Office of Planning, Environment, & Realty (HEP)
Planning • Environment • Real Estate
When Missouri Department of Transportation engineers completed improvements on two Meramec River bridges near St. Louis, they left the bottom foot of the work platform intact to benefit federally-listed as endangered pink mucket mussels and more than 25 other mussel species which had been relocated to safer habitat upstream of the bridges. Scuba divers report that sand, small gravel, and other substrate materials have accumulated between the rock rubble, creating favorable mussel habitat, and that the pink muckets and other species are recolonizing this part of the river. Not removing all of the work platform also meant less disturbance to the river bottom and therefore less sediment to drift downstream
--Apr 25, 2003
|
| Illinois Natural History Survey photo |
| Pink mucket mussel |
