America's Most Endangered River reaches the crossroads
Public comment on future of the Missouri River opens on a sour note

Chad Smith, American Rivers

(Lincoln, NE) - The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will open a six-month
public comment period tomorrow on an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS)
that will determine the future of the Missouri River, the nation's longest
and most historically significant. After more than ten years of bureaucratic
foot-dragging and political football in the halls of Congress, the people
living along America's most endangered river finally have the opportunity to
speak for themselves about its fate.

Two widely divergent visions for the river are buried within the
bureaucratic and technical language of the draft "Master Water Control
Manual" EIS for the Corps' six Missouri River dams. One vision is for a
river restored - supporting robust fish and wildlife populations and driving
the region's economy as a recreation and tourism destination.  The other is
for the status quo - a river shackled to protect a languishing barge
industry and placate unfounded fears of increased flooding.

"The question before us is, do we want a river we can be proud of for the
bicentennial of Lewis and Clark's voyage?" said Rebecca Wodder, president of
American Rivers, which designated the river as the nation's Most Endangered
River in April, 2001. "For more than ten years, a handful of special
interests have used every trick in the book to prevent the public from
having its chance to answer that."

The Army Corps has released a tentative list hearing locations
including Sioux City, IA.

Inauspicious beginnings: Is the deck stacked against restoration?
Although relieved to reach this milestone after years of delay, conservation
groups pointed to troubling signs that the Army Corps is stacking the deck
against changing dam operations:

* In an "about face" from previous public commitments, the Army Corps will
decline to identify the only option meeting ESA requirements as its
preferred alternative.
* Although the public comment period opens tomorrow, the full document and
the supporting facts and data will not available for public review for
several weeks.
* Hearings are not scheduled in Missouri River communities such as Omaha,
NE, Garrison, ND, and Yankton, SD, which depend heavily on recreational use
of the river.
* Hearings are scheduled in Memphis, TN, and New Orleans, LA, home to
substantial shipping interests, which are not even on the Missouri River.
"It looks to me like this was a sweetheart deal between the White House and
Senator Kit Bond from Missouri," said Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) in an
August 17th statement. The full text is available to the media at
http://dorgan.senate.gov/~dorgan/press/01/06/2001821317.html.

River Restoration Long Overdue
The battle over competing visions for the river has raged for more than a
decade, but took on new urgency last November when the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service informed the Corps that its dam operations were
contributing to the decline of three protected species. These scientists
called on the Corps to release more water from the dams in the spring in
some years, and hold more water back each summer to improve river conditions
for the pallid sturgeon, the interior least tern, and the piping plover -
and warned that the Army Corps would soon be in violation of the Endangered
Species Act if it failed to do so.

Changing flows as the scientists recommend would not just prevent the
extinction of the three species, it would improve conditions for a
tremendous variety of fish and wildlife species that live in and along the
river. By making the river a more attractive destination for tourism and
many types of outdoor recreation, adjusting flows would expand economic
activities that already bring $90 million in economic benefits to the region
each year.

Despite these benefits, a small handful of special interests that benefit
from the status quo along the river have thus far waged a successful fight
to prevent any adjustments in dam operations, challenging the science behind
the wildlife service's recommendations, exaggerating consequences for
floodplain farmers and commercial navigation, and making unsubstantiated
claims in the press about increased flooding risk.

"Reforming dam operations on the Missouri River is as much about people as
it is about fish and wildlife," said Wodder.  "River species, recreation,
floodplain farming, hydropower, and all other uses of the Missouri River can
coexist if we choose to let them."

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