St. John's Bayou project an example of swamp-vs.-wetland divide

The St. John's Bayou-New Madrid Floodway Project demonstrates how much attitudes have changed in 100 years. When the Little River Drainage District formed in 1907, the swamps were viewed as useless land. The ecological effects of the project were not a consideration.

In September, a suit filed by Environmental Defense and the National Wildlife Federation led a federal judge to halt the St. John's Bayou-New Madrid Floodway Project on the grounds that harm caused to the fisheries' habitats would not be fully mitigated. The project would close a 1,500-foot gap in the Mississippi River levee.

Closing the gap is intended to protect farmland and the communities of East Prairie and Pinhook from flooding. The judge ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dismantle work already done on the $107 million project. The corps has not decided whether to appeal the decision.

Railroad baron Louis Houck took the Little River Drainage District to the U.S. Supreme Court in a dispute over being taxed by the district, but otherwise the district did whatever it wanted.

"You could never do that today. Think of the environmental issues," said Dr. Frank Nickell, director of the Center for Regional History at Southeast Missouri State University.

The St. John's Bayou-New Madrid Floodway Project is a prime example, Nickell said. "One group of people sees it as a wetland, a place to preserve and enhance nature.

"... Another group sees it as malarial, full of snakes and wild animals.

"What good is swampland? You can't raise any corn or wheat on it."

The St. John's Bayou-New Madrid Floodway Project along the Mississippi River has no physical connection to the Little River Drainage District. The eastern boundary of the drainage district is about 6 miles from the river.

They have different purposes. The former was a drainage project, the latter is aimed at preventing flooding. But any project of this kind always comes at a cost to nature, Nickell said.

"We have designed many features on the surface of the land that protect us, but always at a trade-off," he said.

He points out that swamps serve as filters. The devastation to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina occurred in part because so much of the swampland south of the city that served as a buffer had been drained. "When you move the water out and spray herbicides and insecticides, you transform it. There are certainly water problems," Nickell said.

Joe Brown, a retired farmer who lives near Bell City, said as a boy he fished in the drainage district ditches that run through the area. He does no longer.

"I wouldn't eat them if I did catch some," he said. "The last I saw, some of them didn't have any scales. There's hardly anything alive in it."

Brown points out that the district isn't responsible for the quality of the water in the ditches. The water is runoff from the nearby farmland.

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources Water Protection Program designates four ditches in the system in a map of "Waters Impaired by Discrete Pollutants." The problem identified is low levels of dissolved oxygen.

Low dissolved oxygen can be caused by waste or nutrient loading from fertilizers, said Travis Abernathy, an environmental specialist with the DNR in Poplar Bluff. "Fish can't survive," he said.

Phil Helfrich, a media specialist for the Missouri Department of Conservation in Cape Girardeau, is working with Nickell on a video about the changes wrought by draining the swamp. "When land changes from one thing to another, people have to adapt and also change ... people will adapt to that differently," he said.

"It's an amazing story."

sblackwell@semissourian.com

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