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First in a series: The Endangered Species Act weakened flood control safeguards on the Missouri River, resulting in lost property and livelihoods. Can we right the ship?

May 9, 2019

7 Slides

By Tom Waters

The flood of 2019 wreaked havoc in Missouri, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska. The Bomb Cyclone brought heavy snow and rain and happened so quickly it did not allow time for thousands of farmers to move grain, equipment, property and belongings out of harms way. The result is millions of bushels of grain loss, homes destroyed, livestock lost, and lives ruined.  From Omaha to Kansas City over 100 breaches in levees allowed the Missouri River to spread across some of the nation’s most productive farmland and through Missouri and Iowa communities. 

In each case, levees preformed as designed.  However, the volume and velocity of the river exceeded the design of the flood control system.

Map of Missouri River

Rainfall from the cyclone bomb caused several levee breaches over several states.

 

How it happened

Heavy snow and rain running into the river caused it to rise to record levels.  Most of the runoff entered the river below Fort Randall Dam.  Water running into Lewis and Clark Lake (Gavins Point Dam) had to be released through the dam, because the Lewis and Clark Reservoir has little to no storage available.  It is a regulation dam, which means what come into the lake must be released. 

Compounding the excessive rain and snow event was a breach of the Spencer Dam on the Niobrara River in Nebraska, allowing even more water to run into Lewis and Clark Lake.  The system was overwhelmed and could not handle the amount of water being released by reservoir operators working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

One farmer I talked to lost his home, his machinery, and over half his 2018 crop, which was stored in grain bins.  He will not be able to plant a crop in 2019 and doubts his bank will loan him money to recover and continue to farm in the future. This 5th generation farmer is only one example of thousands suffering from the lack of flood protection needed to prevent Missouri River flooding.

Missouri River Basin map

The Missouri River is the longest river in North America, stretching from Montana and entering the Mississippi north of St. Louis.

From flood control to endangered species

For decades, the federal government has focused Missouri River Operations on fish and wildlife.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has used the Endangered Species Act as a huge hammer to force the Army Corps to weaken flood control on the Missouri River.

The Missouri River is a highly engineered river.  In the upper basin, above Yankton, South Dakota, the world’s largest system of dams and reservoirs were built to capture snow melt and spring runoff.  Below Yankton, levees and smaller lakes and reservoirs provide flood protection as water is released from the system above. 

Sadly, the system, as originally designed, was never finished and the Pick-Sloan Plan for the Missouri River never reached its intended potential.

The system was originally built for flood control. Along with flood control, engineers designed the lower river to provide navigation to move products up and down the river. For decades, the flood control and navigation system brought great economic benefits to the Missouri River Basin. These two primary purposes also allowed for other benefits to develop such as water supply, hydropower, irrigation, water quality control, and recreation, which includes fish and wildlife.

In 1973 things began to change

With the passage of the Endangered Species Act the Corps began changing structures in the river, which were designed to provide for a 300-foot wide and 9-foot deep channel. The Corps began notching dikes, revetments and other structures designed to control the flow of the river and provide flood control and navigation in the lower river.  The notching continues today, 46 years later. 

Other changes have taken place over the years.  Drought impacted the recreation industry in the upper basin and upper basin states began to push for changes in the way reservoir levels were managed. This kicked off a battle between upper and lower basin states.

As calls for changes in the Missouri River Master Water Control Manual were made by upper basin states, some environmental groups saw an opportunity to take over river management. They pressed the Fish and Wildlife Service to get involved.

Three threatened and endangered species were identified, and the power of the endangered species act would soon cause a dramatic shift in the way the Army Corps operated the system. Instead of using the highly engineered system for flood control and navigation as originally designed, the Corps of Engineers found itself dismantling the system piece by piece through increased dike notching and conducting experiments for the Fish and Wildlife Service.

These experiments were designed to “connect the river to the floodplain” -- or in more understandable terms, they led to flooding along the Missouri River.

Tom Waters is chairman of the Missouri Levee and Drainage District Association. He operates his family farming business in the Missouri River bottoms east of Kansas City, Missouri.

 

Tomorrow: It’s up to Congress to fix a weakened river system.

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