Environmental groups want flood-control project vetoed

Environmental groups say they plan to continue urging a veto of a planned Southeast Missouri flood-control project under the Clean Water Act.

A public comment period on the final environmental impact statement for the long-debated St. Johns Bayou and New Madrid Floodway project is expected to open this summer.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-led project that has a $165 million price tag would close a 1,500-foot gap in the Mississippi River levee system, add pumping stations in the New Madrid Floodway and St. John's Bayou and modify miles of ditches in the bayou basin.

It would protect areas of New Madrid, Mississippi and Scott counties from flooding and allow farming on lands that can't be planted. But environmentalists and several federal agencies for years have told the Corps the project may harm wildlife irreversibly and diminish thousands of acres of wetlands that exist because of a natural floodplain.

Whether the project will provide agricultural-related economic benefits as predicted also is being questioned.

Once a final environmental impact statement is released for public review later this spring, a comment period will follow. After the Corps addresses comments, a decision could be made whether to go through with the project.

In the past several years, when the Corps has released draft statements, tens of thousands of comments on the project have been submitted by stakeholders such as state and federal agencies, elected officials, environmental groups, farmers and landowners in the project area and residents in communities affected by flooding.

In late February, the Corps published comments from an independent panel of experts who evaluated the final statement.

The panel stated the estimated economic benefits from the project could not be confirmed based on data and analyses provided by the Corps, and issues may exist with the Corps' plans for mitigating effects on wetlands and wildlife habitat in the project area.

Brad Walker, rivers director for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment that opposes the project, said the panel's comments were similar to those submitted by his group in 2013 after the release of the draft environmental statement. The problem, Walker said, is the Corps supposedly was working to address those concerns as it prepared the final statement.

"It doesn't look like the Corps did a heck of a lot to accommodate the 20,000 comments that came in, some of which were very, very detailed, both in regards to the economic and environmental sides," Walker said.

While the group would like to see a veto of the project under the Clean Water Act, Walker said opponents are open to alternative plans that would help areas in and around East Prairie, Missouri, avoid damage by allowing work to stop related floods in the St. John's Bayou basin and canceling plans to fill the levee gap that lets water into the New Madrid Floodway.

"They are two separate projects that were combined, and the problems in the area of East Prairie won't be solved by the floodway project," Walker said. "A much smaller scale flood-reduction program or project could be done in East Prairie, and it would be less expensive."

Also supporting a separation of the levee closure project is Bruce Morrison of the Great Rivers Environmental Law Center.

"One appears to have justification, and the other doesn't," Morrison said. "We just wish that the community and the Corps wouldn't want one to carry the other."

Overall, Morrison said he believes the floodway project will waste taxpayer money and cause environmental problems.

"It's bad policy for the country to levee off a floodway being used to store floodwater, and there will be lost habitat that cannot be mitigated for," he said. "I'm afraid for the sake of that, it's the most detrimental project I've seen."

Many Southeast Missouri residents, farmers, landowners and local elected officials support the Corps' plans. Several voiced that support to the Mississippi River Commission on Monday at a public hearing during the commission's annual high-water inspection trip.

The commission's president is the Corps' Mississippi Valley commanding general, Maj. Gen. Michael Wehr, who will decide whether the project will proceed, likely after the closing of the comment period.

The Corps at one time had started earth work on the floodway project, but outcry from environmentalists prompted a 2007 order by a U.S. District Court to halt work and restore the area to its original state. The project is part of the Mississippi River and Tributaries Project, which Congress authorized as a means of flood control in 1928.

eragan@semissourian.com

388-3632

Pertinent address:

New Madrid, MO

East Prairie, MO