In 2022, contractors began using 400,000 cubic yards of Mississippi River sand to build six islands at Minnesota’s Pigs Eye Lake; the project covers more than 40 acres and aims to protect surrounding wetlands

If you told most people that a federal agency was using sand extracted from the Mississippi River to create new islands, the question that would follow is, "why?" The reason, it turns out, is less mysterious, and the project itself is located in an area not often traveled by the average American. As reported by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a news release, contractors began work constructing six new islands within Pigs Eye Lake, a relatively obscure backwater of the Mississippi River located in the southeast corner of St. Paul, Minnesota, in June of 2022.

Using approximately 400,000 cubic yards of sand extracted from the Mississippi River during its regular dredging operations and dumped temporarily on Pine Bend Island, contractors laid the base for the six new islands, which will eventually cover more than 40 acres and provide habitat for the local ecosystem within the 600-plus acres of the Pigs Eye Lake. It is, in short, a federal project, literally creating something from nothing, and raising the question of exactly what problem it was trying to solve.

What is going into the water


The sand used for the project was not taken from a quarry, but from the Mississippi itself, as part of its regular dredging operations to clear the channel of silt and debris, dumped on Pine Bend Island for processing. Then LS Marine, one of two contractors for the project, used a pipeline to pump the sand into the Pigs Eye Lake, where it formed the base of the new islands, most of which sit hidden beneath the water. Contractors then capped the sand with a mix of topsoil and native plants, and reinforced the island edges with rock riprap. The Army Corps of Engineers and Ramsey County, the local government, have a 14.7 million dollar contract for the project, which uses dredged material that would otherwise have been treated as waste in creating new habitat within the local ecosystem.

Why a swamp needs islands after all

Pigs Eye Lake was not always in need of new islands. Decades of wind and waves battered the shore, eroding away the land, with an estimated 111 acres of wetland shoreline habitat since 1951, according to a Minnesota Legacy project summary. Islands act as breakwaters, limiting the effect of the wind on the water and waves against the shore, and Pigs Eye Lake is not the first site to implement these measures.

A 2022 technical report titled “Engineering With Nature Principles in Action: Islands," published by the Engineer Research and Development Center, notes that the number of islands along America's coastlines is being obliterated at an alarming rate, and that repurposing dredged sand to recreate them is both a budget-friendly and ecological option. Separately, the USGS has written about the loss of islands within the Mississippi's impounded rivers, with those disappearing becoming an issue during the 1980s and 90s, leading to a series of restoration projects taking place involving the construction of new islands.

Not everyone was happy with the creation of new islands

Pigs Eye Lake is located next to the Pigs Eye Dump, and and the project drew formal opposition: Tom Dimond, a former St. Paul city council member acting on behalf of a group called Friends of Pig’s Eye Lake Park, filed a complaint seeking a stop-work order, which went before the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals. Public reporting on the dispute centered on residents’ concerns about added pollutants and insufficient opportunity for public input, rather than the dump’s proximity specifically. The zoning board had no authority over the matter as it fell under state jurisdiction, and construction continued.

At the same time, residents and legislators noted that the predominantly BIPOC neighborhoods around the Pigs Eye Park saw less investment and cleanup compared to other areas in St. Paul, with the restoration of the Pigs Eye Lake being seen as overdue. The broader context is that while the islands serve a clear ecological purpose, and reusing dredged material that would otherwise require separate disposal is a genuine efficiency, restoration projects like this one unfold within a larger social and environmental history that coverage of federal projects doesn’t always capture.