June 24, 2004

Corps wins ruling on Missouri River plan

n a June 21st ruling, Judge Paul A. Magnuson of the U.S. District Court of Minnesota handed a victory to the Corps of Engineers by rejecting environmental groups' challenges to the agency's new plan for managing the flow of the Missouri River.

	Established commerce based on goods shipped by barge on the Missouri River may now have a reprieve from termination.

He said the revised Master Water Quality Manual and the 2004 operating plan are valid and that the agency should follow the new documents in operating the river.

Environmental groups had sued the Corps, seeking changes in the agency's plan that they would provide more protection for endangered bird and fish species and make the river healthier.

Conservative groups are considering whether to appeal.

The Corps issued a new Master Manual in March, the first rewrite of the document in more than 40 years. The plan includes spending hundreds of millions of dollars over the next 20 or 30 years for habitat restoration.

Managing the nation's longest river requires dealing with a variety of competing interests. Those who live upstream want more water held in reservoirs to boost recreational uses and those who live downstream want more water released to facilitate barge traffic and support other navigational uses.

The corps said the ruling shows the agency has balanced all the demands on Missouri River water. The 2,341-mile river flows from Montana through the Dakotas, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri to St. Louis where it empties into the Mississippi River.

Environmentalists have denounced the corps for giving preference to barge shipping downriver over creating an ebb and flow to protect dwindling fish and bird populations.

The service said that instead of creating a more seasonal ebb and flow to sustain fish and birds, the corps can comply with the Endangered Species Act by building 1,200 backwater acres of pallid sturgeon habitat by July 1st. They have been working around the clock to complete this task (see June 10 article 'Corps hopes to make July 1st deadline for new river habitats').

Fish and Wildlife Service officials have not yet signed off on the corps efforts to do so.