GOOD REASONS TO OPPOSE FLOODWAY PROJECT IN EAST PRAIRIE AREA

Prior to development of the drainage system in the southeastern Missouri lowlands -- the Bootheel -- much of the area was frequently flooded. The region supported some 2.5 million acres of bottomland hardwood and swamp forest habitat. As a result of the success of the drainage program, there now remain but 50,000 acres, some 2 percent of what was present. 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 New Madrid Floodway is an area of several thousand acres located on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River between just south of Cairo, Ill., on the north to just upstream from New Madrid, Mo., on the south. The area is enclosed by the frontline Mississippi River levee on the east and southeast and by a setback levee on the west and northwest. There is an engineered 1,500-foot gap in the frontline levee at the southern -- New Madrid -- end of the floodway. This gap has two intended effects: 1. It allows the enclosed area to drain and flood more or less naturally. 2. During flooding, it relieves flooding in other parts of the river, especially across the Mississippi in Illinois. 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 northern end of the levee, across the river from the Cairo area, was designed decades ago to be blown out in case of severe flooding. That has never been done, but 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 proposed project, designed to relieve flooding in East Prairie, has three main components: 1. Closing the gap at New Madrid. 2. Installing two pumping stations to provide the drainage that would be needed as a result of closing the gap, which currently provides natural drainage. 3. Channelization within the newly enclosed area, which lies between the frontline levee and the setback levee.

The stated purpose of the project, which would drain thousands of acres of seasonally flooded wetlands, is to promote economic development in the East Prairie area, a purpose which the project's design makes unlikely to be achieved.

If we are genuinely concerned about economic development in East Prairie, the wise management of natural resources and the conservation of wildlife habitat, we must oppose this project. Arguments about private-property rights are not relevant to this issue. It's a question of taxpayer welfare designed to benefit a handful of landowners at the expense of our environment. We should not be spending taxpayer funds to promote more destruction. We should oppose this project for the following reasons:

1. It is unlikely to accomplish its stated purpose of decreasing flooding in East Prairie and neighboring communities. According to evidence provided by the Environmental Defense Fund and not challenged by the Corps of Engineers, flooding in East Prairie is caused to a large extent by seasonal storm runoff. To the extent the Mississippi River backwater is a cause for East Prairie flooding, that community would be better served by a simple and much less expensive levee constructed to surround and protect those communities and by improved storm-water handling. The smaller project could involve only St. John's Bayou, which, like East Prairie, lies behind the setback levee.

2. Closing the 1,500-foot gap in the mainline Mississippi levee and installing pumps to keep the newly enclosed area dry would have severe negative impacts on many wildlife species. These include fish, which use the currently seasonally flooded area for spawning and nursery habitat, and waterfowl, which use the area for rest and feeding in their annual migrations. According to the National Fish and Wildlife Service, to make up for this loss of wetlands 36,000 acres of mitigation wetlands would be required, an area difficult or impossible to find and expensive to purchase. Furthermore, given the problematic nature of mitigation projects, there is no guarantee that even this would be adequate to retain the critical wetland services performed currently.

3. The project would increase flood threats from the Mississippi River. The 1,500-foot gap was specially designed decades ago to allow floodwater to flow into the area under discussion. It has served to decrease flooding in the lower Mississippi floodplain. Implicit in the original levee plan was the principle that severe flooding across the river in Southern Illinois could be prevented by blowing a hole in the northern end of the mainline levee, thus allowing floodwater to flow between the levees and lowering the flood threat to our neighbors. Closing the gap at the southern end would make such a plan impossible and thus heighten potential floodwater threats for residents of other communities adjacent to the river, especially those living downstream from the project area. This would unfairly impact many residents and property owners elsewhere and potentially cost vast sums of taxpayer money in flood relief.

4. The cost of this project in relation to its benefits doesn't make sense. The avowed purpose -- economic development in East Prairie -- probably wouldn't be realized for the hydrological reasons mentioned above. The main benefit would be to relatively few landowners farming the seasonally flooded area. These landowners would be able to raise more profitable crops on land that would be protected. This doesn't make sense primarily for two reasons: 1. Increasing yields in an era of overproduction would depress further the national income farmers gain from their crops and thus should be considered a national cost of the project, not a benefit. 2. Spending nearly $100 million to benefit a few large landowners while not solving the problem for which the project is supposedly proposed is not reasonable either for East Prairie residents, most of whom seem to have been persuaded to believe this highly questionable project would be an economic panacea, or for the taxpayers of this state and nation.

5. Because the project does not solve the storm drain problem in East Prairie, the prime cause for the 10-year cycle of floods experienced by the community, it fails to address its primary objective and must be counted a failure even in its own terms of promoting community and economic development. Currently, national floodplain policy quite reasonably discourages investment in areas with the flood risk that East Prairie would experience even after completion of the project.

6. The only criticism that can be leveled at the alternative plan of constructing a much less costly levee system solely to protect the residential and economic communities around East Prairie is that such a plan would not drain agricultural land. Unfortunately, draining agricultural land is not legally permissible as a purpose for such a project as the Corps has proposed.

The opposition to this project voiced by Missouri's Department of Natural Resources and Department of Conservation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should serve as a strong warning about the havoc that it could cause to the conservation, wildlife and water resources in the region.

We urge citizens to oppose this project as vigorously as possible. By stopping it, we cannot only save ourselves tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, but also conserve wetlands and wildlife while simultaneously maintaining sensible flood control along the Mississippi River.

This article was 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 Mississippi Valley Chapter of the Ozark Society.