 rmy Corps of Engineers
Brig. Gen.David Fastabend told the Senate Subcommittee on Water and Power, during testimony on Wednesday July 10th, that the corps will decide by October on specifics of a controversial new plan for managing water releases from the
Missouri River's six
dams.
Corps officials, who missed a May 31 deadline for releasing a tentative plan, now have a plan in hand, Fastabend told the Subcommittee. He declined to reveal its contents, despite repeated requests from subcommittee Chairman Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.
Fastabend, commander of the corps' Northwestern Division in
Omaha, said the agency's civil works director, Maj. Gen. Robert Griffin, ordered him not to disclose the plan. Instead, the corps began consultations in June with the other federal agency in charge of the river, the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service.
River management change proposal history
Fish and Wildlife has recommended since 1990 that, in order to comply with the Endangered Species Act, the corps should switch to a plan that releases more water in the spring and reduces the flow in the summer, mimicking the river's natural flow before dams harnessed its waters.
Fish and Wildlife said current water flows might wipe out two endangered species - the
interior least tern and the
pallid
sturgeon, a 150-million-year-old species of fish.
The current plan also jeopardizes a threatened bird, the piping
plover, Fish and Wildlife said.
The corps has not significantly revised its management plan for America's longest river since the last dam.
Gavins
Point Dam, was built 40 years ago.
In August, after 12 years of study, corps officials unveiled six dam management options, ranging from the current plan to the plan recommended by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Fish and Wildlife Service insists that extensive biological studies suggest that the return to a more natural flow, with heavier spring releases and less water in the summer, is required to protect endangered fish and birds by providing channels and sandbars for nesting and spawning.
The corps then spent six months accepting public comments on the alternatives from communities along the Missouri river. The corps' final plan is supposed to take those comments into account but must be based mostly on the
Endangered Species
Act.
The corps currently operates a series of dams and reservoirs to keep water flowing straighter and deeper for river barge shipments and to
prevent lower river
flooding. The federal Fish and Wildlife Service administers the Endangered Species Act and has given the corps until 2003 to switch to a more seasonal ebb and flow.
Some Dakota and Montana residents, upstream of the dams, said the Fish and Wildlife recommendation would benefit the $84-million boating and fishing industry and provide more water for irrigation. But some also expressed concerns that the proposed changes would decrease hydropower production thereby resulting in higher electricity rates.
Indian tribes have expressed fears that fluctuating reservoir pool levels and river channel flows would create bank erosion which would expose their burial grounds and other cultural sites.
Comments from residents in Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri (states below the upper river dam systems) in the lower Missouri River states, said the recommended changes (a spring increase and summer decrease in flows) proposed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials would result in devastating spring floods, damaging farmland, parks and marinas. Government should protect people from flooding, not cause floods.
Farmers and shippers say the lower summer flows would halt grain shipments along the waterway for good. The $7 million commercial barge industry would grind to a halt. Without the water transportation alternative, farmers will have to rely on what amounts to a transportation monopoly, resulting in higher prices and less reliable service.
Municipal water departments fear that lower river water levels will disrupt river water volume intake levels, forcing the public to burden lower
potable water supplies. Power generation plant interests have expressed
that low summer flows will cause them concern regarding availability
of water for steam turbine operation and nuclear reactor coolant. They also express fears that normal cooling water discharge could put them in violation of permits that regulate the river's temperature.
Marinas, riverside communities and businesses would be flooded out in the spring, then dry up in the summer during the annual peak recreational boating season.
States even further downstream on the Mississippi River fear Missouri River flow changes would disrupt river navigation.
After more than a decade of review, the corps reached a decision last month on a "preferred alternative'' for its management plan, then changed course and entered informal consultations with Fish and Wildlife Service officials. Those talks have no timeline, but if the matter goes to a formal consultation process, the corps will have 135 days to act.
Meanwhile...some statements from Wednesday's Senate Subcomitee RIVER WARS hearing...
Missouri Republican Sen. Kit Bond, who also testified, hit the nail on the head when he stated, "The plan (U.S. F&WS) we oppose fails, because the value to fish habitat is dubious, while the risk to people is very real.''
Bond pointed out that nine people died from flash flooding this spring in Missouri when water rose from seven feet to 28 feet over the course of three days.
His fellow Missourian, Democratic Sen. Jean Carnahan, also testified against a seasonal flow, saying it would jeopardize downstream power plants, water supplies and entire communities.
She and Bond noted that last Friday, the wildlife service effectively blocked the Corps from releasing more water to drought-stricken communities, ruling that endangered shorebirds and their eggs cannot be moved from newly exposed islands and sandbars where they are nesting.
Gen. Fastabend said that the corps already has appealed to the wildlife service to reconsider and allow removal of the birds and nests.
Mrs. Carnahan was on the opposite side of the issue from her party's Senate leader, South Dakota
Democrat Sen. Tom Daschle.
Daschle also testified Wednesday, saying that the corps is indifferent to the environment because it protects a declining downstream barge industry.
"The corps has straightened out the channel, changed the flow and basically turned one of America's greatest rivers, the river of Lewis and Clark, into a drainage ditch," Daschle said. "And the corps continues to bend over backward to block the management changes needed to meet the requirements of the Endangered Species Act and recover the health of the river."
Daschle cited media reports that the White House had intervened to defer a plan until after the Nov. 5 elections. "My hope is that management of the Missouri River will be evaluated as a public policy issue, not as a political or regional issue,"
Senate subcommittee Chairman, North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan, echoed his concern, saying, "I fear there is circling this issue a barrel full of politics and a thimbleful of policy."
White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said corps officials "have made their own decision throughout this process, and they are working closely with the Fish and Wildlife Service."
The corps, overseen by the Bush administration, must decide an issue that has pitted South Dakota and other states upstream of the dams against Missouri and other downstream states. A decision that helped Republican candidates in one area would be damaging for Republican candidates in the other.
South Dakota Republican Rep. John R. Thune, recruited by President Bush to run for the Senate this year against
South Dakota Democrat Sen. Tim Johnson, said Bush told him he made promises to Missouri on the river issue during his 2000 presidential campaign. "(White House officials) know that politically, it's going to be a loser either way," he stated.
Johnson, a member of the Water and Power
subcommittee, said at Wednesday's hearing that, "the failure of the corps to follow the law and revise a decades-old river management plan is inexcusable."
Gen. Fastabend, who likened his work on the Missouri River issue to combat duty in Bosnia, said after the hearing that he needs to reach a decision in October to begin the river management changes in March. That is the deadline set by Fish and Wildlife. "No one's more worried about the timing than us," he said.
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