August 12, 2003

People Aren't Getting Straight Scoop About Missouri River

WJ readers know that it is not our normal editorial procedure to respond to letters criticizing our point of view. But when writers represent an organization like the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) in Minneapolis, they are not immune. Mark Muller of IATP finds our attack on his organization bewildering (WJ, August 4). We did not dispute some conclusions of the study, he argues. Actually we disagree with nearly all of it. We can agree that the river industry is in a world of hurt, due to a variety of causes.

A critic of IATP is Capt. Bill Beacom, whom we have known for years. He documents his claims. We accept his arguments before we do those of C. Phillip Baumel, one of the authors of the "Missouri Report." We call your attention to Letters To The Editor this week, in which Capt. Beacom responds of Muller's letter of August 4. When he discusses why navigation on the Missouri should shut down, Baumel has tunnel vision. He ignores all river-flow benefits except towing, whose day he thinks has come and gone.

As for Muller (author of last week's letter), he ignores our argument about water-compelled rates. He is, however, no different than many other towing industry critics, who can see nothing on their radar screens but the demise of the river industry at their hands. Capt. Beacom says in his letter, "It will take more than a crystal ball and wishful thinking to run navigators off the Missouri."

But let's shift gears. IATP is not disseminating the straight scoop about the Missouri. Nor are the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) and those who brought suits dealing with endangered species protection against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They are being dishonest about the threat to the interior least terns and piping plovers. These birds are being produced in increasing numbers in a variety of locations.

The entire argument that the Missouri should close to navigation to save endangered species is a sham. Environmentalists and FWS officials know it. So do the people at IATP, but their interest, obviously, is to promote railroads.

Corps critics like us to believe (if we can borrow a phrase from Omaha World-Herald columnist Harold W. Andersen) that "the environmental sky is falling." He says that "...attitude appears all the more irrational when one considers recent statements from Brig. Gen. William Grisoli, commander of the Corps of Engineers division that operates the Missouri's dam system. Grisoli noted that biologists have counted 1,300 adult piping plovers on the Missouri River this year, the most since the Corps started monitoring the endangered birds. And the number of adult least terns is at the second highest level ever recorded."

Beacom, who has investigated virtually every facet of the river issues, told the WJ that the number of adult least terns between Vicksburg, Miss., and Cape Girardeau, Mo., was 8,082 in 2003. One sandbar, he said, had over 500 birds. The number between Sioux City, Iowa, and Ponca, Neb., was 364, about 3 percent of the total population and not enough to have a serious effect on the recovery.

Beacom said that according to the Least Tern Recovery Plan, the total number of birds required for full recovery is 7,000. That number was reached six years ago, and it continues to rise. The number of piping plovers determined to represent full recovery on the Missouri is 1,050. There were 1,305 piping plovers on the Missouri this year, an increase of 171, despite the fact that the flow was held at 21,000 cfs. last year, and scientists expected the numbers to go down this year with increased flow.

Not one bird (least tern or piping plover) was lost, said Beacom. This is the third year in a row that recovery goals were exceeded. Even though Judge Gladys Kessler said there would be irreparable damage with the 2003 supplemental biological opinion, the facts show otherwise. She is the judge who imposed a deadline and pending $500,000-a-day fine on the Corps for not reducing Missouri flows.

But back to columnist Andersen. The third endangered species at issue is the pallid sturgeon. According to him (World-Herald, July 31), "All three of [these] species are being protected in a number of environmental locations other than a stretch of the Missouri River downstream from the Gavins Point Dam." The "pallid's range," he said, "extends from Montana to Louisiana and the Department of the Interior is providing a $250,000 grant for biologists to buy nearly 1,400 acres along the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers in northwestern North Dakota in a project intended to protect and enhance pallid habitat."

More than a year ago, wrote Andersen, Wayne Boyd, chairman of the Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD) board, pointed out that NPPD has managed three islands and three sandpits along the Platte River for habitat enhancement and discovered that sandpits have produced seven times as many terms and plovers for one-half the cost as did islands in the river. Boyd also pointed out that nearly half of adult piping plovers on the Missouri River nest on three upstream reservoirs.

Andersen said that Boyd published an article in the World-Herald that should have broadened the Missouri River issue, but unfortunately they received too little attention. Boyd's article said that by NPPD's analysis, proposals to increase the river flow in the spring and reduce it in the summer indicates that electric power generation plants along the Missouri River below Gavins Point Dam could be adversely affected by as much as $200 million. Boyd said, "The increased costs to electric customers would result from the fact that Nebraska receives a significant amount of electrical power from generating plants cooled by Missouri River water and from hydroelectric power generated by upstream dams."

As the WJ has done for years, Boyd reminded readers of the many benefits of Missouri River flows. It is Boyd's opinion that the proposed changes in the Missouri River flow would produce few, if any, benefits in terms of increasing terns and/or plover populations-an opinion, says Andersen, that is "based not on endangered species emotionalism but on the NPPD's experience with tern and plover reproduction in sandpits in contrast to river islands." (That is the same opinion expressed by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.)

So back to our premise that people don't get the straight scoop about the Missouri River. Since this issue deals with economic stability and the survival of navigation on the river, we see this vacuum as a monumental failure on the part of all agencies engaged in the Missouri battle. Both the public and congressional delegates who think the endangered species issues are worthy are being taken in. Failure to disclose all that they know to be true seems to be a favored tactic of many organizations whose ultimate goal is to kill navigation on the Missouri River. They have a lot to answer for.