Missouri River meetings to examine management

Missouri River meetings to examine management
By BRIAN GEHRING Bismarck Tribune | Posted: Thursday, June 17, 2010 10:45 pm

Thursday’s Missouri River meeting in Bismarck was the ninth of 30 such scheduled meetings around the country in what will likely be a long, arduous process.

The “scoping” meetings are the beginning stages of a study authorized by Congress as the result of a bill sponsored by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.

The Missouri River Authorized Purposes Study was established to review the original river operation plan set out in the Flood Control Act of 1944 to determine if changes are warranted.

Ask anyone with an interest in the Upper Missouri River Basin and they will tell you changes are warranted.

Mark Harberg of the Corps of Engineers Omaha District is the study’s program manager. Harberg said comments and testimony gleaned from the meetings will be entered verbatim into a database that will be categorized, then compiled, in a summary report.

Dorgan’s bill authorized $25 million for the study but Harberg said its progress will largely depend on how and when the funding is allocated. The target date for completion of the study is 2014, he said.

“It (a scoping meeting) is really the best way to start a study like this,” he said. “We will have a lot better feel for things after the meetings.”

The final meeting is scheduled for Aug. 20 in Casper, Wyo.

The study also includes 11 tribal-focused meetings with the corps, including one Thursday morning at United Tribes Technical College.

Under the Flood Control Act of 1944, the authorized purposes of the river operations were irrigation, flood control, navigation, water supply, recreation, fish and wildlife and water quality.

Ron Sando, a water resource consultant from Bismarck, said management of the river needs a complete overhaul. Downstream navigation is one use that should be taken off the board completely, he said.

“There are so many purposes that navigation has negatively affected in the upper basin,” he said.

When the river is managed for downstream navigation, the net result upstream is bank erosion and a host of other problems that weren’t considered in 1944, Sando said.

“We have a real problem in North Dakota with bank stabilization,” he said. “The land that is lost is gone forever.”

Sando said more recent legislation designed to provide habitat for endangered species compounds the problem and equates to the indirect taking of land without compensation.

Wade Bachmeier, of the Morton County Water Resource Board and the Missouri River Joint Water Board, said so much has changed in the past 64 years it’s hard to know where to start when providing comments.

“What we are trying to address are the inequities,” Bachmeier said. “The upper basin states sacrificed a lot.” He said the flood control aspect of the river management didn’t work in 2008 — “and for the 10 years before that, we didn’t have water.”

Bachmeier said the value of the water from the upper basin was illustrated several weeks ago, when the corps considered limiting permits for drawing water from the system for oil exploration.

“We have to protect our water,” Bachmeier said.

Aside from issues such as flood control, recreation and navigation, there are deeper concerns, such as the cultural and social impacts for Native American tribes.

Roger White Owl, assistant to Three Affiliated Tribes councilman Barry Benson, said that when land was taken for the reservoir, tribes in the upper basin were not part of that process.

“There are social and cultural issues,” he said. “The reservoir goes right through the heart of our nation ... families were literally torn apart.”

White Owl said constant fluctuations of water levels are a threat to archeological and cultural sites up and down the basin.

“This study needs to look at how this has adversely affected our tribes ... to help make us whole again so we can progress,” he said.

“A big part of that is management of the river.”

While it may be four years before the study is completed, Sando said the time is now for interests in North Dakota and other upper basin states to be heard.

With the energy boom in western North Dakota, Sando said, money from mineral rights on federal land should be redistributed to the heirs of those who were bought out when the dam was built, or at the very least go to the state.

Sando said it falls to state and local leaders to take a stand in the early stages of the process.

“If our leaders are not here to tonight, shame on them,” he said. “This is so critical to the future of the state of North Dakota.”