For Immediate Release
June 13, 2002

Contacts:
Chad Smith, American Rivers, (402) 477-7910, cell (402)730-5593
Eric Eckl, American Rivers, (202) 347-7550, cell (202) 486-7877


White House, Army Corps sound retreat on Missouri River

(Washington, DC) - The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, with the apparent
blessing of the White House, revealed today its intentions to avoid its
obligations to alter the operations of its Missouri River dams by
strong-arming the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to withdraw or modify a
"biological opinion" that called for modifications to a river management
scheme that is slowly sterilizing America's longest river.

"This action flies in the face of the Administration's repeated pledges to
rely on sound science in environmental decision-making," said Rebecca R.
Wodder, president of American Rivers. "Once again, the White House has
catered to a influential industry and disregarded a conclusive body of
science, economics, and legal precedent."

Biologists for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service have given the Corps a 2003
deadline to alter dam operations to prevent the extinction of three species
and to begin restoring the river. Specifically, they called on the Corps to
begin releasing a "spring rise" of at least 49,500 cubic feet per second to
raise river levels for two weeks in May and to begin dropping river flows to
21,000 cubic feet per second in late July and early August. To balance
ecological and human needs along the river, the Service's river experts only
called for a spring rise during normal water years, once every three years
on average - and not in years of drought or flood.

Today, Corps officials began circulating "talking points" to members of the
media indicating that rather than make the needed changes, the agency
intended to seek a rewrite of the Fish and Wildlife Service's "biological
opinion." In a meeting with conservation leaders just last week, White House
environmental advisors had indicated that the Corps would be acting at their
direction on the Missouri River.

"With the apparent blessing of the White House, the Corps is setting a
course to violate the Endangered Species Act, and abdicating their
responsibility for river management to the courts," said Rebecca R. Wodder,
President of American Rivers. "If you read between the lines, what the White
House is really saying is that it is willing to break the law and let native
fish and wildlife go extinct on behalf of an influential industry," she
said.

The Corps' action today fulfills a prophecy of the National Academy of
Sciences, which noted in its January report that although the "smallest
benefits among authorized purposes along the mainstem [of the Missouri
River] come from irrigation and navigation," the barge companies and
agribusinesses in a small portion of the floodplain "wield great political
influence and may resist changes to traditional management policies."

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