Drought revives old water war among river states
The Associated Press
FILE – In this June 13, 2012 file photo Bich Nguyen catches a smallmouth bass at Gavins Point Dam on the Missouri River near Yankton, S.D. North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana, which in the past have brought suits to reduce water being released from dams to boost recreation, are once again battling battling downstream states facing a severe drought and low water levels that threaten commercial traffic along a 180-mile stretch of the Mississippi River between St. Louis and Cairo, Ill. (AP Photo/Argus Leader, Jay Pickthorn, File)
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The water wars are raging again in America’s heartland, where drought-stricken states are pleading for the increasingly scarce water of the Missouri River — to drink from their faucets, irrigate their crops and float the barges that carry billions of dollars of agricultural products to market.
From Montana to West Virginia, officials on both sides have written President Barack Obama urging him to intervene — or not — in a long-running dispute over whether water from the Missouri’s upstream reservoirs should be released into the Mississippi River to ease low water levels that have imperiled commercial traffic.
The quarrel pits boaters, fishermen and tourism interests against communities downstream and companies that rely on the Mississippi to do business.
“We are back to the age-old old battle of recreation and irrigation verses navigation,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri.
If the water is held back, downstream states warn that shipping on the Mississippi could come to a near standstill sometime after Christmas along a 180-mile stretch between St. Louis and the southern Illinois town of Cairo. But if the water is released, upstream communities worry that the toll of the drought could be even worse next year for farms and towns that depend on the Missouri.
Obama has not decided whether to enter the dispute, nor has the White House set a timetable to respond. But tensions are rising in this decades-old battle.
From his perch as executive director of the Southeast Missouri Regional Port Authority, Dan Overbey watched this week as workers scrambled to ship out as much grain as possible before the Mississippi gets so low that it is not economically feasible or physically possible to move loaded-down barges.
“I don’t know if we’ll have, ‘How the Grinch Stole the River’ here,” Overbey said. But if there is water to spare, “it would be a good thing to do.”
More than 800 miles to the northwest, Michael Dwyer was also stewing. He’s the executive vice president of the North Dakota Water Users Association.
To Dwyer, the downriver interests are “taking selfishness” to “a level you can’t even comprehend.”
“We suffered the impact of these reservoirs” when they were created decades ago by dams that flooded 500,000 acres of bottomland, Dwyer said. “To have some use of the resource only seems appropriate.”
At the Mississippi River port near Cape Girardeau, Mo., about a million tons of cargo are loaded or unloaded annually, providing about 200 jobs, Overbey said.
The water is also vital in parts of the Dakotas, where the dammed-up Missouri River has spawned a tourism industry centered on boating and fishing.
Todd Martell serves as a guide for walleye fishing in the summer and also runs an upholstery business in Pierre, S.D., that makes custom boat covers and interior furnishings. Lower water levels don’t necessarily hurt the fishing but can leave certain boat ramps high and dry, he said.
Over the past three decades, more than a dozen lawsuits have been filed challenging the management of the river, many of which set Missouri and other downstream states against the Dakotas and other upstream states.
The battles started in 1982, when Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska challenged a government contract allowing water to be drawn from the Missouri River in South Dakota to flush coal through a pipeline to power plants in the southeast. The U.S. Supreme Court blocked the project, but other lawsuits followed, including an effort by upstream states to reduce the water released from dams in an attempt to boost sport fishing in the reservoirs.
Missouri, meanwhile, sued the Army Corps of Engineers when it held back water because of droughts and shortened the navigation season. Environmental groups also joined the court battles, advocating for spring surges and summer declines in downstream river levels to help threatened species of birds and fish.
So far, no lawsuits have been filed in the current competition for water. But battle lines have been drawn.
In May, North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven teamed up with Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri to tour dams and levees along the Missouri River a year after devastating floods in 2011. The Republicans stressed their desire to work together to improve flood control and river management. Now they are on opposing sides.
“There are times when they need to get rid of water, and we need to appreciate what we have to do about that,” Blunt said. “And there are times when we need water, and they need to appreciate the fact that we need that water, even though they’d rather not get rid of it.”
Said Hoeven: “Obviously, we’re not going to be in agreement all the time.”
Senators from 17 states along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers sent Obama a letter urging him to intervene and release water from Missouri River reservoirs. A day later, 15 officeholders from upstream Missouri River states countered with a letter warning the White House that intervention would be unlawful and would “only exacerbate the drought-related losses already experienced” by towns, Native American tribes and industries that rely on the Missouri River.
The Corps of Engineers, which manages both the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, says its guidelines prohibit it from releasing water from the Missouri River reservoirs for the primary purpose of improving navigation on the Mississippi. That position was backed up by a 1990 report from the federal government’s General Accounting Office, though officials from downstream states believe Obama could trump that by declaring an emergency to avoid an “economic calamity.”
Martell said it’s hard to envision a truce in the water wars.
“The years we’ve really needed the water to stay here, it’s gone,” he said. “And then when we let it go, they complain about that, too. I don’t think there’s any happy medium, to be honest with you.”
a cruel accountant says:
Admin said
The areas that have plenty don’t want to give it to places that don’t have plenty because they might run out.
Water is cheap. If the price is high enough they will sell it to those who need it.. There may be some gunplay (china town), and a little bit palm greasing, but it will all be resolved in the end.
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8th December 2012 at 10:52 am
KaD says:
It’s dry enough that there’s STILL a fire burning in Estes Park, CO-since October. On mountains that would normally be covered by snow at this time of the year. If there’s one thing I wish I’d like agencies to stop making us water our useless lawns in the summer. Complete waste of a vital resource in an area that was never meant to have green grass at that time of the year.
It’s also so unusually warm that the wheat crop isn’t going dormant like it normally does. Some areas are still up to 14 inches down on rainfall. This does not bode well.
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8th December 2012 at 11:40 am
ron says:
We had one light dusting of snow this year.Its strange. Ive thought about moving,and i considered Texas but now thinking about water is part of where i would move to.
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8th December 2012 at 11:49 am
efarmer says:
The scramble to get corn and soy down to the gulf is on as is the scramble to get fertilizer up for spring.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-12-06/the-mississippi-river-ebbs-and-farmers-stock-up
EF
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8th December 2012 at 12:16 pm
Stucky says:
The real water wars will occur in the ME. Palestinians are charged three times the cost for water that comes from under the West Bank (Villiers).
Hot debate. What do you think?
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8th December 2012 at 1:40 pm
Eddie says:
Water wars are front page news in Austin this week. The municipalities are scrambling to line up supply for future growth, but they are just looking at demographics…not factoring in the effects of permanent changes in temperature from climate change…therefore, their models are
seriously flawed.
http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local/scramble-to-secure-groundwater-rights-to-keep-up-w/nTQPG/
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8th December 2012 at 1:54 pm
cahuitabeachbound says:
All the more reason to annex Canada. We could use lake Winnipeg alone to solve our water problem. I will be happy to lead the charge across the International Bridge between International Falls, Minnesota and Fort Francis, Ontario. Fuck, I just realized, though, that the King of Spades would probably block a water pipeline as been done with that oil pipeline.
I also proposed during my first year in law school that we annex Baja California for ocean view condo development. My fellow classmates in the property law class didn’t follow my vision………..
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8th December 2012 at 3:05 pm
Davos says:
I highly recommend the book ‘The Ripple Effect’. I think it would be a super attribute to the Book List on this blog.
Water WILL be the next gold and silver. Unless there is some new solar PV technology it’ll be the next reason silver becomes massively expensive, beyond our wildest imagination expensive. Probably impossible to even own.
Talk about something hidden in plain sight.
Reading that book will be the best holiday present you can give yourself or a loved one.
The fact that Admin wrote about this years ago should surprise me, but it doesn’t.
Super job!
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8th December 2012 at 5:07 pm
Davos says:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Ripple-Effect-Twenty-First-Century/dp/B006LWE0RA
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8th December 2012 at 5:07 pm
underfire says:
The tensions in this country continue to grow. The Federal government versus State governments. States versus local. Red States versus Blue States. Producers versus eaters. Whites versus blacks. Religions versus religions. Wealthy versus middle class. Poor versus middle class. Republicans versus Democrats. Rural versus urban. Banks versus the people. Mega-corporations versus small businesses. And so on.”
Exactly right. When this thing finally blows, it will most likely shatter into a thousand pieces. Will it be containable? I don’t know.
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8th December 2012 at 5:34 pm
Thinker says:
eFarmer, you’ll appreciate that Lake Michigan is 14-17″ lower than normal, too. The Mississippi is going to be a BIG issue in the next year if we don’t get enough rain, snow and ice covering over the coming winter.
Admin, I’ve been thinking a lot about this, given the shocking condition of the Lake, which I observe every morning. The lower water levels are not only obvious, they’re rather shocking. What if “water issues” are the critical component of this 4T’s environmental crisis, as much as the Dust Bowl was the last 4T’s env. crisis? Another year of mild winter weather and summer drought could easily turn it into that.
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8th December 2012 at 3:34 pm
Administrator says:
Thinker
If this drought doesn’t subside, it will surely contribute to the 4th Turning Crisis.
I wonder whether Obama is purposely pushing the country over the cliff to create a new Crisis.
I’m still looking for what will create the regeneracy.
Could you imagine all of the secession talk five years ago?
Things certainly aren’t calming down.
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8th December 2012 at 3:54 pm
Thinker says:
No, the mood of the country is definitely changing. Even with the Christmas season upon us, I see and hear people saying they’re “not in the spirit this year,” or something similar. Everyone is tired of the mess the country is in, or fearful about where it’s going. The vast majority of people do NOT support the government, and if we do go over the “fiscal cliff,” as it appears Obama and his minions are wont to do for political purposes, I expect all hell to break loose.
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8th December 2012 at 4:04 pm
Colma Rising says:
Ha! Thinker….. there is a LOT more “Ba-Humuggin” this year, that’s for certain….
We had a week-long storm last week that, instead of snowing in the Sierras actually melted a lot of it (Reno area was on watch for floods from runoff). Warm storm…. and it’s sunny now. Anyway, if we don’t get the snow pack that’s when issues start.
Housing/Enviromentalists versus Farmers…. it went to the developers first round. Now water’s being pumped to the subprime, insolvent wastelands.
For. How. Long.
Yeah, the mood is changing and it doesn’t look rosey. Food Prices always awaken the peasants. That and gas and taxes and…..
Who’s sand dunes do we blitzkrieg next? Our own?
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8th December 2012 at 6:11 pm
TeresaE says:
Seems I remember your original article Admin. Growing up in Michigan, water and “rights” surrounding lakes and groundwater have been a constant battle so I’ve read and researched about coming “peak water” for a few years.
A few years back a group was looking into building a pipeline to drain the Great Lakes and send the water to the desert southwest. Thankfully more than just the enviro-nazis banded together to make our voices heard. Scary thing is that we have heard ZERO about this since O became POTUS, there is simply too much money, graft and “growth” on the table for the politicians to let it go.
Trying to create a modern standard of living in a desert seems futile, at best. Stealing water from one area of the world to continue the insanity will lead to “unintended” environmental consequences.
Our belief that the desert can support millions and millions of resource-gobbling Americans is as insane as our belief that individuals can choose to live in the paths of hurricanes without paying individually to repair the destruction.
That which cannot be sustained, won’t be. But we sure as heck will deploy our destruction in the name of progress and fairness.
So it goes.
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8th December 2012 at 9:24 am