The Waterways Journal
21 April 2008
A major problem with trying to understand issues involving the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, environmentalists and the rivers is that our vision is restricted. We don’t always take time to understand the “why” of it all. Let’s explain it this way:
An elderly lady and a younger one were observing a third who had traveled a rough road in her life. The elderly lady said, “She’s a good person.” The younger lady responded, “How can you say that?” Then she listed reasons for thinking the third lady was not good. The elderly lady smiled and with a twinkle in her eye said, “Oh, but you should have seen what she used to be like.”
Too often we forget what the rivers once were like. Too often we forget how life has changed since people began settling the riverbanks. We fail to recognize that the descendents of those settlers along the rivers have done almost a complete about face in their attitudes about needs.
Once most river towns depended entirely on the river for their livelihood. Some in St. Louis today do not realize that the city of Worlds Fair of 1904 fame once boasted a riverfront where hundreds of steamboats tied up, that challenged Chicago as a transportation center.
The Corps has its own colorful history dating back over 200 years. As always, the Corps was willing and able to follow the dictates of Congress as it responded to human needs related to the rivers. When the wishes of the citizenry were understood, Congress was informed. The Corps performed studies and, if Congress provided funding, built the projects.
While some have always fished the rivers commercially, recreational fishing was not in the equation. Hordes of boathouses, rental businesses for boats and tackle, and dozens of marinas for recreational boats were still ideas to be conceived. Even keeping the rivers clean for human consumption was not big on the list. Clear up into the mid-1900s, some people relied upon outhouses in their backyards. When the banks of the Upper Mississippi River were settled, there was a list of about 50 metropolitan-type communities along the shores. Only one or two had sewage treatment facilities; the rest dumped raw sewage into the river. Tourism was not an industry. No one worried about the pallid sturgeon.
When we turn the clock ahead, we find that life has changed. Environmental concerns have surfaced, and in the early 1970s laws were passed to protect the environment and endangered species. Over the past 38 years, pressure has grown against the Corps for doing all that it did (in the name of meeting the needs of the time), and for doing more to meet the changing demands of stakeholders. It is easier for Corps critics to be vitriolic if they conveniently forget the past. In the past, the Missouri River was harnessed in such a manner as to best serve navigation and flood control, thought by people of the day to be most important. Today, after much to-do about many things environmental (including trying to protect and restore endangered species), the Corps is being criticized for trying projects designed to return the river to its old self—to some degree.
After years of controversy, the manual that guides Missouri River Corps operations was updated and approved. Obviously there were critics. The Corps has not been without them since the existence of environmentalists became known. They fought the proposed Upper Mississippi/Illinois lock-expansion projects tooth and nail until it became clear that the feds would sweeten the pot by spending a much greater share of the projects money for environmental restoration. But now, the projects are in the hands of Congress and money is tight. A few bad words here and there by the environmentalists might serve to convince Congress not to fund these projects ever. A major feature story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of April 13 reveals that the National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, and the Izaak Walton League are back at it again—blasting the Upper Mississippi/Illinois river lock-expansion proposals.
The Ikes and Sierra Club are the same pair that went to bed with western railroads in the early 1970s to bring a halt to the Corps’ bid-opening for the replacement Locks and Dam 26 project. It took 10 years to build Mel Price Locks and Dam and user fees were instituted against the barge and towing industry. The railroads charged an extra $750 million annually for transportation until the lock and dam project was done.
So the battle along the Missouri is growing, and the fight over the proposed Mississippi/Illinois projects is continuing, though some of us had hoped it was settled.
In the meantime, every Missouri River stakeholder and his brother have become wards of the government and expect the feds to coddle their every need. We live at a time (especially during an elongated drought) when the Missouri water supply cannot meet growing demands by stakeholders, who often cannot even get along with each other. Each feels his needs take priority. Some want the manmade spring flood. Some don’t. Some worry about sediment, some don’t. Some worry about endangered species, some don’t.
Whatever the case, times have changed. Stakeholders are fickle. Worst of all, the Corps is caught in the middle and blamed for it all.
We are not suggesting that we relive the past—only that we try to understand it, so we know why we are where we are.