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State's congressional delegation couldn't overcome uphill battle to kill $5 million river study

By Bob Watson - bwatson@newstribune.com

Published: Monday, November 2, 2009 6:00 AM CST

Missouri's Congressional delegates tried to stop it - and lost.

President Barack Obama has signed into law the federal appropriations bill that includes the first $5 million installment paying for a new, five-year study of the Missouri River's uses.

South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds said Friday the new federal study should change management of the Missouri River, to better reflect the needs of people who live along it.

An Associated Press story reporting on last week's meeting in Pierre, S.D., of the Missouri River Association of States and Tribes said officials from several Missouri River basin states think the new study will provide a long overdue review of the 1944 law that spelled out the purposes of the river's six dams.

“They're hoping to get a different result,” said U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton, who's represented west-Central Missouri in Congress since 1977. “I'm concerned it's redundant. ...

“It's going to be the same as a study on this very same subject, that cost $35 million and was finished in 2004.”

That 15-year study, Skelton noted, resulted in only minor changes to the Army Corps of Engineers' Missouri River management, which now is dictated by the federal “Flood Control Act of 1944.”

That law directed the Corps to design and build dams on the Missouri and on some of its tributaries, for the purposes of flood control, hydropower, water supply, irrigation, navigation, recreation, water quality and fish and wildlife.

Rounds said fishing and other recreation on the reservoirs should be given a higher priority.

And Mike Hayden, the association's vice chairman and secretary of the Kansas Wildlife and Parks Department, said last week: “We need to be taking into account all those things we didn't know in 1944.”

Congress approved the new study after years of debate, arguing and lawsuits between the upper basin states and the lower basin states - especially between North Dakota and Missouri.

The Show-Me State's two U.S. Senators - Kit Bond, a Republican, and Democrat Claire McCaskill - together asked two different Senate committees last year to reject funding for the new study.

“It doesn't make any sense to repeat events when circumstances have not changed and such little time has passed,” they wrote. “This is a serious waste of taxpayer money and federal resources.”

McCaskill made similar arguments last summer, when she pursued an unsuccessful floor amendment to cut the funding and the study.

Paul Johnston, spokesman for Corps' Omaha office, said Congress' new order is for a complete “review of the purposes for which the dams were built.”

To view the entire article, please go to our e-edition. http://www.newstribune.com/e-edition


Council members tour firehouse targeted for replacement at Cherry Creek		Decrease in landline phones cited for reduced funding

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Jack deeken wrote on Nov 2, 2009 8:10 PM:

" South Dakota has wanted to control the MO river for years and years.The democcatic congress is willing to spend what ever it takes to keep their fellow democrats happy.Look where all the "stimulus" money went.Pure pork barrel politics. Jack Deeken "

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TheRickster wrote on Nov 2, 2009 8:51 AM:

" It is terrible when our Congress says it is a waste of money! And the rest of the Congress goes along with it after a 35 Million study of 15 years ended in 2004. Complete disregard for priority of spending. And does anybody know why we are broke? "

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