Conflicts in policy

As the Clean Water Commission sees it, the corps, along with the Fish and Wildlife Service, has been taking liberties with soil and the river that aren’t allowed to the public.

“We feel that it’s grossly unfair that the government is allowed to do that when the rest of us are not,” Perry said. “Whether it is shoveled in or falls in, it’s not fair.”

The Clean Water Commission has the backing of the Missouri Farm Bureau.

“From our perspective,” said Dan Cassidy, chief administrative officer at the Farm Bureau, “it makes absolutely no sense to have a state sales tax for soil conservation on a state level, and then come federal agencies that decide to put soil in the river.”

Perry said that policy shouldn’t be set “by letting the government do something and say, ‘It’s OK now.’ If there needs to be a policy change, then science needs to be openly presented so all can evaluate.”

Cassidy sees the Jameson Island project as “a grand experiment at the expense of taxpayer dollars.”

Since the September order, work on the Jameson Island site has been halted, even though the corps contends that it has received no binding requirement.

“As of today,” George said in an Oct. 18 interview, “we have no legal reason to stop work, so everything we have done has been voluntary.” The corps doesn’t consider the commission’s cease and desist order to be legally binding, he said.

The Missouri Attorney General’s Office has entered the fray on behalf of the Clean Water Commission, and a long-awaited first meeting with the corps and the Department of Justice was held Oct. 25.

“All that came out of that meeting was that they will meet again,” George said.

While the standoff continues, expenses for the taxpayer-financed chute at Jameson Island continue to climb.

Costs have “obviously gone up,” George said, “because the contractor has had to change their methods and has had to pay a lot of people to sit around doing nothing.”

Politicians are now joining the sediment debate.
“Although I oppose the discharging of sediment into the Missouri River,” Gov. Matt Blunt wrote in an Oct. 22 news release, “I believe the Missouri River Mitigation Project has merit as a whole.”
Jacobson weighed in on the quandary, asking “Is that risk (of adding nutrients to the river) worthwhile, given that it’s instrumental in constructing the habitat?”

A resolution will require an agreement on both the ends and means to balancing the river’s sediment and nutrient budgets. If one conclusion can be drawn from this muddied debate, it’s that there is no absolute authority for the river’s ecological economy. But like the shifting underwater dunes, answers should eventually surface downstream.

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The players

Alex Tribou | Missouri River habitat projects, overseen by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, have been put on hold. Objections, raised by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources’ Clean Water Commission and others, point to too much excavated dirt set to enter the river. Sediment, under state and federal water quality laws qualifies as a pollutant, but according to scientists, it is in short supply riverwide.

U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
A scientific agency that provides research, aiming to better understand the natural world.

U.S. FISH & WILDLIFE SERVICE
A national conservation agency, focused on improving habitat. In Missouri, it manages the Big Muddy National Fish and Wildlife Refuge among other projects.

EPA
A federal agency, created in 1970, dedicated to improving human health and the environment through research, education and policy.

U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS
A primarily civilian agency charged with civil works projects such as flood control and disaster response as well as military facilities.

CLEAN WATER COMMISSION/DNR
A citizen-board-run body that operates through the Department of Natural Resources. It oversees water quality permits and enforcement.