The St. Louis County Council recently voted to rezone land adjacent to the Columbia Bottom Conservation Area at the Confluence to make way for a massive casino development.
The proposed development would destroy farmland and raise the level of nearly 400 acres of the current floodplain by 30 feet to accommodate a large casino, 8,000 parking spaces, and a golf course.
Missouri Coalition for the Environment says this development will introduce hundreds of thousands of gallons of runoff polluted with motor oil, fertilizers, and pesticides to sensitive wetland habitat and to the rivers.
Please post a comment:
How do you feel about the development? How do you feel about the vote cast by
your representative at the County Council? The Council Members who voted for the casino
rezoning were:
Michael O’Mara from North County Dist. 4
Hazel Erby from District 1
Steven Stenger from South County Dist. 6
Kathleen Burkett from District 2.
Colleen Wassinger, from Dist. 3, was absent.
Gregory Quinn, Dist. 7 and Barbara Fraser, Dist. 5 voted against the rezoning.
The voting shows that Council member Wasinger was absent at the time of the vote. I was troubled by this. Earlier, I had expressed my concern to my Council representative (Wasinger). I do not typically post others’ replies to my correspondence, but this is a public matter. Therefore, I’ll share what my Council representative’s assistant stated about this important County Council decision in reply to my concern:
Missouri law limits the number of casinos in the State to the thirteen already in operation. And so, there is currently no license available for another casino in St. Louis County. Even if a license was available, there are many federal, state, and county regulatory processes that must be cleared before a casino development could be considered for approval.
Given the many unanswered questions related to this development, Councilman Wasinger believes it is premature to approve the zoning change requested by North County Development, L.L.C. For that reason, Councilman Wasinger voted against the zoning change.
Regards,
Michael F. Chapman
Executive Assistant to
Councilman Colleen M. Wasinger
3rd District, St. Louis County Council
Interesting article. I’m curious – has the casino been approved? I thought the vote was just to allow re-zoning so a casino COULD be built, not an approval to build one. I’m also curious if there’s been any talk of Missouri granting an additional gaming license. My understanding is that the number of licenses is capped at 13, and there are already 13 casinos in MO, if you count the one being built in Lemay. So even if the council did vote to approve a casino, how would it operate without a license?
I’m also a little surprised by your comment that casinos are an industry that produces nothing. The same could be said of many other industries, such as sports franchises, or movie theatres, or museums. These examples, like casinos, are forms of entertainment, and while they may not produce tangible goods, they do provide a service, and they do provide jobs and tax revenue. There are studies that say that casinos even offer increased property values and revenues for small businesses in the vicinity. Is it possible that casinos aren’t as evil you seem to make them out to be?
I also think one could easily make the argument that a casino offers more tax revenue, jobs and other economic benefit than a nature preserve. I am hesitant to fault a casino for its inability to “produce something” versus the production capabilities of a conservation area. Especially in current economic conditions. Maybe we need a better argument.
Still, your point about conservation is valid. It is sad to see natural resources fall prey to any business (be it a casino or anything else). I suspect that if you asked the casino operators, they’d be only too happy to have the freedom to operate someplace other than on (or near) a river. Maybe the solution to this ecological quandary is in getting legislation to lift the restrictions that require casinos to locate so close to rivers and other ecological conservation areas. What if the environmental groups you mentioned in your article joined forces with the casino industry to change the laws? Give the casinos somewhere else to go, and maybe they’ll leave the conservation areas alone.
If I were a betting man, I’d wager that the odds of getting the state to allow casinos to build away from water are better than the chances of stopping a casino operator from building (assuming, of course, that they can get a license).
Paul Peterson
http://bit.ly/8kGxdz