Upriver, downriver interests clash on Missouri River water

 No comments  
 E-mail Story
 Print Story
  Share

 digg it!
 Facebook
 del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit

Text Size: 

Tools Sponsor

By LIBBY QUAID

WASHINGTON- Drought-ravaged communities along the upper Missouri River would keep more water, and downstream barge shipping would halt immediately, under a measure that cleared a Senate committee Tuesday.

The battle over who gets more water erupted after lake levels plummeted to all-time lows at big reservoirs in Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota this spring and summer. Along the lower reaches of the Missouri, barge shipping will end early this year, in mid-October, as the Army Corps of Engineers cuts releases from the reservoirs to conserve water.

But Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., said it's not enough merely to curtail shipping.

"They've been doing it at the cost of our water," Burns said. "We feel like that if you're in drought conditions, that everybody should share the pain, that's what we're saying."

Burns' solution is to stop releasing water for barges right now, and he added it to an Interior Department spending bill that cleared the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday evening.

The move angered Sen. Kit Bond, a Missouri Republican allied with the shipping and grain industries.

"The scope of the disaster, not just to Missouri but for all of the Mississippi River states, is unimaginable," Bond said in an interview. "Because this would shut off the flow of the Missouri right now. This is a total nuclear war on Missouri."

Bond and Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, tried unsuccessfully to kill the provision, but Bond said, "The fat lady hasn't sung on this one. This battle is just beginning."

The 2,341-mile Missouri, the nation's longest river, provides more than half the water for the Mississippi River. Sixty percent of all U.S. grain exports move through the middle Mississippi River, said Chris Brescia, president of a St. Louis-based shippers' group called MARC 2000.

Ending navigation would force the grain to be moved more expensively by truck or by rail, an alternative shippers estimate to add $8 to $12 per ton.

"Grain is sold based on world price, so we've got to eat that higher cost of transportation," Brescia said. "It's going to be the farmer that eats it most."

But upriver communities are hurting now, Burns and his allies argue.

Drought has severely damaged the upriver recreation industry and the economy that revolves around it, said Chad Smith, a Nebraska-based spokesman for the conservation group American Rivers. In far northeast Montana, the economy revolves around recreation at Fort Peck, particularly its walleye fishery, Smith said.

"And when you take that away, you really stress the local community," Smith said.

Drought also has forced some communities to go to greater lengths to get drinking water, Smith said. Burns' staff said he's also worried about having enough water for hydropower and irrigation.

Smith blamed the corps for worsening the situation by continuing to provide water for what he says is a sagging barge industry.

"The reservoirs just continue to drop. I'm not surprised that finally somebody stood up and said, 'This can't happen anymore,'" Smith said.

The provision by Burns would force the corps to halt reservoir releases when levels at the big three reservoirs drop below 40 million acre-feet, rather than below 31 million acre-feet under the current master water control manual for river operations. They are Montana's Fort Peck Reservoir, Lake Sakakawea in North Dakota and Lake Oahe in South Dakota.

With the Burns amendment in place, there would have been shipping last year but not this year, and probably not next year.

Corps spokesman Paul Johnston of Omaha said the reservoirs are storing 36.1 million acre-feet and are projected to store just under 35million acre-feet next year.

The Senate battle pits two longtime friends against each other. Burns and Bond have worked on farming issues for several years as part of an informal Senate "ag posse" and have many other common interests.

"That's what makes it a little strange," Bond said.