Corps of Engineers awaits bat habitat survey to begin dredging drainage channels

About 81 miles of drainage channels within the Little River Drainage District have been slated for maintenance and restoration by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers since historic flooding caused blockages in the system two years ago. The corps documented the damages. Emergency funding was allocated by Congress.

The project now is awaiting an Indiana bat habitat survey, leaving district officials worried money for the project might disappear before environmental requirements are met, and frustrated that projects can be halted with a regulatory "pen stroke."

"Without flood control and drainage, nothing else matters in Southeast Missouri, or in the whole Mississippi Delta," said W. Dustin Boatwright, the district's assistant chief engineer. He is charged, along with other district officials, with overseeing 1,000 miles of open channels that drain more than 1.2 million acres.

Named for a tributary of the St. Francis River, the district extends from the Headwaters Diversion Channel just south of Cape Girardeau to the Arkansas border, including parts of seven Missouri counties -- Cape Girardeau, Bollinger, Dunklin, New Madrid, Pemiscot, Scott and Stoddard. The corps is responsible for maintenance of 250 miles of the district's channels, through which all the remaining channels drain.

Boatwright addressed the Mississippi River Commission at its High-Water Inspection Tour last month to alert officials to regulatory barriers in completing channel restoration. The district has dredged about 450 miles of its channels to pre-flood conditions, he said on Monday, but the corps has been caught in red tape and "hasn't dredged their first mile."

An Indiana bat on a tree. (Adam Mann ~ Environmental Solutions and Innovations.)

As a result, the system cannot function the way it should and could flood "at a lesser event," Boatwright said. Already, water is backing up into the channels because of blockages, he said. Because surveys for the Indiana bat can be completed only between May 15 and Aug. 15, Boatwright said another construction season could be lost before work is allowed to begin.

The Memphis District of the corps is working toward completing the restoration of the channels.

"The ditches no longer provide the capacity to carry the volume of water it was designed to hold," said Jim Pogue, spokesman for the Memphis District. "Most blockages are a result of sloughing banks where trees and root wads fell within the channel banks. There are areas where the land which separates the ditches have breached and is allowing the series of ditches to empty water into an adjacent ditch."

Disaster Relief Act funds were distributed in February 2012. Field surveys began in March, were completed in July and the "plans and specifications" phase, involving real estate, regulatory and environmental processes, was initiated in August, Pogue said.

"One of the primary missions of the corps is environmental stewardship," Pogue said. "The Indiana bat is a known endangered species, and if they are in the project area, we are prepared to work with state and federal environmental agencies to protect their survival."

Trees have grown along the Ditch No. 1 floodway which is seen just north of the Highway 162 bridge Monday, May 6, 2013, about seven miles west of Portageville, Mo. (Fred Lynch)

Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Shauna Marquardt said the service has been working in consultation with the corps, but nothing formal has been submitted. She said the corps is being "very proactive" in considering the possible habitat effects of the channel project.

The habitat of the Indiana bat stretches across most of the eastern United States and it has been protected since 1967. Despite conservation efforts, the population estimate in 2009 was 387,000, fewer than half as many as when the species was listed as endangered, according to the Wildlife Service. Bats are sensitive creatures and a healthy bat population suggests a healthy ecosystem overall, Marquardt said.

"The whole state has to deal with these kinds of issues," Marquardt said.

Bats provide agricultural pest control nationwide, valued at an estimated $3.7 billion to $53 billion a year, according to an analysis published in Science magazine in March 2011 by scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, University of Tennessee, Boston University and the University of Pretoria in South Africa. A single bat, with a body no bigger than an adult's thumb, can eat four to eight grams -- the weight of about a grape or two -- of insects each night, the authors wrote.

"Consequently, not only is the conservation of bats important for the well-being of ecosystems, but it is also in the best interest of national and international economies," said Justin Boyles, a researcher with the University of Pretoria, the lead author of the study.

Corps biologist Mark Smith said that, after May 15, acoustic sampling devices will be placed in the project area, section by section, to detect the presence of bats. If found, they will be captured, tagged with a radio device and tracked to their roosts, he said.

Marquardt said the Wildlife Service would respond to the corps' project documents, once submitted, within 30 days.

Contracts for restoration of the channels are scheduled to be awarded in September, Pogue said.

Meanwhile, Boatwright worries that the funding allocated by Congress will dry up, and the district has appealed to U.S. Sens. Roy Blunt and Claire McCaskill for help.

"The longer that our system goes without maintenance, the worse flooding it's going to see," Boatwright said.

"Our office has received no indication that the project's funding is at risk, but Claire and her staff will continue to closely monitor the situation," Drew Pusateri, spokesman for McCaskill, said on Monday.

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