Navigation Expansion Boondoggle
on Upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers Affects Iowans!
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We are urging Iowans to attend the Corps of Engineers workshop to be held
in Des Moines, Tuesday, August 3rd at the Botanical Center at 6 p.m..
(The Sierra Club will be on hand from 1-5 p.m. to provide *alternative
information* about the impacts of the proposed commercial navigation
expansion and to answer questions about environmental concerns. )
Contact Debbie Neustadt at [log in to unmask] or Jane Clark at
[log in to unmask] for details about this meeting.
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The US Army Corps of Engineers is soon to complete a $50 million study on
whether it can justify expanding the barge traffic capacities of the
50-year-old locks on the Upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers.
The series of locks and dams on these rivers allow tows pushing up to 15
barges to ply the two rivers all the way up to St. Paul, Minnesota.
However any tow pushing over 6 barges is forced to split its barge string
to get through the locks, which can only accommodate 600 feet of tow and
barges at one time. Delays at the locks due to this time consuming
splitting, plus increasing amounts of barge traffic in the lower reaches of
the river are driving the need to study the economic and environmental
feasibility of expanding some or all of the locks to handle 1200 foot
tow-barge combinations.
River biologists and a large coalition of diverse environmental and
conservation organizations are raising red flags at the planned expansion.
Concerns are that the current amounts of traffic in many locations are
already too much for the biological processes of the two rivers to function
properly. It has been shown that barges re-suspend sediment, of which
there are large amounts carried by both rivers, and the sediment load in
suspension is causing loss of plants and animals through its effects on
them directly and indirectly through loss of water quality and habitat. In
addition, the Corps construction of the lock and dam system and its
operation to the benefit first of the commercial navigation industry to the
tune of over $130 million per year in taxpayer monies, is as much at fault
as the sediment. The alteration of currents, the blocking off of natural
backwater areas, the losses of side channels, among other impacts, all have
drastically altered the ecosystem and affected wildlife and water quality.
While the Corps proposals are mostly centered on the lower pools of the
Mississippi (20-25) and the Peoria and LaGrange pools on the Illinois, but
the entire system would be affected by increasing traffic.
Iowans are affected by the proposed expansion in many ways. Farming is the
single largest business enterprise in Iowa with its many supporting
businesses. Barges carry mainly bulk commodities such as grain, soybeans,
coal, fertilizers and petroleum. The barges moving on the river affect
Iowa's role as a major corn and soybean producer, and consumer of coal at
its power plants and user of large amounts of fertilizer. Farmers within
50 miles of the river are shown to benefit from slightly lower shipping
rates at some times of the year when selling their crops. The major
beneficiary of the subsidized commercial navigation system, however, are
companies like Archer Daniels Midland, ConAgra, Amoco, and the like –
multibillion dollar, multinational companies who control purchases of the
grain, control its shipments as end -user and international marketers, and
who control the grain terminals on the river and many of the barges.
The Corps' planned expansion, at a minimum, would allow nearly twice as
many barges to utilize the rivers. Cost estimates range from $120 million
to $250 million per lock expansion with seven locks being in the first wave
to be built between 2001 and 2015, approximately. Taxpayers for Common
Sense, a conservative tax watchdog group in Washington, D.C. calls
expansion of the system ill conceived and a waste of taxpayer monies.
Environmental groups as diverse as the Izaak Walton League, National
Audubon Society and the Sierra Club have teamed up to raise concerns over
impacts of the current levels of traffic, let alone doubling the traffic.
River users who recreate on the river would be affected by poor water
quality, loss of beaches, poor fishing and hunting, and see the
transformation of the beautiful river into an ever increasing barge canal.
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For more information on this campaign, please contact:
-- Upper Mississippi River Campaign, National Aubudon Society, 25 East
Exchange St., Suite 215, St. Paul, MN 55101 phone: (651)-290-1695
fax: (651)-225-4686 e-mail: [log in to unmask]
-- Midwest Office, the Sierra Club, 214 North Henry St., Suite 203,
Madison, WI. 53703-2200
phone: (608)-257-4994 fax: (608)-257-3513 e-mail:
[log in to unmask]
Sierra Club, Mississippi River Protection Program, Regional
Representatives:
-- Illinois, Iowa and Missouri: Mark Beorkrem (217)-526-4480
[log in to unmask]
-- Minnesota and Wisconsin: Dean Rebuffoni (612)-920-9632
[log in to unmask]
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