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WATER WARS
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Battles
rage over area’s river resources.
By William Poe
If it’s true that we don’t really appreciate something until it’s
gone, now’s the time to recognize the importance of the mighty river
resources of the St. Louis region. Our rivers aren’t gone, of course,
but a number of people are trying to divert the water that’s in
them or otherwise dilute their economic power. It’s a water war
all right, and it’s a conflict area governmental and business leaders
aim to win.
“We have a resource that looks large and endless, but it’s just
not true,” says Stephen Mahfood, director of the Missouri Department
of Natural Resources.
The water wars are engulfing three rivers and three main battlefronts.
The mother of all battles is over North Dakota’s proposal to divert
Missouri River water for irrigation and other purposes. The second
is a federal plan to further manipulate the amount of water in the
Missouri. And the third fight is locks and dams on the Mississippi
and Illinois rivers.
St. Louis owes its existence to its strategic location on hills
below the confluence of the Missouri, Mississippi and Illinois rivers.
And area leaders note the future of the region is inexorably tied
to the rivers as well.
“The rivers provide our drinking water, water for commercial transportation,
water for recreation, water for industrial use, and water for agriculture,”
says Roger Walker, an environmental attorney with Armstrong Teasdale
LLP and chair of the RCGA’s Water Committee. “Our rivers are a valuable
resource and, frankly, there are a lot of different reasons to be
concerned about it.”
Walker and others are alarmed by North Dakota’s renewed efforts
to divert Missouri River water. In some respects, this is a battle
that has been brewing since 1888, when the federal government authorized
the first irrigation survey of the American West and the first skirmishes
over water rights broke out along the Missouri River watershed.
Today, the fight is whether North Dakota should be allowed to complete
construction of a 40-year-old pipe dream: the Garrison Diversion.
Only 22 miles of the Garrison Diversion remain to be completed,
and to Missourians, it’s 22 miles to hell. The Garrison Diversion
is 150 miles of open canals—some as deep as 114 feet—that would
divert and consume enough Missouri River water in a single day to
fill 4,000 football fields a foot deep from end zone to end zone.
After years of intermittent construction, Congress has yet to authorize
completion of the diversion or allow the pumping of Missouri River
water, but a new study of the matter is underway.
“It’s like the camel getting his nose under the tent,” Walker says.
“You start allowing these diversions for the Missouri River, and
you don’t know where it will lead. But you worry that the Missouri
will start to resemble the Colorado River where it just kind of
disappears at the end because all of the water has been diverted.”
U.S. Rep. Kenny C. Hulshof (R- Columbia, Mo.), fears the diversion
could mean nothing less than the shutdown of barge traffic on the
Missouri. “The (diversion) plan would not allow for navigation along
the Missouri River and could seriously impact Mississippi River
navigation.”
Missouri River commercial navigation is also threatened by the second
water war: a plan by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to change
its operating manual for dams to implement a “spring rise” and “summer
draw down” on the lower stretch of the Missouri. The U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service authored the plan to restore wildlife friendly
sandbars and backwaters that existed along the river before it was
dammed and channelized. Supporters say the plan could save from
extinction the river’s pallid sturgeon and two shorebirds, the least
tern and the piping plover. Defenders of the Missouri’s preservation,
led by Senator Christopher “Kit” Bond, counter that the plan would
increase spring flooding and threaten summer and fall river commerce.
Walker and Chris Brescia, president of MARC 2000, an industry trade
group based in St. Louis, contend that the innocuous sounding spring
rise plan is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. While the plan appears
to be all about rescuing endangered fish and birds, it’s actually
all about killing barge transportation on the Missouri, they note.
“The ultimate effect of the so-called summer draw down is to destroy
the barge industry on the Missouri River,” Brescia says. “If you’ve
got a split season for navigation, then you’re not providing for
navigation.”
“Some think that the spring rise and summer fall are an environmental
ruse that’s really meant to kill the barge industry,” Walker says.
”Now, we have some environmental problems on the rivers, and we
have some endangered species. But there are ways to protect fish
and wildlife without arbitrarily manipulating the water flow to
the detriment of the St. Louis region’s use of the water resources.”
Senator Bond sees the spring rise as a spring flood that would create
havoc for farmers and anyone else living along the river. “We believe
people, property and fish can all be protected without increasing
the risk of flooding,” Bond says. “Some bureaucrats in Washington
wouldn’t recognize a responsible river plan if it jumped in their
canoe.”
Under pressure from Bond and others in Congress, the corps appears
to be backing away from its endorsement of the proposed river flow
changes and may simply present them among alternatives for preserving
endangered species. A series of public hearings are to be held this
fall on the issue. “The public will finally get a chance to comment
on how the Missouri river is preserved,” Bond says.
The summer draw down is a threat to more than the barge industry,
officials note. Electric utilities rely on river water to cool power
plants. About 40 percent of Missourians take their drinking water
from the Missouri. And Missouri’s growers use river water to irrigate
their crops. “AmerenUE and the rural electric cooperatives are very
concerned about the level of water in the Missouri,” Walker says.
“Last summer, even without a summer draw down, AmerenUE had to release
water from the Lake of Ozarks to make sure its Labadie plant had
enough cooling water to meet peak demand periods. And the drinking
water utilities are very concerned about water supplies.”
The third water war is raging over modernizing locks and dams on
the Mississippi and Illinois rivers. The business community wants
to increase the barge-handling capacity of the locks, while environmentalists
hope to scuttle plans for $1 billion worth of lock extensions at
five dams on the Mississippi and two on the Illinois.
“We’ve got an infrastructure system on the upper Mississippi and
the Illinois River built more than 70 years ago for moving cargo
in the manner it was moved 70 years ago,” Brescia says. “A modern
tow is 1,100 feet long but our locks are only 600 feet long.”
The result, Brescia says, is slower lock-throughs, more barge congestion
and higher product costs. “Congestion translates into higher transportation
costs. Income generated by producers declines; prices paid by consumers
rise; farmers pay more for fertilizer inputs, so food costs increase.
And then we start to lose some of our worldwide competitiveness
as costs rise.”
Hulshof, who serves as co-chairman of the House Mississippi River
Caucus, says locks and dams need to be improved. “Each year, 60
percent of the grain produced in the midwest is transported to market
down the Mississippi River. The current system is already operating
far beyond capacity. As such, lock extensions are a key element
of any strategy to expand markets abroad.”
Brescia says failure to improve river locks will have an effect
far beyond the rivers. “There are 100 million tons of cargo that
move through the Port of St. Louis on average each year. The implications
to St. Louis are staggering if some of that moves off the river
onto trucks to circumvent the portion of the river with inadequate
locks. It has been estimated that without new locks we may see within
10 to 15 years as many as 14 million more tons of traffic on the
highway system of St. Louis to docks south of the locking system.
That’s going to mean more wear and tear on our roads and higher
emission levels for an area that is already being penalized for
emissions.”
“It would cost much, much less to keep the rivers open and filling
our port facilities with goods,” says Robert L. Wydra, executive
director of the Tri-City Regional Port District. “It would have
a greater economic impact, and it would be cheaper, more fuel efficient,
safer, and less intrusive to the general public.”
Regional planners agree that the Missouri, Mississippi and Illinois
rivers remain key to the region’s position as a major transportation
hub. River commerce here continues to have a major impact on other
industries and jobs. Tri-City operations alone account for 1,000
jobs and an annual economic impact of $175 million, Wydra says.
It is estimated that the economic impact of the entire Port of St.
Louis—70 miles of river flowing between Alton, Ill. and Jefferson
County, Mo.—is many times that of Tri-City. St. Louis is the nation’s
second largest river port and the 21st largest port of any kind.
To those who consider the region’s navigable rivers to be the region’s
greatest natural asset, the water wars must be won.
William V. Poe is principal of Poe Communications, a St. Louis
advertising and marketing communications firm. |
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