Any knowledgeable birder in St. Louis will tell you that there are no waterfowl on the Missouri River: no ducks, no herons, no gulls. That’s because the Missouri isn’t a river anymore. The Corps of Engineers has turned it into a big ditch with a deep, fast flowing main channel. It has no sloughs anymore, and it’s not suitable for waterfowl.
It is suitable for barge traffic. In addition to its locks and dams, the Missouri, unlike the Mississippi, has rock jetties that jut out into the river forcing the water to flow quickly in the deepest part of the channel. That’s good for barges. If you’ve ever been down to the confluence of the two major rivers, you’ll see how much more quickly than the Mississippi the Missouri moves.
The Mississippi is broad enough and deep enough not to need those rock jetties. But barges on the Mississip do need locks and dams, and there are 27 of them. Those locks and dams make the spots that are wide and thus too shallow for barges deep enough for them to navigate. The Corps of Engineers lo-o-ves to build them and to beat the drums for more of them. Who cares about a few silly old herons?
I say, who cares about a few silly old barges? Who needs them? We, the taxpayers, don’t need them. Only ConAgra and Cargill do, as a cheap means of shipping their grain. And we get stuck with the bill for subsidizing their “cheap” means of transportation.
Hey, there’s a highway system out there. Let them use that and leave the flood plains to flood and the herons to breed.
And the Least Terns. They are even more in need of breeding grounds than the herons. Least Terns are quick, acrobatic fliers who would make any fighter jet jock look like a stumblebum. My husband, who is a birder, has twice witnessed Least Terns–an endangered species–build nests on the mudflats and gravel of Ellis Bay above the locks and dams of Alton, only to have the nests destroyed and the babies drowned when the Corps flooded the bay.
The Corps would, no doubt, have patiently explained that, because the river was low, it was necessary to close the locks and back up the river to make it deep enough for barge traffic. Oh well then, that’s different. Can’t have those barges waiting around for baby birds to grow up.
What the Corps won’t tell you is that building those locks and dams is a boondoggle, and that their own studies show it. In 1998-99, their own economist, Donald Sweeney, blew the whistle on them for lying about the conclusions of a fifty million dollar feasibility study on new locks and dams. His study showed that building them made no sense economically. The Corps reversed his opinion, declaring publicly that it was feasible. When Sweeney’s internal protests were ignored, he went public.
Quite a brouhaha ensued in the media, but nobody at the Corps lost his job or was reprimanded–well, nobody but Sweeney, that is.
Who knows but what that exposure of the Corps’ lying impressed Claire McCaskill? She voted no on the bill that just passed the Senate giving Missouri interests $4 billion for locks and dams. McCaskill doesn’t approve of the lack of oversight of the Corps of Engineers:
The Senate vote was delayed for nearly two months by Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., who joined McCaskill in opposing the water bill after arguing that the Congress had weakened Senate provisions giving independent experts power to oversee Army engineers’ studies justifying river construction.
Unfortunately, she does approve of the projects themselves, she just doesn’t seem to trust the Corps of Engineers to be honest.
To be honest, neither do I. And we’re about to give them four billion dollars to play with. If ever there was a federal agency that needed to just fade into the sunset, it’s this one.
I’m reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which is making me absolutely hate corn but has also made clear to me how dependent on corn our economy is. I’m not defending that and I’d like to see it change. But reality is reality. When you say:
I say, who cares about a few silly old barges? Who needs them? We, the taxpayers, don’t need them. Only ConAgra and Cargill do, as a cheap means of shipping their grain.
If their means of shipping their grain gets more expensive then everything food related in our lives is going to get more expensive for we the taxpayers who are also consumers. That may be a good thing in the long run, but we should recognize it.
That being said, the entire situation with the Missouri River is abominable from top to bottom and needs to be completely re-evaluated.
Also, the vast American corn desert is the product of big ag. The bushel basket price for corn has essentially remained unchanged since the late 1960’s due to the incredible increases in yields brought about intensive weed and pest control. Corn has never been cultivated so intensively. No-till, Round-Up-Ready Terminator-Seed corn and soybeans – after it’s in the ground just spray-it and forget-it with weather being almost the only variable bearing on yields. It’s like a damn lawn out there. Look at the wild-life that lives in your lawn. And the amber waves of grains; barley, oats, rye, millet and the many varieties of corn once planted?
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Let me establish that I’m not an advocate of maintaining the Missouri River for barge traffic. However, I think that blaming the U.S. Corps of Engineers is a little misplaced. Positioning and jockying when errors are discovered and made public is not really an indicator that the USACE is the big bad river bully. However, the first person we should talk to about making real changes on the Missouri River is your member of the House of Representatives or either of our Senators. And never compare the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers in almost any way.
In reality, the USACE is like a back-up quarterback sent in to finish the game after the star was injured. The back up, like the USACE, cannot audible or deviate in any significant way from a playbook for river management. Who approves that playbook? Take a wild guess — oh, and it’s not the Corps.
If you want to impact changes on the Missouri River for wildlife or recreation or for whatever reason, place a call, write a letter, write hundreds of letters. But, at least focus any angst at the right target.
Again, I’m not an apologist for the USACE, but I also know it’s Congress that we need to discuss this with. Remember, they work for us and the USACE works for them.