In a speech in Arrow Rock Saturday night, Jay Nixon said a whole slew of things that a Democrat in this state ought to be saying.  He criticized the Department of Natural Resources for failing to protect state parks, according to their mandate.  The DNR is going out of its way to license CAFOs (contained animal feeding operations) next to our state parks.  Nixon also got on the DNR’s case for failing to side with the state in preserving a bridge that is part of the Katy Trail.  Then he criticized the Corps of Engineers for dumping tons of soil into the Missouri River without questioning what effects that might have on wildlife.

“My vision for our state and our state government demands that we return the Department of Natural Resources to its original duty of protecting our state resources,” he said, adding that DNR has taken the side of business at the expense of protecting the environment on key issues.

Right on!

The Columbia Tribune summarized the bridge controversy:

Nixon spoke at length about the Boonville lift bridge, a 408-foot span over the Missouri River that Union Pacific Railroad says it owns and wants to disassemble for use elsewhere. Nixon and others believe the structure is part of the Katy Trail and should be preserved.

A judge ruled in 2006 that the state does not own the bridge. Nixon is appealing that ruling.

“Why in the world would the state offer to give this up?” Nixon asked. “Why is DNR opposing me on this issue and arguing the railroad’s side of this case?”

Powerless to argue with the rectitude of Nixon’s remarks, the Republican spokesman accused him of making a political speech on the public dime.

“Jay Nixon consistently blurs the line between political campaigning and public office, and it’s awfully hypocritical,” Sloca said, noting that Nixon aide Scott Holste distributed a news release about the speech. “It’s unfortunate for the taxpayers who pay Scott Holste’s salary and pay Jay Nixon’s salary that they are paying for what is certainly a political campaign.”

Look over here!  Sloca was saying.  Look over here!  He’s just a politician.  Don’t pay any attention to the substance of his remarks.  (How dare Nixon make well founded accusations on topics that the Attorney General is bound by law to deal with!)

The accusation about pretending to make a policy speech while really making a political one is, truth be told, a charge that both camps trade on an almost daily basis.  Note the latest fundraising e-mail I received from the Nixon campaign:

Matt Blunt recently scheduled the first of several official events through the governor’s office to highlight “the positive impact of the governor’s and his administration’s initiatives in the community.” As the Kansas City Star commented on Friday, “Does this strike anyone as anything other than an early campaign appearance at taxpayer expense?”

In a hotly contested election, with both candidates in office, of course they will use their bully pulpits to get their message out.  The question is whether the political speeches are based on sound public policy.  And anytime Jay Nixon goes after CAFO’s next to our state parks, protects the KATY trail, and calls the Corps of Engineers on the carpet for dumping–without concern for the consequences–tons of soil into the Missouri river, that’s a political speech that ought to be made.

Keep up the good work, Jay.  The public dime is being spent as it ought to be.

photo courtesy of the Columbia Tribune

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.