Environment Wins on Missouri Flood Control Project

Environment Wins on Missouri Flood Control Project



2007 September -   The U.S. Army Corps of 
Engineers must stop construction on the St. John's Bayou/New Madrid 
Floodway Project in Missouri, a federal court in Washington ruled Friday. 
The controversial flood control project is located on the west bank of the 
Mississippi River in the "bootheel" of southeastern Missouri. 
Judge James Robertson of the U.S. District Court for the District of 
Columbia sided with two of the nation's largest nonprofit groups, 
Environmental Defense and the National Wildlife Federation, who filed the 
lawsuit in 2004 challenging the Corps' Environmental Impact Statements for 
the project.

Judge Robertson ruled that "with respect to the environmentally important 
issue of fish mitigation," the Corps' decisions were "arbitrary and 
capricious in violation of applicable laws." 
In "finding that its plan would fully mitigate impacts to fisheries 
habitat," the judge wrote, the Corps violated the Administrative Procedure 
Act, the Clean Water Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act.
He found that the Corps was "manipulating models and changing definitions 
where necessary - to make this project seem compliant with the Clean Water 
Act and the Nation Environmental Policy Act when it is not." 
Judge Robertson ordered that the Corps stop construction on the $112 
million St. John's Bayou/New Madrid Floodway Project. He ordered the Corps 
to remove any part of the project that has been built so far and restore 
the area to its historic condition. 
Until Friday, Hill Brothers Construction had been at work constructing the 
first major portion of the project near New Madrid, Missouri.
The plaintiff groups argued successfully that the project's levee and two 
large pumps would cut off the Mississippi River from the last major piece 
of the floodplain to which it is still connected and in the process would 
have devastated tens of thousands of acres of floodplain wetlands while 
failing to provide the flood control benefits it promised. 

A central purpose of the project, the Corps said, was to alleviate 
flooding to promote economic development in the small Missouri town of 
East Prairie. Other Missouri cities and communities impacted by the 
project include New Madrid, Charleston, Sikeston, and Pinhook. The project 
area is across the river from the city of Cairo, Illinois. 
"This single project would drain more acres of wetlands than all the 
wetlands drained by the country's developers in a single year, yet it 
would not reduce the frequency of flooding in the towns it was intended to 
benefit," said Tim Searchinger, the attorney who represented Environmental 
Defense and the National Wildlife Federation in the lawsuit. "I'm happy 
the court agreed to halt the project." 
The court set aside the Corps' Environmental Impact Statements and 
invalidated the environmental analysis used to justify it under the Clean 
Water Act. 
In his decision, Judge Robertson wrote that the Corps' manipulation of the 
analysis "gives new meaning to the phrase result-oriented 
decision-making'" and that many parts of the analysis "lack factual 
support or substantial evidence." 
"This project underscores the imperative that the Corps make a total shift 
away from traditional flood control projects that destroy wetlands to 
ecosystem restoration projects in the Mississippi Basin," said Jim Tripp, 
general counsel for Environmental Defense. 
The court decision noted that many of the Corps' decisions about the 
project seemed to be based on cost alone, and did not take into account 
the possible damage to the environment or the limited flood protection the 
project would provide. 
The Corps argues that "The floodway is not a vast region of marsh/swamp 
wetlands as has been represented by opponents of the project in past 
years." 
The region is a productive agricultural area whose main products are corn, 
cotton, milo, winter wheat, and soybeans, the Corps says, explaining that 
local farming interests have modified the Floodway over the last 100 years 
to become a viable agricultural area. The land use in both the Floodway 
and St. Johns Bayou Basin is mostly agricultural with the economy of the 
region based on agriculture.

"The flooding that occurred in May 2002 had a great impact to the region," 
the Corps said. "This flood covered about 77,400 acres in the St. Johns 
Bayou Basin and the New Madrid Floodway, of which 61,400 was agricultural. 
About 48,700 acres of crops had been planted and were lost. If the project 
had already been constructed, only about 1,900 acres of cropland would 
have been flooded from backwater." 
"The impact of not completing this project is demonstrated by the 
importance placed on the project by the East Prairie Enterprise Community 
program," said the Corps. "The local community has identified, and the 
U.S. Department of Agriculture concurred, that flooding that destroys 
crops, isolates citizens, impacts schools, and causes a loss of life is 
the number one impact to the economic stability of the region." 
"Simply put," the Corps says, "the economic and human hardships of the 
regions will continue without the implementation of some alternative of 
this project." 
The Missouri Congressional delegation has long supported the Floodway 
Project and considered the Environmental Defense and the National Wildlife 
Federation to be "extreme environmentalists who for years have attempted 
to delay and derail the project by thwarting the efforts of the Corps and 
local citizens," Congresswoman Jo Ann Emerson, U.S. Senator Kit Bond, and 
then Senator Jim Talent said in a 2003 joint statement. 
"Environmental opponents argue there's an ecological cost to the project 
that is just too great. The exact opposite is true. The only concern 
environmentally is an alleged loss of wetlands. One of the conditions of 
the project is that over 8,000 acres of agricultural land will be returned 
to bottomland hardwoods and wetlands that will become a natural area for 
the public to enjoy for generations to come," the lawmakers said. 
"Moreover," the lawmakers said, "the levee district, the Corps of 
Engineers and other agencies have for years conducted study after study to 
make certain the project was beneficial to the environment." It is those 
studies conducted by the Corps that Judge Robertson set aside on Friday. 
The Corps argued that in order to implement the first phase of the St. 
Johns Bayou and New Madrid Floodway Project, a gap in the mainline 
Mississippi River levees would have had to be closed. The Corps says this 
gap at the lower end of the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway has not been 
closed because local interests are "reluctant to provide the necessary 
rights-of-way," fearing drainage would be adversely affected. 
The Corps had thought this issue was resolved with its proposal to build 
four 10-foot concrete outlet culverts with lift gates along the 1,500 foot 
levee closure. 
Last year, Judge Robertson ruled that construction could begin on a 
cofferdam just inside the Birds Point-New Madrid Spillway, in preparation 
for construction of the spillway pumping station, one of two pumping 
stations in the project. This pumping station would have removed local 
rainwater from the spillway after the levee gap was closed. 
Local environmental groups opposed to the project say the solution is much 
simpler and less costly than the Corps' elaborate plan, which they say 
would really benefit a few large landowners rather than the town of East 
Prairie. 

The Missouri Coalition for the Environment, MCOE, which also brought legal 
action against the project, says, "This gap has remained in the levee to 
the present time because it helps reduce flooding in more developed areas 
upstream. Closing the gap would mean that floodwaters could no longer 
expand into the river's floodplain, which would put more pressure on 
communities like Cairo, Ilinois in times of dangerous flooding." 
MCOE says East Prairie would still flood once every 10 years even if the 
project is built because East Prairie is not flooded by the Mississippi 
River but by a small tributary, St. James Ditch. 
The real problem, MCOE says, is that even modest rainfalls overwhelm East 
Prairie's inadequate storm drains, a problem that would not be fixed by 
construction of the larger floodway project. 
"Adding insult to injury is the fact that a workable solution to protect 
the town of East Prairie from flooding exists, and it could have been 
built years ago if the region's politicians hadn't tried to shake down the 
American taxpayer for more government pork," MCOE says. 
According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, MCOE points out, only $11 
million would be needed to put a levee along St. James Ditch and build a 
modern stormwater system for East Prairie. 
The natural seasonal flooding of the Mississippi River is beneficial for 
this ecosystem, MCOE and the other environmental groups maintain, 
nourishing fish, migratory ducks and shorebirds and some of the state's 
largest trees in Big Oak Tree State Park. 

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