Suit seeks to block Missouri River levee

[SaintLouisBlues]

JEFFERSON CITY - The Sierra Club sued the Army Corps of Engineers in federal court Friday, contending the corps failed to determine the damage that would be caused by a huge, new Missouri River levee.

The California-based environmental organization said the corps' proposed 1,000-year levee at Jefferson City would eliminate wildlife habitat, ruin wetlands and encourage construction in what is now undeveloped flood plain. The suit also said the proposed levee would lead to higher flood levels in the St. Louis area and at other points along the 735 miles of the lower Missouri River.

(snip)

"The wetlands in the project area are an important remnant of what was once a vast aquatic ecosystem," the suit states. "The natural wetlands in the project area constitute a productive and valuable public resource. Primarily because of their seasonal inundation by flooding river waters, they fulfill significant biological functions such as providing feeding, nesting, spawning, rearing and resting sites for aquatic and land species, along with a hospitable environment for many aquatic plants.

"The anticipated flood protection provided by the project is likely to give rise to pressures for the development of this land, a phenomenon which has been observed in many other river bank areas following levee construction," the suit states.

http://tinyurl.com/w3rn
(St.Louis Post-Dispatch 11/22/03)


The Army Corps of Engineers have already wiped-out close to 800,000
acres of Missouri River wetlands in the State of Missouri alone.
They have channelized the river all the way up to Nebraska for
barge traffic that is only 10 percent of the projected shipping
numbers used to justify the project. Add to that these giant urban
levee projects lobbied for by the Wal Mart crowd. A gigantic new
mall just opened on a newly-leveed chunk of Missouri River bottomland
in St. Louis County.

With global warming causing crazy weather patterns, don't be surprised if the Mighty Mo takes its flood plain back like it nearly did in "1,000-year flood" of 1993.

[catmandu57]

1. They didn't learn a damn thing from "93"

Wetlands protect us from floods much better than the levees they throw up. Right now all this once great river is, is a huge ugly drainage ditch.
I for one would like to see it reclaim itself, a flood of massive proportion wiping all the crap away reclaiming it's natural channel, the hell with the farmers and bargers.

[Fovea]

2. I need to make a clarification

Urban Riparian corridors are unlikely candidates for turning back over to the rivers.

While I agree that the river is being ruined by channelization, we are going to have to put a lot of effort into making cities like KC, Jeff city, and StL flood protected. We need to protect the already urbanized areas, and legislatively stop the rest.

The first sign that we had really messed up in flood management issues came in 1971's flood. We have done progressively stupider things since then. Earth City was a lost battle even then. We now have to find ways to deal with the new climate we are making, and its effect on the river.

It is going to take Billions of dollars to fix what we have done wrong. I have no idea where it is going to come from. Certainly not Bush.

There is just too much preexisting development in these areas to return them to the flood plain. Politically, that will not happen.


For a lot more on this...

http://65.64.114.185/7leveesReport/7leveesMeetingPersonalResponse.htm

[SaintLouisBlues]

3. How familiar are you with the local geography?

This Jefferson City levee opens up farmland to developers. The new
Mega Mall in St. Louis County was farmland until another new levee.
Earth City and Gumbo development was all relatively recent and took out prime farm land. These are/were not "already urbanized areas".

Ninety percent of St. Louis City and County is on high ground and needs no direct flood protection from the Big Rivers. Also, there is
plenty of land on high ground available for redevelopment, although these areas have minority populations and are not attactive to the chain stores.

The reason for the continued office park and big-box flood plain building spree is because of the proximity to the far suburbs of St. Louis, the desired demographic of the developers. The Illinois
floodplain across the Mississippi from St. Louis is the only
historically urbanized part of St. Louis located on bottomland.

The Big Rivers may be the big equalizers, whether we build on the flood plains or not. No one is saying that tearing down urban levees is a political possibility.

[Fovea]

4. I am not as familiar with the Jeff City Levee

But I grew up first in Southwest St. Louis County (Castlewood, Ballwin) and then in rural St. Charles county (Harvester, Weldon Springs were rural back then).

I watched the big levee go up in Earth City, watched Trammel Crow's nightmare levee sink St. Charles twice in 30 years. Yes. I do agree that St. Louis county does not need to develop the river bottoms. But in Kansas City it is too late. Our river bottom land was already developed by 1881. Protecting the community is going to be a nightmare, as you will see if you read the URL I attached to the original message.

I have spent weeks of my life filling sandbags on the Missouri river.
Kansas City is where I live now. And if we cannot give the corridor back to the river here. KC is much more exposed to the river than St.L.

I agree on letting the river become a natural waterway again over most of its length. But I do know how high the 93 flood got in Jeff City, as my S/O is from there. We do not need to develop new riparian corridor properties, but we need to protect those urban industrial environments that have been in place making waste for 150 years, just to contain the contaminents. Moving them somewhere else is just tracking the dirt all over the carpet.

Also, you do not want some of these places to be flooded, because in un-remediated areas there still remains a nightmarish amount of environmental toxins, such as Petroleum, Cadmium, Lead, Arsenic, etc, which, thanks to the Bush EPA, no longer must be paid for by the polluters.

You are down stream from a potential environmental disaster. In a 51 or 93 scale event, it could easily become your environmental disaster.