Standoff continues

In March, farmers in Howard County were treated to an uncommon sight. Across the river, they saw truckloads of dirt being dumped over the bank. The dirt made them nervous about additional pressure on their levee. And they were pretty sure the dumping was illegal.

What the farmers had seen were the early stages of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ habitat-restoration project. And it was news to them.
In an effort to stop the dumping, residents contacted the Clean Water Commission, which brought their objections to the corps in April.
The ensuing standoff between the corps and the Missouri Clean Water Commission has continued for the past seven months. The outcome might determine not only the future of shallow-water river habitats but also the health of the entire river system.

The hot-button site is Jameson Island, a 1,871-acre area near Arrow Rock that’s part of the Big Muddy National Fish and Wildlife Refuge.

The site’s name alludes to an island that is no longer there. But if the corps’ habitat project is completed, a 1.8-mile side-chute will bypass a bend in the river, recreating a semblance of the prior landscape.

“Projects like the chutes create some diverse habitats that used to exist on the flood plain,” said Wedge Watkins, a Columbia-based biologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Big Muddy National Fish and Wildlife Refuge. “Our refuge certainly doesn’t have the budget to create this kind of habitat. The corps approached us, and we were willing partners.” The Big Muddy Refuge includes about 11,000 acres of Missouri River flood plain devoted to improving wildlife habitat.

To the species that evolved in it, the current river looks very little like home.

“The river and its ecosystem evolved to accommodate that high turbidity,” Jacobson said, referring to the water’s murkiness.

The pallid sturgeon, with its poor eyesight, sensitive feelers and keen sense of smell, is an ideal resident for a practically opaque river. Biologists hypothesize that the sturgeon’s competitive advantage might be diminishing as the amount of sediment in the water decreases.

Migratory bird populations have also been hurt by man-made changes along the river. The interior least tern and the piping plover, for example, both require sandbars for nesting and slow, shallow water to hunt the small fish they eat. As the river has been reshaped for navigation, both the sandbars and shallow-water areas have disappeared.

In 2000, the Fish and Wildlife Service issued a “biological opinion” to the corps, citing research that alterations of the Missouri River have pushed the pallid sturgeon, the interior least tern and the piping plover toward extinction.

The Fish and Wildlife Service determined that these species and others would benefit from the creation of shallow-water habitat with less current, plentiful sandbars and the ability to flood occasionally.

The corps has since refocused some of its work on habitat rebuilding. At least nine projects designed to create more shallow-water habitat along parts of the river’s flood plain have been completed or are in the works in Missouri.

These side projects aim to re-establish a small amount of the natural connection between river and flood plain. When the river rises and spreads into areas like Jameson Island, it rejuvenates habitats both in the channel and in the flood plain, Jacobson said.

Similar projects have already been completed along the river, including a side chute at Overton Bottoms, near the Interstate 70 bridge west of Columbia.

“When you cross the I-70 bridge, last spring all the bottomlands were under water,” George said. “When you come back this summer, it’s beautiful habitat.”

About $15 million of the corps’ 2008 budget is earmarked for “Missouri River Fish and Wildlife Recovery,” according to the agency’s Web site.

Turning Jameson Island back into flood plain habitat will cost the corps approximately $2.3 million. Before the floods of the 1993 and 1995, the Jameson Island bottoms were planted in rows of corn and soybeans. The floodwaters left massive sand deposits, and willing sellers took up the federal government’s offers to buy their farmland as part of efforts to restore the natural flood plain.

By digging a shallow, 100-foot-wide ditch at Jameson Island, engineers hope to recreate some of the important shallow-water habitat. Scientists put considerable labor behind projects like the one at Jameson Island. The Geological Survey uses computer programs to model how water, sediment and debris will move through a chute over time. These computer simulations are based on information gathered via GPS readings, satellite imagery and underwater echo sounders.

The corps performed modeling of its own and combined that with the findings of the Geological Survey to design the chute currently under construction at Jameson Island.

“It was a pretty well-thought-out and discussed design,” Watkins said.

But the process began to break down early on during the permitting and public notification phases. While corps notified adjacent landowners, no one across the river, including the Howard County Levee District, was informed.

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