Corps Plan to Release Water Meets Resistance
Posted on: Thursday, 27 October 2005, 12:00 CDT
By Bill Graham, The Kansas City Star, Mo.
Oct. 26--The Army Corps of Engineers has released plans for Missouri River water releases that include "pulses" next spring to help an endangered fish. Some fear the pulses will cause flooding.
The draft plan calls for extra water releases from upstream dams in March and May to mimic rises from melting snow that occurred before the dams were built.
Experts believe the rises will trigger pallid sturgeon to spawn in a segment of the river from Gavins Point Dam in South Dakota to Sioux City, Iowa, said Paul Johnston, a corps spokesman.
Downstream of Sioux City, the river has been converted with levees and dikes into a shipping channel.
Farmers near the river oppose the plan, which was released Monday.
"News on the spring-rise decision is disappointing because we know it will result in the regular flooding of farm crops and in extreme cases, much worse," Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri said.
Missouri Farm Bureau President Charles Kruse said heavy rain on top of the spring pulses could prompt flooding.
"Nobody can guarantee what the weather will be a week from today," Kruse said.
But Johnston said the corps has trimmed the pulses to two days, rather than the two weeks that was initially proposed.
"This is close to what happens to the river during a rain," Johnston said.
Those extra releases will be 5,000 cubic feet of water per second above navigation releases in March, he said. In May, the pulse will be 16,000 cubic feet per second extra water.
The river was carrying 26,000 cubic feet per second at Kansas City on Monday, and it topped 100,000 cubic feet per second on Oct. 3 after torrential rain.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is requiring the pulses to meet the Endangered Species Act.
But the pulses will not occur next spring unless winter snowfall is adequate to ensure enough runoff to protect drinking water intakes and sport fisheries at lakes in the Dakotas and Montana, which have suffered low water due to drought.
A public meeting on the plan will be at 7 p.m. Nov. 15 at the Embassy Suites hotel in Kansas City, North.
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Source: The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Missouri)
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