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Today's Poll!Blunt: Corps of Engineers needs new priorities
U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., talks with reporters during a news conference Friday afternoon at the Carl Noren Missouri River access in Cedar City. Blunt says the Army Corps of Engineers is following a flawed plan. Photo by Kelley McCall.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers manages the Missouri River by the book — its 438-page “Master Water Control Manual.”
But U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt told Jefferson City area business and government leaders Friday it’s time to change parts of that manual.
“I’ve been saying for 10 years that the current management plan is not the right plan,” Blunt said, while standing on the Conservation Department’s Carl Noren River Access boat ramp on the north bank of the Missouri, just west of the U.S. 54/63 bridges. “That was the one that was put in place in 2004, and we argued pretty vigorously before 2004 that this was not the right plan, that you’re almost planning for floods.”
The Corps has been taking heat up and down the Missouri, for not releasing water sooner from the six Upper Basin reservoirs.
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Comments
mo_ky_fellow 1 year, 11 months ago
Has anyone except me thought that God meant for the rivers to flood ever so often? Did God mean for us to build levees up and down our rivers, just so we could stay closer to them? Tear out the levees and leave them out. Allow the rivers to do what God had in mind.
3blindmice 1 year, 11 months ago
^^lol at mo_ky_fellow. my thoughts exactly. only god has power over rivers. does he think changing a manuel will change anything.?
asb 1 year, 11 months ago
The senator is looking out for a narrow slice of Missouri shipping interests. The oldest and most subsidized slice, river shipping. Precipitation is too variable year-to-year to allow us to afford levees for all possibiliities, and God, who hides His work cleverly in the ebb and flow of physics and climate) doesn't give a fig about Blunt, the unnaturally deep shipping channel, or the upper-reservoir non-flood control uses. The Corps did what their manual has been written for what to reasonably expect in even very wet years. But the snows of 2011 took away some wiggle room, and the massive, late, upper-basin rains took away the rest. If the Corps had known what was coming, they could have drawn down the upper reservoirs earlier and held back a larger portion of the spring rains, but they didn't so they didn't, and river is upon us. And Roy never passes a chance to put Missouri interest over up-stream interests (his job) so now he uses an extreme event nobody could anticipate or pay for to push for keeping the upper reservoirs nearly emergency-low all the time to protect MO River shipping interests (not his job but he's bound to anyway). We need levees, and we need regular flooding, controlled by humans and nature. We do not need a nine foot channel when highways and railroads can carry the same cargo for only slightly more per pound. But Roy fights to keep the taxpayers funding the thin margins of river shipping.
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