STUDY COULD HELP WITH FLOODING AND STREAM DEPREDATION

A study that could provide information to ease flooding along the Missouri River and upgrade the state's "very badly abused" streams is being undertaken by the National Biological Service along with seven other federal and state agencies and the University of Missouri.

The Missouri aquatic ecosystems study is one of 11 projects chosen nationwide to receive funding this year under the NBS State Partnership Program. It will map and examine the ecological health of the state's rivers, lakes and wetlands.

Missouri's streams have been mistreated through a combination of channelization and impoundment, says Jim Fry, chief of the Fisheries Division for the Missouri Department of Conservation in Jefferson City.

Channelization, a course straightening usually done to increase the rate of flow or, misguidedly, to control flooding, changes the aquatic habitat. The stream then is left to only certain tolerant species, Fry said.

"And once it's been done it's very difficult to undo."

Both the government and landowners have built levees that are responsible for flooding and stream depredation, Fry said.

"Channelization of the Missouri River has resulted in elimination of many backwater kinds of habitat."

In addition, pesticides, sewage and other pollutants have caused the removal of important riparian vegetation, Fry said.

"Many landowners have developed land-use practices they're going to find difficult to give up," he said.

As for Missouri River flooding, the study will identify past practices "and determine if changes in practices could help stop it from happening again," said Pamela Haverland, the lower Missouri River ecosystem coordinator for the National Biological Service Midwest Science Center in Columbia.

Though some blame the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the record-setting Flood of 1993, contending that too much water was released upstream, she instead blames the torrential rains that fell downstream.

The same thing could happen this year, she said, because the reservoirs are full from a big snow melt-off and the Corps is having to release water from each reservoir into the next.

"If we were to start getting rain in Northeast and Central Missouri like we did in 1993 in July, we would be in a world of hurt," Haverland said.

The Corps now is saying that moving levees back from the bank and allowing the river to reassociate with the flood plain in particular areas will reduce the flood impact further downstream, Haverland said.

Mapping will help determine where the allowable flooding could best happen.

Once the study is completed in October 1996, the information will be made available both to resource managers and the public, who can pull maps up on the Internet.

"This will allow managers to have more information available to figure out why things are happening instead of just that things are," Haverland said.

This study does not include the Mississippi River because it already is the subject of numerous surveys, Haverland said.

Joining the National Biological Service and the Department of Conservation in the study will be Department of Highways and Transportation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the U.S. Forest Service and the University of Missouri.

In the past, natural resource agencies have operated autonomously for the most part, Haverland said, often collecting the same information.

"Because of the streamlining of government, agencies are in a position where they want to work together," she said.

"We know we can get a lot more done together than separately."

The NBS is providing $60,000 for the project, with each of the other agencies contributing unspecified amounts.

Fry said the same kind of cooperation the study entails will be needed to return Missouri's streams to health.

"That's the only way to have a significant impact on these problems, to get everyone involved," he said. "Not just the agencies but the landowner and the general public."