Battle Over Missouri River
Air Date: Week of July 25, 2003
The Army Corps of Engineers has managed the flow of the Missouri River for more than half a century to prevent floods and facilitate barge traffic. Now, that flow is an issue in a number of legal cases around the nation. Host Pippin Ross discusses the conflicting interests with Bill Lambrecht, reporter with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Transcript
ANNOUNCER: Support for Living on Earth comes from the National Science Foundation and Stonyfield Farm.
[THEME MUSIC]
ROSS: Welcome to Living on Earth. I’m Pippin Ross, sitting in for Steve Curwood.
The Missouri River holds a special place in American history. Lewis and Clark wandered its shores two hundred years ago. And for more than half a century, the Army Corps of Engineers has altered the river to prevent floods and allow year-round barge traffic. Now, the Missouri is being tugged in a number of directions by a series of court cases that could change its course.
 Missouri River water levels are at the center of a controversy where opposing court rulings may force the Army Corps of Engineers to change the way it manages the river. (Photo: American Rivers) |
A district judge in Washington, D.C. has ordered the Corps to reduce the amount of water it sends down river each summer, so that three endangered species have a better chance of survival. But the Corps says it can’t do that and run barge traffic at the same time. Joining me is Bill Lambrecht, a reporter with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who’s writing a book about the river’s history and politics.
Bill, before we dive into a discussion of the interests involved in these cases, tell me what does the Missouri look like in the upper reaches in Montana where the river starts? LAMBRECHT: One starts at the headwaters of the Missouri River: the Madison, the Gallatin, and the Jefferson Rivers, all named by Lewis as he stood on a bluff looking westward. The water there runs clear and cool and sparkling. I was just on it a couple weeks ago, in the face of some very high bluffs. There are a couple dams there, but throughout Montana it’s much like it was when Lewis and Clark saw it. The river changes markedly as you get into the Dakotas where it’s been dammed up quite heavily. It’s a series of huge lakes. And then in the lower third, the lower stretch, it has becomes more or less a barge canal. It’s much narrower, with these rock-armored banks. It runs swift – sometimes eight miles an hour. If you put your canoe in Kansas City, you’ll be in St. Louis in no time, Pippin. ROSS: At the center of this is that along the way that you just described, the Army Corps of Engineers have a series of dams that are really integral to the court case. How do those change the river and influence this case? LAMBRECHT: Well, those dams came about, most of them, after the 1944 Flood Protection Act, which was aimed at just what is says, flood protection, but also to create this great navigable river. That never really happened. The barge traffic is very slim downstream. And there has been a great debate in recent years about whether we should continue operating these dams as we do. ROSS: There are a number of competing interests up and down the river that have come to a head, of course, in this courts case. One is endangered species. The main argument in the most recent case was to make the flow simulate a more natural river to help protect three endangered species. How would a change in flow help protect animals along the river?
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Barge on the Missouri River (Photo: American Rivers) 
