Missouri River Management Proposals Offer Conflicting Visions

By Cat Lazaroff, Environmental News Service
from http://ens-news.com/

WASHINGTON, DC, August 31, 2001 (ENS) - An environmental review released today will help determine the future course of Missouri River management - whether water flows favor wildlife habitat and endangered species, or the barge traffic that carries much of the Midwest's agricultural bounty. The public will be offered an opportunity to comment on these alternatives, and help decide the future of a river that has been called the nation's most endangered.

The Corps dredges the Missouri River to accommodate barge traffic, reducing suitable habitat for pallid sturgeon and other species (Photo courtesy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)

"The question before us is, do we want a river we can be proud of for the bicentennial of Lewis and Clark's voyage?" said Rebecca Wodder, president of American Rivers, which designated the river as the nation's Most Endangered River in April 2001. "For more than ten years, a handful of special interests have used every trick in the book to prevent the public from having its chance to answer that."

The battle over competing visions for the river has raged for more than a decade, but took on new urgency last November when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) informed the Corps that its dam operations were contributing to the decline of three protected species. USFWS scientists called on the Corps to release more water from the dams in the spring in some years, and hold more water back each summer to improve river conditions for the pallid sturgeon, the interior least tern and the piping plover - and warned that the Army Corps would soon be in violation of the Endangered Species Act if it failed to do so.

Changing flows as these scientists recommend would not just prevent the extinction of the three species, but would improve conditions for a tremendous variety of fish and wildlife species that live in and along the river. By making the river a more attractive destination for tourism and many types of outdoor recreation, adjusting flows would expand economic activities that already bring $90 million in economic benefits to the region each year.

The threatened piping plover needs dry sand bars for nesting. Current Missouri River management may flood that habitat during nesting season (Photo courtesy Nebraska Game and Parks Commission)

"Reforming dam operations on the Missouri River is as much about people as it is about fish and wildlife," said Wodder. "River species, recreation, floodplain farming, hydropower, and all other uses of the Missouri River can coexist if we choose to let them."

The draft environmental impact statement offers six alternatives, but does not present a single preferred alternative. Instead, the agency says it is seeking an open discussion regarding all the options and their impacts rather than focusing on a single plan.

The final environmental impact statement, scheduled for release in May 2002, will contain a single preferred alternative, based on science, public opinion, environmental imperatives and other project purposes, such as navigation and flood damage reduction, the Corps said.

"We have come to a very important point in the review and update process for the Missouri River Master Manual," said Colonel David Fastabend, the Corps' northwestern division engineer. "We feel it is important to present more than one plan and receive comments from the people affected by the proposed changes. The [Revised Draft Environmental Impact Statement] includes analyses of the alternatives that allow people to understand and compare the impacts of potential changes."

Pallid sturgeon need strong spring flows to trigger reproduction, and shallow water in the summer for young fish (Photo by Ken Bouc, courtesy Nebraska Game and Parks Commission)

The document also offers a description of the economic, social and environmental impacts on flood control, navigation, fish and wildlife, hydropower, water supply, water quality, recreation and irrigation.

There are features common to all the alternatives except the current water control plan. The common features are:

• Drought conservation measures. Water levels maintained for barge navigation would be reduced earlier in a drought than under the current water control plan. This would allow more water to be stored in the three large reservoirs in Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota.

   

• Fort Peck Dam release changes. Releases would be increased up to 23,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) for three weeks in May and June on average every three years. A mix of cold water through the powerhouse and warm water over the spillway is intended to trigger pallid sturgeon spawning by increasing both flow and temperature in the river reach downstream from the dam.

   

• Unbalancing the three upper reservoirs. One of the three upper reservoirs would be lowered about three feet to allow vegetation to grow around the rim, and then refilled to inundate that vegetation. The unbalancing would rotate among the three lakes on a three year cycle.

  The practice is intended to benefit three protected species - pallid sturgeon, least tern and piping plover. It would also provide spawning and rearing habitat for young forage and game fish in the lakes.

   

• Adaptive management. This is an overall strategy for dealing with change and scientific uncertainty. It promotes testing hypotheses and exploring promising changes to operations based on sound scientific data and analyses.

Four alternatives add a range of modified releases from Gavins Point Dam, including:

Four alternatives would involve altering water releases from Gavins Point Dam in South Dakota (Photo courtesy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)

Low annual releases from Gavins Point from mid-June to mid-August to provide nesting habitat for least terns and piping plovers. Releases would be reduced to the minimum navigation service level of about 28,000 cfs to 21,000 cfs, followed by monitoring and evaluation.

The Corps will accept public comments on the draft for six months, until the end of February 2002. During that time, workshops and hearings will be held from Helena, Montana, to New Orleans, Louisiana, to explain the plans and take comments.

The Summary of the Revised Draft Environmental Impact Statement, workshop schedule, library depositories and other support material are available at http://www.nwd.usace.army.mil. The complete document will be available by mid-September.

The endangered interior least tern needs exposed sand bars to nest successfully (Photo courtesy USFWS)

• Despite several previous public commitments to announcing its preferred alternative, the Corps declined to identify the sole option that meets Endangered Species Act requirements as its preferred alternative, or to provide any options which exactly match the USFWS' recommendations.
• Hearings are not scheduled in Missouri River communities such as Omaha, Nebraska, Garrison, North Dakota, and Yankton, South Dakota, which depend heavily on recreational use of the river.
• Hearings are scheduled in Memphis, Tennessee, and New Orleans, Louisiana, home to substantial shipping interests, which are not even on the Missouri River.

"It looks to me like this was a sweetheart deal between the White House and Senator Kit Bond from Missouri," said Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, in an August 17 statement on the draft plan.

American Rivers and other conservation organizations have launched a new website, http://www.SaveTheMissouri.org, to provide additional information on the Missouri River and allow visitors to submit comments to the Corps via fax or E-mail.

"Because the Corps is tilting the comment period in favor of the status quo, it's particularly urgent for people who want the Missouri River restored to speak up," Wodder said. "Missouri River basin residents, hunters and anglers, and anyone who cares about healthy rivers and fish and wildlife can visit www.SaveTheMissouri.org and take action."