FIGHT FOR AMERICA’S LONGEST RIVER (Part 1)

  • Wing dams along the Missouri River force the flow of water to the center, scouring the bottom of the river. Environmentalists say the Missouri has been turned into little more than a big ditch for barges. They support management plans that restore habitat for wildlife. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Rivers have been the life-blood of commerce in the United States since the
nation’s beginning. In 200 years, the machines of trade have evolved from flat-
bottomed wooden boats to today’s steel-hulled river barges. The rivers link
America’s natural resources with the industrial cities that propel its economy.
Decades of damming and dredging have turned the big rivers into shipping
channels. But in recent years, competing interests have argued in defense of
other uses of the rivers. In the first of three reports, Kevin Lavery looks at how
those groups seek to balance the economy and ecology:

Transcript

Rivers have been the life-blood of commerce in the United States since the
nation’s beginning. In 200 years, the machines of trade have evolved from flat-
bottomed wooden boats to today’s steel-hulled barges. The rivers link
America’s natural resources with the industrial cities that propel its economy.
Decades of damming and dredging have turned the big rivers into shipping
channels. But in recent years, competing interests have argued in defense of
other uses of the rivers. In the first of three reports, Kevin Lavery looks at how
those groups seek to balance the economy and ecology:


Long before interstates and over the road trucking, America moved its goods on
the water. River barges carry just about any kind of commodity. They emit less
pollution than trucks and trains… and the river route is cheaper than both the road
and the rail.


The nation’s farms, coal mines and quarries depend on rivers like the Mississippi,
Ohio and Missouri to keep their products moving. Business is healthy on the
Mississippi and the Ohio. But on the Missouri, barges carry just a third of the
cargo they did 30 years ago. Many shippers say drought and overregulated dam
releases make the water levels too unreliable to plan the big hauls that bring in
the most profit.


Paul Davis runs Interstate Marine Terminals, 200 miles upstream from where the
Missouri River meets the Mississippi, near St. Louis. He ships and stores
fertilizer from his dock. But Davis says when the river runs low, barges are not
his best option:


“The real adjustment that I’ve made is going from river to rail.”


Logistically, the adjustment is easy. The Union Pacific railroad line runs just a
few feet from Davis’ dock. But it costs him about 15 dollars more per ton to move
goods by rail. Davis says river barges might be profitable again if old feuds over
water management would end:


“There’s business out there. It could come back if people quit fighting and start agreeing
and confidence would return to shipping on the Missouri River. But I can’t afford to wait
and see… I’ve got to make adjustments.”


The fighting puts business against the environment. Shippers want enough
water to move freight. But environmentalists want the river to rise and recede
like it did before the Army Corps of Engineers started changing it.


The conflict goes back to the 1930’s. Congress ordered the Corps to make the
river safe for barges. That meant clearing snags and sandbars from a 735-mile
stretch from Sioux City, Iowa to St. Louis, Missouri. The Corps also confined the
river with earthen levees. Opponents say it turned the Missouri into a
characterless ditch.


The Corps spends 7 million dollars a year to maintain the channel. Spokesman
Paul Johnston says despite the dwindling volume of river traffic, the Corps is
mandated to keep the river open:


“The Corps of Engineers, like any federal agency, does not have the option to pick and
choose which laws it’s going to obey and not obey.”


But critics say wildlife has paid for the Corps’ mandate. Over the years, dams
and channels eliminated a half a million acres of wetland habitat. Birds lost their
sandbar nesting grounds, and fish no longer found shallow backwaters to lay their
eggs.


Among the hardest hit animals is the pallid sturgeon. It’s a long, flat-nosed fish
that dates back to the T-Rex. It’s been around 70 million years, and for the last
17, it’s been on the endangered species list.


Chad Smith directs the Nebraska field office of the environmental group
American Rivers. He says the pallid sturgeon’s fate shows the whole river is in
jeopardy:


“When it starts to decline, you know, that kind of creature that’s so in tune with the
Missouri as it was, is an indicator that maybe something’s not right, and it’s going to be
the first thing to fall.”


So Congress told the Corps to take on a recovery mission. The agency spends
more than 50 million dollars a year to rebuild shallow water habitat for fish and
birds. The Corps hopes a water resources bill pending in Congress will increase
its habitat restoration budget to 80 million dollars.


In 2006, the Corps launched its most controversial restoration program to date. It
released extra water from a South Dakota reservoir to mimic the natural flood
pulse that occurs on the Missouri River every spring. That triggers the sturgeon
to spawn.


Conservationists herald last year’s man-made spring rise as a long overdue sign
of progress. But barge companies on the lower Missouri are upset. They say
the spring rise brings a drop in the river’s depth in the summer… which means
less cargo they’re carrying and less money they’re making.


For The Environment Report, I’m Kevin Lavery.


ANCHOR TAG: Tomorrow, Kevin reports on the commercial barge
industry’s concerns over the Army Corps of Engineers’ control of the big
rivers.

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Farewell Tour of Historic Icebreaker

  • The Mackinaw is a historic ship that was built during World War II. In June it will be decommissioned. (Photo courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

The historic Coast Guard icebreaker Mackinaw has docked for the final time. The vessel is scheduled to be decommissioned at the beginning of June, after more than six decades of service on the Great Lakes. The GLRC’s Sarah Hulett visited the ship on its farewell tour of the lakes, and has this report:

Transcript

The historic Coast Guard icebreaker Mackinaw has docked for the final
time. The vessel is scheduled to be decommissioned at the beginning of
June, after more than six decades of service on the Great Lakes. The
GLRC’s Sarah Hulett visited the ship on its farewell tour of the lakes, and
has this report:


I’m on the bridge of the 290-foot icebreaker, and I’m just in time for the
daily test of the vessel’s alarms and whistles.


(Sound of bell)


After 62 years, they’re still working.


(Sound of alarm)


The Mackinaw was built in Toledo, during World War Two – when
demand for raw materials from the Great Lakes region exploded.


The icebreaker extended the shipping season through the winter, and
helped make sure iron ore and other cargo could get to the industrial
cities at the center of the war effort.


Today, Pat Pietrolungo and his 80 fellow crewmembers are still keeping
the shipping lanes cleared for commercial transport. They can spend up
to two weeks at a time on the ship, cutting ice during the winter months.


But cruising Lake Superior in the dead of winter can get spooky on those
long, cold winter nights.


Pietrolungo says there are some crew members who think there’s a ghost
on board the Mackinaw.


“Certain little weird things happen. Lights will flicker that shouldn’t,
doors will shut, some of the wheels on the scuttle will turn. I guess it
was a former crew member that died on board.”


But that ghost will have a lot less company soon, when the crew moves
to the Mackinaw’s smaller, more efficient replacement this summer.


The old ship isn’t flexible enough to serve other purposes for the Coast
Guard. And Pietrolungo – the Mackinaw’s machinery technician – says
finding parts for the vessel’s huge diesel engines is getting more difficult
by the year.


“It’s more or less along the lines of a locomotive engine. So you’ve got
to go start searching train museums, more or less, to find the big parts if
we needed them.”


A non-profit group based in Cheboygan, Michigan wants to make the
Mackinaw itself a museum.


Hugh O’Connor and his two young children were the first in line to
board the vessel when it docked in Detroit during its farewell tour. He
says he’ll be sad to see the Mackinaw decommissioned, but he says he
would visit the ship as a museum. Like a lot of boys who grew up along
the lakes, O’Connor says he and his friends knew the names of all the
freighters, and looked forward to catching a glimpse of the Mackinaw.


“We always used to ice fish in the winter, and I remember from our ice
shanty you’d get out and see it going by, breaking ice on Lake Saint
Clair for the freighters. That was when they were trying to run the boats
year-round. I don’t think they do that much anymore though. That was
pretty cool. Back then it was all white, though. Painted all white.”


The Mackinaw’s hull – painted red since 1998 – powered through thick
sheets of Great Lakes ice for the last time this past winter.


For the GLRC, I’m Sarah Hulett.

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