Posted at: 02/04/2010 10:45 PM | KSAX.com
By: Bob McNaney and Becky Nahm

Tracking Your $: Huge pier breaks bank and DNR rules

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 emails, 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.

5 EYEWITNESS NEWS asked DNR Commissioner Mark Holsten about the pier.

Holsten said, "I am not taking a bullet for this one."

Holsten said blame the legislature.

The pier was a project of the late Sen. Dallas Sams of Staples. When he died in 2007, Rep. Mary Ellen Otremba, DFL-Long Prairie, pushed the project forward and put it in the bonding bill. The legislature approved the bill and the governor signed it.

There is a memorial to Sams on the pier.

Otremba makes no apologies for the pier. She told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS she believes it was a good use of taxpayer money.

Tom Steward of the government watchdog group Freedom Foundation of Minnesota said legislators and the DNR wasted taxpayer money.

He said, "Everything about this project is over the top. It is like 30 times more than the state generally gives out for a project. The size: it is more than a tenth of a mile long and then there is the environmental impact. You can see this thing, for heaven's sake, from Google Earth."

Steward also said the dozens of communities on a waiting list for public fishing piers will have to wait several years longer because of the cost of the Dower Lake pier.

The DNR said that is true. Officials said eight communities have not had piers built because of the Dower Lake pier.

Holsten would not say whether he considered the pier a waste of money, but he did say the DNR advised the legislature that the pier could have been built at a lower cost.