BOND PROBES WHEATER PLAN CLOSES RIVER

Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond's Washington office is still awaiting a written response from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on a routine recommendation that Bond interprets as a possible closing of the upper Mississippi River to barge traffic.

"We have been told that a written answer is being prepared in response to the senator's letter to the FSW," said Catherine Kaliniak of Bond's office.

Bond interpreted certain language in a letter from the fish and wildlife agency's Rock Island, Ill., field office to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to mean that the upper Mississippi could be closed because of dangers to the pallid sturgeon and the least tern.

The letter to the Corps recommends "that new regulating works construction be deferred until adequate preconstruction data are available for biological monitoring of specific projects, or until a NEPA review including formal consultation, indicates that site specific actions are not likely to adversely impact federal listed species, specifically the pallid sturgeon and the interior least tern."

Bond wrote the wildlife service, saying that in practice, people on the inland waterway system understand this means suspending Corps activities that allow navigation on the Mississippi River.

In other words, Bond said, this recommendation effectively ends navigation on the upper Mississippi River.

Bond, in his letter to Wildlife Service Director Molly Beattie said he didn't know if the wildlife service's recommendation is routine or "if, somehow, the letter doesn't really mean what is written."

The closing of the river, however, could be a reality, Kaliniak said. "The Department of Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service could close traffic on the river."

However, the fish and wildlife agency isn't trying to shut down barge traffic on the Mississippi River, said Richard C. Nelson, field supervisor of the wildlife service's Rock Island office. "We are just asking the Corps of Engineers to take a hard look at its proposed rock work -- dikes and piers -- and to hold off on new construction for a while."