A federal whistleblower agency found "substantial likelihood" that the Army Corps of Engineers officials violated regulations and wasted millions of dollars during its controversial Upper Mississippi River Navigation Study. This discovery confirms what Audubon and other river advocates have claimed for over a year-that the Corps was "cooking the books" to justify a costly and unnecessary public works project that would doom the Upper Mississippi River ecosystem.
Under pressure from the barge industry, the Corps was expected to recommend a project that would double the size of the existing locks and dams along the Upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers. The Corps has struggled to get this project to meet the necessary cost-benefit ratio required for its recommendation.
The controversy began with an affidavit from a Corps economist claiming that he was relieved of his duties after five years of work on the Upper Mississippi River project because he refused to alter his analysis, which did not justify the major construction project that his superiors favored. The economist also alleged that his replacements were similarly pressured, but even so, barely managed to produce studies that reached the necessary cost-benefit threshold. The scandal, which has been fueled by a series of articles in the Washington Post and Midwestern newspapers, has lead several members of Congress to call for a review of the process that led to the project's development.
In forwarding her findings to Secretary of Defense William Cohen, Special Counsel Elaine Kaplan concluded that the Corps probably broke laws and engaged in "gross waste of funds." Her review was aided by the 44-page affidavit and several memos and e-mails that seemed to urge and even order the Mississippi study team to concoct a rationale for major lock expansions.
** To view Audubon's response to this development, go to http://www.audubon.org/campaign/umr/ .
From the The Audubon Advisory - 3/3/00.
You're invited to attend the next Manitou Bluffs Project public information meeting - "Missouri Department of Conservation Land in the Manitou Bluffs Region: Managing Missouri River Bottom Land for Public Use". Tuesday, February 22, 2000 at 7:00 PM in Conservation Hall (Auditorium), Natural Resources Building, U of MO-Columbia, Rollins and Hitt Street (northeast corner).
Presentors: Tim Grace Fisheries Regional Supervisor, MDC Ted Horst Wildlife Management Biologist, MDC Jeff Pennock District Wildlife Biologist, MDC
More than 12,000 acres of Missouri River bottom lands, (between Boonville and Jefferson City, Missouri), have been acquired by various public agencies since the big floods of 1993 and 1995. More than one-half of these lands are owned or managed by the Missouri Department of Conservation. Three MDC staff will present information about current and future management plans for Diana Bend, Overton Bottoms, Eagle Bluffs, Plowboy Bend and Marion Bottoms. This is an excellent opportunity for citizens to learn and provide MDC with feedback on the plans for these public lands.
Co-sponsored by MDC and the Missouri River Communities Network.
Return to contentsThe Missouri Prairie Foundation launches a major campaign to save the Prairie Chicken and other grassland birds in Missouri. The "Lek Trek" is a 565-mile walk across Missouri from July 21 to October 14, 2000. It will span the state from Iowa to Arkansas, taking trekkers through the best of Missouri's prairie country. Sixteen special events are planned in towns along the way to celebrate our prairie heritage and highlight the importance of grasslands.
Named after the "lek" (courtship ground) of the greater prairie-chicken, the Lek Trek is a campaign to raise awareness of the value of grasslands - and the plight of grassland plants and animals. It will also raise funds to further the work of the Grasslands Coalition, which helps Missouri landowners improve their grassland habitat. The Audubon Society is a member of the Grasslands Coalition.
For details, updates and information on how you can get involved see: Lek Trek
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Daniel Straubel, President, Four Seasons Audubon Society
Alan Journet, conservation Chair, Trail of Tears Group, Ozark Chapter of the Sierra club
Ann Drake, President, Mississippi Valley Chapter of the Ozark Society
Phil Dodson, President Elect, Mississppi Chapter of the Ozark Society
Prior to development of the drainage system in the southeastern Missouri lowlands--the Bootheal--much of the area was frequently flooded. The region supported some two and half million acres of bottomland hardwood and swamp forest habitat. As a result of the success of the drainage program, there now remain but 50,000 acres - some two percent of what was present. The Army Corps of Engineers is developing plans--called the St Johns Bayou--New Madrid Floodway Project--for further draining of those remaining acres.
The New Madrid Floodway is an area of several thousand acres located on the Missouri side of the Mississippi river between just south of Cairo, IL, on the north, to just upstream from New Madrid, MO, on the south. The area is enclosed by the frontline Mississippi River levee on the east and southeast and by a setback levee on the west and northwest. There is an engineered 1,500 foot gap in the frontline levee at the southern--New Madrid--end of the New Madrid Floodway. This gap has two intended effects: (1) it allows the enclosed area to drain and flood more or less naturally; (2) during flooding, it relieves flooding in other parts of the river, especially across the Mississippi. St. John's Bayou, which empties into the Mississippi through the gap, is behind the setback levee. This area and the New Madrid Floodway area comprise about several hundred thousand acres.
The northern end of the levee--across the river from the Cairo area--was designed decades ago to be blown out in case of severe flooding. It's not clear that has ever been done, but that plan suggests how serious the flooding may be in the general area of the proposed project--or rather, across the river from the floodway. The proposed project, designed to relieve flooding in East Prairie, has three main components: (1) closing the gap at New Madrid; (2) installing two pumping stations to provide the drainage that would be needed as a result of closing of the gap, which currently provides more or less natural drainage; (3) channelization within the newly enclosed area, which lies between the frontline levee and the setback levee.
The stated purpose of the project, which will drain thousands of acres of seasonally flooded wetlands, is to promote economic development in the East Prairie area, a purpose which the project's design makes unlikely to be achieved.
If we are genuinely concerned about economic development in East Prairie, the wise management of natural resources, and the conservation of wildlife habitat, we must oppose this project. Arguments about private property rights are not relevant to this issue; it's a question of taxpayer welfare designed to benefit a handful of landowners at the expense of our environment: we should not be spending taxpayer funds to promote more destruction. We should oppose this project for the following reasons:
1. It is unlikely to accomplish its stated purpose of decreasing flooding in East Prairie and neighboring communities. According to evidence provided by the Environmental Defense Fund, and not challenged by the Corps of Engineers, flooding in East Prairie is caused to a large extent by seasonal storm run-off. To the extent that Mississippi River backwater is a cause for East Prairie flooding, that community would be better served by a simple (and much less expensive) levee constructed to surround and protect those communities and by improved storm-water handling. The smaller project could involve only St Johns Bayou, which, like East Prairie, lies behind the set back levee.
2. Closing the 1,500 ft. gap in the mainline Mississippi levee and installing pumps to keep the newly enclosed area dry will have severe negative impacts on many wildlife species; these include fish which use the currently seasonally flooded area for spawning and nursery habitat and water fowl which use the area for rest and feeding in their annual migrations. According to the National Fish and Wildlife Service, to make up for this loss of wetlands 36,000 acres of mitigation wetlands would be required, an area difficult or impossible to find and expensive to purchase. Furthermore, given the problematic nature of mitigation projects, there is no guarantee that even this would be adequate to retain the critical wetland services performed currently.
3. The project will increase flood threats from the Mississippi River. The 1,500 ft gap was especially designed decades ago to allow floodwater to flow into the area under discussion. It has served to decrease flooding in the lower Mississippi River floodplain. Implicit in the original levee plan was the principle that severe flooding across the river in could be prevented by blowing a hole in the northern end of the mainline levee thus allowing floodwaters to flow between the levees and lowering the flood threat to our neighbors. Closing the gap at the southern end will make such a plan impossible, and thus heighten potential floodwater threats for residents of other communities adjacent to the river, especially those living downstream from the project area. This will unfairly impact many residents and property owners elsewhere, and potentially cost vast sums of taxpayer money in flood relief.
4. The cost of this project in relation to its benefits doesn't make sense. The avowed purpose--economic development in East Prairie will probably not be realized for the hydrological reasons mentioned in (1) above. The main benefit will be to relatively few landowners farming the presently seasonally flooded area. These landowners will be able to raise more profitable crops on land that would be protected. This doesn't make sense primarily for two reasons: (1) increasing yields in an era of overproduction will depress further the national income farmers gain from their crops, and thus should be considered a national cost of the project NOT a benefit; (2) spending nearly 100 million dollars to benefit a few large landowners while not solving the problem for which the project is supposedly proposed is not reasonable either for East Prairie residents (most of whom seem to have been persuaded to believe that this highly questionable project will be an economic panacea) or for the taxpayers of this state and nation.
5. Flooding: Because the project does not solve the storm drain problem in East Prairie--the prime cause for the ten year cycle of floods experienced by that community--it fails to address its primary objective, and must be counted a failure even in its own terms of promoting community and economic development. Currently, national flood plain policy quite reasonably discourages investment in areas with the flood risk that East Prairie would experience even after completion of the project.
6. The only criticism that can be leveled at the alternative plan of constructing a much less costly levee system solely to protect the residential and economic communities around East Prairie is that such a plan would not drain agricultural land. Unfortunately, draining agricultural land is not legally permissible as a purpose for such a project as the Corps has proposed.
The opposition to this project voiced by Missouri's Department of Natural Resources, Department of Conservation, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should serve as a strong warning about the havoc that it could cause to the conservation, wildlife and water resources in the region.
We urge citizens to oppose this project as vigorously as possible. By stopping it, we can not only save ourselves tens of million of taxpayer dollars but also conserve wetlands and wildlife while simultaneously maintaining sensible flood control along the Mississippi River.
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