THREAT: NAVIGATION INFRASTRUCTURE, LEVEES, AND POLLUTION
#10 Mississippi River
States affected: MINNESOTA, WISCONSIN, ILLINOIS , IOWA,
MISSOURI , KENTUCKY, TENNESSEE,ARKANSAS, MISSISSIPPI , LOUISIANA
THE ARMY CORPS WANTS TO EXPAND ITS LOCKS UPSTREAM OF ST. LOUIS, WASTING BILLIONS OF TAX DOLLARS AND FURTHER JEOPARDIZING THE HEALTH OF THE RIVER.
After decades of manipulation by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Mississippi
River is beset with problems. Unless Congress gives the agency marching orders that reflect the needs, desires and opportunities of today’s communities, the river faces ecological collapse with vast negative economic impacts to tourism and recreation industries worth $21 billion per year.
On its journey from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River drains 41 percent of the continental United States, and carries more water than any other American river. The river also provides drinking water for millions of people.
The Mississippi is a cultural and recreational treasure for the nation. Tourism, fishing and recreation generate about $21.4 billion each year, and contribute 351,000 jobs along the river. The river also supports a $12.6 billion shipping industry, with 35,300 related jobs. Half the nation’s corn and soybeans are barged on the Upper Mississippi. The river and its floodplain support more than 400 different species of wildlife, and some 40 percent of North America’s waterfowl migrate along the river’s flyway.
With its focus on managing the Mississippi for navigation and flood control, the Army Corps has profoundly altered almost everything about the river — its course, depth, flow, floodplain, and wildlife. Among the casualties: more than half the river’s floodplain has been cut off by levees, millions of acres of wetlands and countless side channels and sandbars have been destroyed or damaged, the number of marsh plants at the base of the river’s food chain have been reduced, sedimentation and erosion have increased, and fish and mussel habitat has been destroyed.
Riverside communities that look to tourism and recreation as key industries suffer as the river deteriorates. Every year, more than 20 square miles of coastal wetlands near the river’s mouth are lost because sediment that once nourished the Mississippi’s delta is funneled through a tight corridor of Army Corps flood control levees into the Gulf of Mexico. Pollution from farms and sewage plants is also swept down the river where it contributes to an 8,000-square-mile “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico — an area that can’t support marine life.
The Army Corps continues to undermine recovery efforts by pursuing more of the same types of projects that have caused wildlife extinctions and brought the river to the brink of ecological collapse. Even though less expensive and less environmentally damaging alternatives are available, the agency proposes to spend more than $2 billion to replace or extend many of its 29 locks above St. Louis. Two separate findings by the National Academy of Sciences show that the agency’s barge traffic forecasts for the river are grossly overstatedand its economic models supporting thelock project are flawed.
Although billions of dollars have already been spent constructing flood control measures along the river, flood damages are on the rise — damages in 1993 alone exceeded $12 billion. Now the Army Corps wants to spend and build more. One example, the proposed $85 million St. Johns Bayou/New Madrid levee and pump project in southeastern Missouri, would wall off more than 75,000 acres.
This spring, the Senate will take up the Water Resources Development Act of 2004. In this bill, Congress will direct the Army Corps to either perpetuate or begin to fix problems afflicting the Mississippi River. The Army Corps will likely try to have it both ways, presenting lawmakers with a multi-billion dollar, 30-year wish list for lock and dam renovations wrapped in a grand — but vague — commitment to restore the ecological functions of the Upper Mississippi River. The agency’s economic justifications for longer locks have been thoroughly discredited.
Congress should decline this wasteful expenditure, and authorize simpler, less-costly measures such as traffic scheduling and helper boats to relieve periodic lock congestion.
Congress should also direct the Army Corps to conduct a study to determine how to operate the existing lock and dam system to improve the ecological health of the river, and to develop a clear and binding plan to do so.
Congress should immediately fund the Lower Mississippi River Resources Assessment that will help to identify and prioritize restoration opportunities for the lower river.
Congress should direct the Army Corps to immediately acquire and restore floodplain land, accelerate dam reforms to provide lower summer flows, and fund side channel restoration along the lower river. Congress also should urge the Army Corps to quickly complete a comprehensive delta restoration plan for coastal Louisiana, and that plan should be submitted to Congress.
Finally, Congress should enact long overdue reforms in Army Corps’ project planning procedures. Among other key reforms, independent peer review of the economic and ecological assessments of large or controversial Army Corps projects should be required.
Contacts
KELLY MILLER, American Rivers, (202) 347- 7550 ext. 3008, kmiller@americanrivers.org
SCOTT FABER, Environmental Defense, (202) 387-3500 ext.
3315, sfaber@environmentaldefense.org
MARK BEORKREM, Illinois Stewardship Alliance, (217) 498-9707, mbeorkrem@hotmail.com
MARK MULLER, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, (612) 870-3420, mmuller@iatp.org
ANGELA ANDERSON, Mississippi River Basin Alliance, (314) 776-6672 ext.102, angelaanderson@mrba.org
DAN MCGUINESS, National Audubon Society, (651) 739-9332, dmcguiness@audubon.org
FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO TAKE ACTION: www.americanrivers.org/mississippi2004.html