River conservation plans dealt a blow

WASHINGTON - Efforts to conserve more Missouri River water in upstream reservoirs - at the expense of downriver barge shipping - suffered a setback Tuesday in a U.S. Senate committee.

Drought has plunged lake levels to record lows on the Missouri's big reservoirs in Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota, prompting desperate measures from lawmakers laboring to finish spending bills.

The Senate Appropriations Committee last week voted to halt water releases from the reservoirs, which would end barge shipping mostly in Missouri, but also in Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.

The panel essentially reversed itself Tuesday, as Missouri Sen. Kit Bond inserted a measure that denies funding for the drought conservation measure into another spending bill.

Without the releases, Bond said in an interview, farmers would face higher costs and shipping delays, birds and fish would lose new habitat and people could lose power.

"This is a disaster all up and down the river," said Bond, a Republican who champions the grain and shipping industries.

Disaster is facing upriver communities, too, lawmakers from those states argued. Drought threatens to trim fish populations and otherwise impair the upriver economy that revolves around recreation. Some communities also have experienced problems with intakes for drinking water.

"If we're going to have pain on the Missouri River, everybody ought to share that pain," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D. "Downstream states are sitting there fat and happy, and upstream states are seeing their reservoirs drained."

Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., said marinas can't reach water, farmers can't irrigate and "the impact to recreation and agriculture has been devastating."

"But that is not the end of it. It's not the impact on us; it's the impact on the river. And should we have another really serious dry year, are we going to ruin our reservoirs? We got no more water to release."

Said Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., "This is nothing more than Senator Bond playing king of the hill."

Because the full Senate must approve the committee's actions, lawmakers on both sides expect another showdown on the issue.

The drought conservation provision was approved last week as part of an Interior Department spending bill, while Bond's language is part of a bill funding housing and veterans' programs.