Upper Mississippi River System Navigation and Ecosystem Sustainability Program

Past

Present

Future
The Corps of Engineers are legally bound to manage the Mississippi as a multi-purpose resource through the enactment of various federal laws, Corps engineering regulations and interagency agreements. Yet the Corps continues to manage the system stressing the navigation project.

The Study to find if it was feasible to do major construction on locks on the Upper Mississippi and two new locks on the Illinois rivers was halted due to misconduct by military and civilian employees acting to manipulate certain portions of the economics review to achieve justification of lock expansion. This misconduct was revealed by a Corps whistleblower.

Previous releases of the study did NOT show complete environmental mitigation costs NOR determine ability of system to handle more traffic NOR present completed cost/benefit analysis. If such expansion were truly necessary, then the manipulation would never have occurred to justify expansion. This is why we request that no action on any expansion takes place without the required studies.  

The Corps NOW ADMITS, as pointed out by the National Research Council review, that the previous study was slanted to the economic justification of the study and did NOT provide adequate review of environmental impacts. 

During the recent decades of major rehabilitation work on the locks and dams, over a BILLION dollars since 1986 has been spent on the infrastructure, while only $220 MILLION has been invested in the Environmental Management Plan to try and stem some of the decline in the ecosystem.

On August 02, 2001 in the Corps Guidance for restart of the study issued by M.G. Griffin, HQUSACE, it is stated that: “The ecosystem on both waterways has been in decline, and there is considerable concern that the growing barge traffic may accelerate the decline, perhaps precipitously.”  

UMR-IWW barge traffic has been flat or declining in recent decades and clearly declining for the past 10 years.

The Corps developed the Upper Mississippi River System Navigation and Ecosystem Sustainability Program (NESP)'s navigation expansion plan – with an associated implementation cost of more than $2 billion – in response to industry claims of significant delays in passing barge tows through 600-foot locks on the UMR-IWW. Provisions to tie ecosystem restoration to the construction plans were later added through NESP to address the documented environmental degradation to river ecosystems resulting from barge navigation. Although delays do occur on the lock and dam system, and the need for environmental restoration actions are clearly known, the primary question is whether the heavily subsidized construction of new 1,200-foot locks to expand barge capacity on the UMR-IWW system is a justified investment of taxpayer money.

We question how the Corps can consider increasing traffic from barges while the past and present problems are not yet resolved. These problems include, but are not limited to degradation due to siltation and re-suspension of sedimentation, loss of backwaters, and the specific impacts fleeting has, such as impaired fish habitat access, mussel bed kills, prevention of vegetation growth, and silt dredging. We feel that the current form of mitigation needs to be stepped up, accounted for, and monitored for success.

The most promising of these restoration efforts is the Environmental Management Program (EMP), created by Congress in 1986 in response to a Sierra Club lawsuit to bring together federal and state expertise to develop and test restoration activities to determine the most effective methods to restore ecosystems on the Upper Mississippi River System. To combat the radical changes brought by the locks and dams, EMP has responded with a host of practices and technologies to support natural river functions. Water level management, side channel rehabilitation, and even manmade islands are examples of projects conducted through EMP to mimic the behavior of free-flowing rivers.

BUT, the annual ecosystem restoration needs of the Upper Mississippi River System have never been adequately funded. The great potential of the Environmental Management Program will never be realized if the average annual investment continues at a $20 million level. Research from resource professionals suggests that the average annual restoration investment of $100 million contained in NESP is also inadequate: 200 wildlife resource professionals that make up the Upper Mississippi River Conservation Committee estimated in 2002 that an annual investment as high as $900 million for 50 years may be necessary to restore the river ecosystems and address the impacts from ongoing barge navigation.

  

 

  

 

 

 

The Upper Mississippi River attracts more visitors annually than Yellowstone National Park, pulling in an estimated $1.6 BILLION annually in tourism dollars, which are threatened by the decline in the ecosystem.  That is more than the Corps estimated $400 MILLION annually in net return on the currently operating navigation system.

We recommend the following:

·         NESP be de-authorized, canceling the lock construction projects.

·         The small-scale and non-structural measures presently included in the NESP Recommended Plan receive separate authorization so that they may be implemented without delay.

·         The increased funding for ecosystem restoration currently bound to the initial phase of NESP, any additional related restoration plans, and new and essential restoration components; be formally transferred to the existing Environmental Management Program. Specifically, these new restoration components include an allowance to acquire at least 35,000 acres of land from willing landowners for the purposes of reconnecting floodplains isolated from the river by levees; new wetland and riparian habitat protection and restoration activities; construction of fish passages at up to four dams to improve species diversity; improved water level management capabilities that mimic the historic flood pulses lost with dam construction; adding the capability of project cost sharing with non-governmental organizations; and establishing an advisory panel of diverse stakeholder interests for project reporting and ranking.

·         Congress authorize these recommendations and appropriate funds to support them, including initially increasing funding for the Environmental Management Program to at least equal the authorized funding level for restoration contained in NESP of $100 million annually with further increases as are deemed necessary to adequately restore the system.