Safe fishing on pier Amy Lochli of Staples holds her first place 19 inch northern that she pulled out of Dower Lake June 14. Amelia Fornstable from Wadena helped her pull up the northern. (Staples World photo by Tom Crawford) Reaction in the Staples community to a KSTP television ‘investigative reporting’ segment broadcast last week was virtually universal: it was a hatchet job.

Reporter Bob McNaney’s broadcast version, plus a longer segment on the KSTP website, used the Dower Lake pier replacement project as an example of unnecessary government spending and a pork barrel project that went against the rules of the Department of Natural Resources, which eventually paid for the project.

McNaney’s piece, with video of the new pier constructed in 2008 and dedicated last June, starts out:

“5 EYEWITNESS NEWS Tracking Your Money discovered a huge pier on a small Minnesota lake that cost taxpayers $667,000 breaks Department of Natural Resources rules.

“The DNR said the 612- foot fishing pier on Dower Lake near Staples should never have been built. It’s the biggest pier in Minnesota, built on a lake one-fifth the size of Lake Calhoun.

“According to internal DNR e-mails, staff repeatedly tried to kill the project because of environmental and financial concerns. Staff members said allowing the project to move forward and disregarding DNR rules would open the door to shoreline absurdities like gazebos in the middle of White Bear Lake or boardwalks blocking off the shore of Lake Calhoun.”

Local reaction to the story was almost universally defensive of the project which replaced a century old, dilapidated Northern Pacific structure with a new handicapped accessible fishing pier.

“It was definitely put together to attack the DNR and state legislators. It portrayed the whole thing as a tremendous waste of money,” said Kevin Grondahl, the director of the Staples Parks and Recreation Department, who was instrumental in getting the new pier built.”

He’s astounded by the dollar figure the TV report claims. “I’ve been told by the DNR the cost was $540,000. The original budget was $525,000, but there was a cost overrun due to extending the pier an extra 12 feet (to cover a concrete structure at the end of the old pier) and support pilings had to be pounded down further than first anticipated. Where their figure of $667,000 came from, I don’t know.”

Grondahl was most

upset at the lack of the “human side of the story.”

He was interviewed by McÑaney but nothing from his interview was used. “I told him how it has been used by the public since at least the 1960’s. I told him I learned to fish there myself. It’s been used for recreational purposes by people from the surrounding area for nearly 50 years. We had an adult group home with wheelchair people using the pier this summer, a summer school group from Bertha fished off the pier last summer. It’s much more than just people from Staples using it.”

“People without boats can fish there and they use it for fishing all the time.”

Grondahl began trying to replace the old Northern Pacific pier (built around 1906 or earlier to provide water to the railroad’s steam generating facilities in Staples) or refurbish in the late 1990’s. He first worked with the DNR but found they were not interested. “The DNR from the onset was against it.” The DNR’s Trails and Waterways Division normally constructs 25 to 40 foot long docks at public accesses. With an annual budget of perhaps $150,000 for such dock, they told him to contact his legislators.

He found the support he needed with former State Sen. Dallas Sams who first tried to incorporate pier replacement into normal DNR funding bills with limited success. Eventually in 2005 during the second Special Session of the Legislature, Sams was able to get Dower Lake pier funding into an Omnibus bonding bill. In the House, Sams’ counterpart Mary Ellen Otremba and Rep. Dennis Ozment from Fairmont cosponsored the measure.

Without the late Sams to interview, KSTP incorrectly said Otremba picked up the bill after Sams died. She was interviewed about something five years earlier which she had only slight involvement and a short splice of her interview was used.

“They really spun it to make her look bad,” Grondahl said.

But the funding was approved in 2005, two years before Sams died, a year before he lost the 2006 election.

Even after the funding was okayed, the DNR balked at the size of the pier. “They came up with the idea of a floating pier about a 125 feet long. Dallas rejected that idea. He called then DNR Commissioner Gene Merriam and that idea was soon dropped.”

“I don’t feel this was a pork barrel project,” Grondahl said. “I would support it elsewhere if it had the same merit as ours.”

Grondahl noted other inaccuracies or shortcomings of the KSTP piece included nothing about the history of the pier. The Google Earth map, used to claim it can even be seen from outer space, is a shot of the old pier before it was replaced, according to Grondahl.

Contrary to the KSTP version, Grondahl feels it has no negative ecological impact on the lake. “We had looked at shorter one, in other spots on the lake, but for the public to use, this was the best place.”

That eight other communities did not get a dock that year because of the Staples pier, as KSTP claims, got Grondahl really upset. “That’s a total lie. To my knowledge, the bonding bill appropriation was not part of the DNR budget. They were only administering the project, with funding from the bonding bill.”

But most of all, Grondahl said, “They totally left out the human side of the equation.”

Staples Mayor Chris Etzler, who was a council member at the time of the

pier approval, said the TV

piece failed to mention that “The 100 year old structure

is a part of our cultural heritage. There was no mention that people without boats use the pier to fish all the time. They made it look as bad as they could.”

On the positive side, Etzler said, Grondahl has been wanting to verify the Dower Lake pier is the longest one in the state. “Now KSTP-TV has confirmed it, we have the longest fishing pier in the state. Let’s promote it.”

Asked if anyone locally has ever complained to him about the Dower Lake project, Etzler said no one has.

City Administrator Nate Mathews referred to the KSTP piece as “politically contorted news reporting.” A real cynical person, he said, might wonder if there is any relationship between the report critical of the Minnesota DNR and recent problems that the KSTP owners have had with fines imposed on them by the DNR for personal property along the St.Croix River.