FLOODWAY PROJECT IN EAST PRAIRIE AREA: A RESPONSE TO CRITICS WHO OPPOSE EXTREMELY COMPLEX PLAN

We read with interest the Jan. 4 opinion piece compiled by Daniel Straubel, president of the Four Seasons Audubon Society; Alan Journet, conservation chair of the Trail of Tears Group of the Ozark Chapter of the Sierra Club; Ann Drake, president of the Mississippi Valley Chapter of the Ozark Society; and Phil Dodson, president-elect of the Ozark Society, opposing the St. John's Bayou-New Madrid Floodway flood control project.

As is so often the case with the environmental movement, your authors' assumptions, "facts" and statements are often incorrect, always misleading and disturbingly one-sided. They were obviously "compiled" from articles written by others in the environmental movement who do not want the levee system for Mississippi, New Madrid and Scott counties to be completed.

Here are a few facts:

This is an extremely complex issue, but the flood control project is not a drainage project. The land has been drained for decades. The vast majority of the acres involved are classified as prior converted cropland.

The flood control project would provide East Prairie with a drainage outlet, the first step in providing protection from floods. The project would benefit everyone in Mississippi County and many in Scott and New Madrid counties, not just "a few landowners."

That's just the point. It will benefit people -- state parks, and county and state roads and bridges -- and wildlife and waterfowl. This project is a win-win situation, and we are appalled that the Southeast Missourian would run this article, apparently, without checking with one local official -- even if you did run it, as you do so many of Dr. Alan Journet's "stories," on the Opinion page.

The article says: "The Army Corps of Engineers is developing a plan, called the St. John's Bayou-New Madrid Floodway Project, for further draining of those remaining acres."

The Army Corps of Engineers has worked on this project for close to 50 years. "Is developing" is a misnomer. "For further draining of those remaining acres" is a deliberate lie.

The article gives a fairly decent description of our levee system here, the man-made system of levees and drainage put together by the Corps of Engineers in the 1930s after the Flood Control Act of 1928. But your highly esteemed authors are confusing two completely separate "projects" here: the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway and the St. John's Bayou-New Madrid Floodway flood control project.

Closure of the 1,500-foot gap in our levee system near New Madrid would have absolutely no impact on Illinois. Illinois is around 63 miles upriver from the gap, for Pete's sake. Look at a map.

The levee gap had one intended purpose -- one, not two: to allow the Birds Point-New Madrid Spillway to drain. That's it. Period. Congress decided in the Flood Control Act of 1954 that the flooding should stop. That's when the levee closure was authorized. And, as we said, backwater flooding into the spillway certainly does not relieve flooding "across the Mississippi in Illinois."

When the floodway was constructed in the 1930s, the setback levee intercepted most of Mississippi and Scott counties' natural drainage. A man-made drainage system was constructed in this watershed, effectively dividing it into two parts: the St. John's Bayou side and the New Madrid Floodway side. Both still have major flooding and drainage problems because of the floodway's existence.

"St. John's Bayou, which empties into the Mississippi through the gap, is behind the setback levee. This area and the New Madrid floodway area comprise several thousand acres," the article states. For the authors' information, the St. John's Bayou basin contains more than 280,000 acres and the floodway 130,000 acres, a pretty substantial "several thousand acres."

The article says the levee has "never been blown out in case of severe flooding." The Birds Point-New Madrid Spillway was "operated' with several thousands of TNT in February 1937 during an ice and sleet storm. Thousands were evacuated. All still remember the scenes from that time vividly.

"That plan suggests how serious the flooding may be in the general area of the proposed project or, rather, across the river from the floodway," the opinion piece says.

The backwater flooding has nothing to do with the operation of the Birds Point-New Madrid Spillway, which, incidentally was originally designed to overtop in a couple of places, to reduce the stage at Cairo, which was a thriving river town in 1928, when the Jadwin Plan was conceived. In 1937, when the spillway was operated, the stage at Cairo was reduced 0.5 feet before the river rose to its crest 10 days later.

Existence of the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway -- in the year 2000 -- is another story entirely. Consider these facts: The current operational plan for the floodway is to explode up to 264 tons of a "dense blasting agent" explosive in three locations, one in the section of levee just below Cairo, and two inflow/outflow crevasses in the lower end, one a quarter-mile below Big Oak Tree State Park and then just above Donaldson Point State Forest. The water would first flow, explosively, in and later would flow out. Each of the crevasses, when blown, is expected to create a massive blue hole one-half mile wide. This is 264 tons of DBA 105P, with one and a half times the cratering capability as TNT -- all directly above the New Madrid Fault. The last major earthquake on this fault was epicentered in Charleston on Halloween 1895. Archaeologists have found evidence of at least three major earthquakes in this area.

However, the floodway is designed to be operated only in the case of the Lower Mississippi Valley's "project design flood," a flood with the greatest probability of occurring. It can only be operated if the river at Cairo is threatening Cairo's floodwall that is now at 65.5 feet.

We'll leave the floodway issue alone for the moment, but you may want to spend a little time contemplating the worst probable scenario.

The article implies that the two pumping stations would be constructed in the floodway "to provide the drainage that would be needed as a result of closing the gap, which currently provides natural drainage."

Fact: One pumping station would be installed on the floodway side of the setback levee and the other in the St. John's Bayou Basin side.

"Channelization (would be) within the newly enclosed area, which lies between the front-line levee and the setback levee."

That is outright wrong. The channelization is on the St. John's Bayou side, to improve the drainage outlet for East Prairie.

The article states that the project would "drain thousands of acres of seasonally flooded wetlands," and that is not the case. We are already drained and have been cleared for decades, except for land that local people saved, such as Big Oak Tree State Park, and forests that private landowners have preserved.

The project would help to "promote economic development in the East Prairie area." It would give East Prairie the same playing field enjoyed by every other rural town in the Mississippi delta: Protection from flooding.

The article goes on and on with "reasons" to oppose the flood control project. They are all based on misconceptions or outright lies.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service -- before reneging on its negotiations last year -- had agreed with the more than 9,500 acres of cropland to be used as mitigation for this project.

The Missouri Department of Conservation -- before it reneged on its agreement last year -- worked with local folks and the Corps of Engineers for more than 20 years, agreeing with a mitigation package calling for the purchase of 2,400 acres of timberland at the Ten Mile Pond Conservation Area on land deliberately preserved in timber for use as mitigation for this flood control project by the landowners.

This flood control project would be more than amply mitigated.

Some of the mitigation features of the St. John's project are the reforestation of almost 10,000 acres of cropland (forget the land and existing timber preserved by the landowners; we want you to plant acorns on almost 10,000 acres of cropland now -- it's ludicrous.), conservation easements along ditches to allow land along both banks to river to woodlands, seasonal flooding on up to 6,400 acres of cropland for migratory waterfowl during the winter months, flooding of 760 acres of land during the growing season for shore birds, fish habitat structures in the St. John's Bayou, mussels would be relocated from spillway ditches and monitored for 10 years (the study shows that there is a greater diversity and wealth of mussels on the bayou basin watershed with its gates, compared with those found in the spillway ditches), the size of the ditches to be enlarged has been cut down from 200 feet to 120 feet, and woodlands along ditches would be avoided.

The people of Mississippi County, many of them farmers, are the truest of environmentalists. They live with and love the land and the beasts it supports, and have historically done a lot to preserve special natural places, as well as getting into tree and food plot plantings long before such ideas became popular with the so-called environmentalists.

For instance, before the turn of the last century, local landowner Thomas Beckwith recognized the importance of the national treasure he possessed, Beckwith's Fort (now Towosahgy State Historic Site), a Mississippian era Indian ceremonial site, and he preserved the ceremonial mound and other mounds. It is a wealth of prehistoric information.

We have many mound sites on the National Register of Historic Places, and landowners have preserved them throughout this county and New Madrid County.

Timber cutting became big business in the early decades of this century. Landowners, residents and children recognized the importance of the big trees at Big Oak Tree State Park in the 1930s and purchased 1,000 acres of timber for future generations. (They wanted to preserve 21,000 acres of virgin bottomland forests but could get no support from state or federal agencies.)

Big Oak Tree State Park is on the National Register of Natural Landmarks, but many of the old oaks and hickories have been damaged by severe flooding that occurred in the 1990s.

Other landowners have preserved their timed and natural cypress bayous. This is land that remains in private ownership and is likely to remain so because of that attitude and those beliefs in the need to preserve on the part of many generations of local families.

The Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the flood control project indicates there is more "forest" land in these two counties than in the rest of the Bootheel of Missouri. Why? Because landowners have always taken their responsibility to preserve nature seriously.

While tracts of timber do remain in this region, most of the land was cleared and drained long ago, and the vast majority of the acres in the spillway and St. John's Bayou Basin is now valuable cropland -- prior converted cropland.

In the late 1980s, early 1990s, four local individuals captured five major state and federal environmental awards, three from the Conservation Federation of Missouri, the state's largest conservation association "for outstanding contributions to the wise use of our nation's natural resources."

Those Conservation Federation honors were Wildlife Conservationist of the Year, Soil Conservationist of the Year, and Conservation Communicator of the Year -- top statewide awards of the federation.

All involved planting trees or wildlife food plots in a big way.

Levee and drainage districts have made it mandatory, as maintenance is being provided on the ditches here, to install erosion control culverts where a field ditch enters a main ditch. That has been going on for the last 15 years, and most are now in place.

There is a separate project that is already under way to create a 300-foot-wide riparian corridor on the top bank of the Mississippi River north of the confluence with the Ohio River, 13 miles long. Also in association with the Corps of Engineers, trees -- killed by flooding during the past decade -- will be replanted in borrow pits adjacent to the mainline levee. More than a million trees will be planted as those projects are completed.

The river is important to Mississippi County residents and landowners. We have more miles of river frontage than any other county in Missouri and perhaps in the nation. There are also many miles of borrow pits, old sloughs and oxbow lakes in this region, bringing with them many opportunities for recreational fishing, hiking and bird watching in really beautiful, isolated natural areas.

Those assets would remain with completion of the St. John's Bayou-New Madrid Floodway flood control project. The environment will be enhanced by all of the mitigation features described above. The project also will enable residents to live each year secure in the knowledge they will no longer have to fear the disruption to their lives Mississippi River floods cause.

Liz Anderson is the editor of The Enterprise-Courier in Charleston and The East Prairie Eagle.