public transportation, can obscure far-reaching structures of inequality and injustice.
Unseen Systems
Not all ways of crossing are immediately apparent. Intended to advance industry and commerce, oil and gas pipelines carry their products across state boundaries and across the natural border of the Mississippi River. Just like the early railroad bridges of the 1800s, pipelines carry the sources and products of American economy through the natural environment, heralded as the height of human ingenuity and progress. Three pipelines cross the Mississippi River in Minnesota, owned by the Magellan, Koch, and Enbridge companies, respectively.
Recently, the proposed replacement of Enbridge’s Line 3 Pipeline has drawn new attention to the generally unseen processes of oil and gas transport. Built in the early 1960s, Enbridge’s Line 3 Pipeline covers over 300 miles in Minnesota. With over 900 structural integrity issues, the current pipeline leaks oil throughout Minnesota, contaminating native land and water supply. Due to these structural issues, Enbridge plans to abandon the existing pipeline and build a replacement that cuts through tribal land and endangers the Great Lakes. The proposed new Line 3 Pipeline would carry nearly twice as much crude oil as the existing pipeline — far beyond a mere replacement. Between 2010 and 2016, nearly 9 million gallons of crude oil spilled from pipelines in the United States. Opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline garnered unprecedented media attention, yet its installation went ahead anyway. In 2017, the Dakota Access Pipeline leaked at least five times, validating protesters’ fears. The transport of crude oil and natural gas through manmade pipelines demonstrates the destructive impact of humans on our environment and on each other.
In some ways, human intervention on the environment is incredibly visible; the Stone Arch Bridge tangibly and concretely demonstrates the act of human conquering wild. Enbridge’s Line 3 Pipeline, on the other hand, is much less visible. How can we visualize unseen human interventions on the environment? What prevents visibility? One answer lies in cartography. Maps reveal our surroundings, yet are subjective as human creations themselves. Katharine Harmon’s book titled You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination considers the art of the map as the art of being human. She notes that part of what intrigues us about maps is “inhabiting the mind of its maker…if I had mapped that landscape, we ask ourselves, what would I have chosen to show, and how would I have shown it?” (Harmon 11). The potential of maps to reveal our humanity also limits the objectivity of the map. For every feature or system the map exposes, there are others that remain unseen and obscured. Rebecca Solnit’s work on atlases, as in Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas, also confronts the visible and invisible in environmental systems through the human act of mapping. Solnit writes compellingly of the hidden nature of Minetta Creek, which helped power New York City’s water system, telling us that “the ghosts of Manhattan’s old water supply system live on in stories, only occasionally surfacing” (Solnit). Paradoxically, it is through human intervention that our environment and water systems are concealed, yet it is through the human intervention of mapping, art, and activism that again reveals them.
While in the library, I came across a book of Upper Mississippi River Navigation Charts constructed by the U.S. Army Engineer Division in 1972. These maps included notes for everything from submerged cables to wildlife sanctuaries, but I failed to find an accessible, updated version that included the modern transit and pipeline systems that cross the river. Instead, a cursory Google search resulted in my discovery of the National Pipeline Mapping System (NPMS) public viewer. This Department of Transportation tool reveals where liquid and gas pipelines are located in the United States, along with any and all accidents caused by those pipelines. When using the tool, public viewers are only able to access data regarding one county during a search session and are prevented from downloading any relevant data. Through these limitations, users are blocked from knowing the extent of these hidden pipeline systems. The pipelines are visible, but only to the extent that the government and corporations allow them to be.
As seen in this screenshot of the mobile app viewer of the National Pipeline Mapping System, one county is highlighted. This image of Ramsey County, Minnesota (where St. Paul, the capital of Minnesota is located) shows the natural liquid and gas pipelines running through the county in red and dark blue, along with liquid and gas accidents that have occurred in purple and light blue. Viewing one county at a time limits connections between counties, visually halting our mental map of pipelines in this country. Preventing viewers from downloading data makes the function of the map ephemeral — temporarily visible, but not for long. The National Pipeline Mapping Systems viewer, with all its limitations, appears to be the only digital site where viewers can access geographic systems data about the locations of hazardous liquid and gas pipelines in the United States. Google Maps, for example, does not have a tool where users could see oil and gas pipelines in their area, which would make knowledge about these pipeline systems more accessible and less hidden.
To combat the limited nature of the public viewer tool, I worked with a friend and cartographer, Henry McCarthy, to create a map and visualization of pipelines across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Our finished product appears here.
The map’s aim is to bring together the geography of major roads and hazardous liquid and gasoline pipelines with the natural environment of the Mississippi River, revealing the manmade systems that act upon the river. In this map, viewers can see the topography of the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. As a state, Minnesota is known for its freshwater lakes and the might of the Mississippi River. Here, the map centers on the Mississippi River, revealing where liquid and gas pipelines cross these water sources. At times, the pipelines appear disconnected where they cross the Mississippi, which is due to the underground or submerged nature of the pipelines. Ultimately, the map serves to counter the lack of continuity in the National Pipeline Mapping System public viewer. The public map viewer makes this visualization of pipelines difficult, yet it is again through mapping that these systems become clear.
The Art of Making Visible
Although the manmade design of systems of water and crossing are rendered invisible through human intervention, it is also through human design that these systems can be made visible again. The seen meets the unseen through art, geography, and activism. States must collaborate with citizens and artists with scientists to reveal the natural environment we have worked to conceal, as the danger in being unable to see our impact on the environment reaches everything from the carbon footprint we create through an increasingly distant food system to the rising rates of cancer, respiratory disease, and heart disease linked to industry. Art and design is one way to bring these anthropogenic processes to light.
Innovative work to check out in this realm includes the Making the Invisible Visible: The Big Pipe Portal Project created by the RHIZA Architecture and Design studios, which draws attention to the confluence of the Eastside and Westside Combined Sewer Overflow tunnels in Portland, Oregon. The same studio created the Eastbank Knotted Gateway series, which “marks the blurred boundary between the natural and human-made aspects of the site” of Interstate 5 and the Willamette River. In the Twin Cities, Anna Metcalfe’s Upstream project builds connections across the Mississippi watershed through ceramics and stories. Visual artist Seitu Jones has created work for Twin Cities Light Rail stations, along with sewage grates designed to help viewers remember and visualize the flow of water through our sewer system to the Mississippi. Most recently, he was awarded a public art grant to build a boat to serve as a research vessel on the Mississippi River. By working with cities that support sustainability and public art across sectors and actors, we can make the invisible visible again.
Books Referenced
Harmon, Katharine. You are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004. Print.
Solnit, Rebecca. Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas. University of California Press, 2016. Print.
Steinberg, Theodore. Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. Print.