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OmahaRiverFront.com
- RIVER NEWS
Summer barge and boating traffic threatened on Missouri River
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 he lack of substantial rainfall and the concern for two endangered species of shorebirds have combined to threaten barge and boating traffic on the Missouri River.
According to the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers, nesting areas of the least tern and
piping plover shorebirds below
Gavins
Point Dam are preventing adjustment of river levels. To protect these endangered birds, the corps cannot raise the current river level because any rise in water levels would flood the nests built just inches above the water on barren sandbars.
The corps began moving nests and eggs from sandbars on the banks of the
river earlier this month in order to relocate them so water releases could be increased from Gavins Point dam to meet navigation needs downstream.
On July 1, the corps moved nests of piping plovers and least terns closest to the water near
Fort Randall Dam and also downstream of Gavins Point Dam. Besides moving the nests, 28 eggs were taken into the care of the corps, which has taken eggs into its captive facility near Gavins Point Dam and later released the birds in times of flooding.
But the U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Service, the "policing" agency for the Endangered Species
Act, said by taking the eggs, the corps was violating a 'biological opinion' issued by the wildlife
service in November 2000. That opinion said there are certain instances in which the corps is allowed to properly relocate nests and eggs. In this specific situation, the wildlife service said the corp's actions are not permitted under the biological opinion. Mike Olson, a spokesman for U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service out of Bismarck, N.D. said, "They can't take these eggs and chicks into a captive facility. It's not the intent to release them into zoo. ... You have to do what you can for these plants and animals in their natural environment."
The least tern is a state and federal endangered species, and the piping plover is a state and federal threatened species. This legal protection mandates that state and federal agencies avoid destroying the birds and their nests.
Moving the nests is a separate matter in this instance. "We've allowed the corps to move these eggs and nests up on the sandbar," Olson said, adding the sandbars are running out of room. "We're running out of options here."
Paul Johnston, spokesman for the Army Cops of Engineers in Omaha Neb. said, "The Services told us that we cannot move nests and collect eggs from nests that would be at risk if we increased our flows. It doesn't take much of an increase before you start flooding out the nests."
The corps has been allowed to move the eggs and nests in the past due to flooding or other acts of nature not under the corps' control.
Fish and Wildlife Service officials said its decision was in keeping with its legal obligation to protect the endangered birds, while the corps decided not to flood the birds, in keeping with its legal obligations.
Olson said the wish of the wildlife service would be to keep river releases at their current levels at Gavins Point Dam and Fort Randall Dam to allow the birds to complete their life cycle this year.
"We're just telling them where the sidelines are for this law," Olson said. "If they were to release this water, they would be killing the species."
That leaves the corps with the choice of increasing its releases to meet navigation needs downstream, or maintain its current release schedule, which does not meet target navigation flows.
The corps will maintain its current flows for most of the summer. What the river level is in Omaha right now, is
probably what it's going to be in August. Johnson said, "We'll be maintaining 25,500 cfs (cubic feet per second releases) through about the end of August, then I would expect it would come up some after that, but only to meet minimum navigation flows."
Downstream from Gavins Point dam, tributaries will be drying up and the river will continue to decline unless it rains.
"Normally, we kind of anticipate how much water we're going to need in the river in August, when the terns and plovers finish their nesting, and we set our release schedule accordingly," he said. "But that uses a lot of water."
In the past two years, the corps has changed its method so that it hits
target flows at four locations on the Missouri River: Sioux City, Omaha, Nebraska City and Kansas City. "As the tributaries dry up, we've been slowly increasing our releases to get what our targets are at," Johnston said. "Since the first of July, we've been at minimum navigation flows."
Meanwhile, barges currently are running at minimum capacity loads because of low river channel water levels.
Tom Murphree, vice president of Marketing and Business Development for
Global Materials Services of
Omaha, said if barge traffic were halted it would drastically affect all types of people who depend on the river to move their product to market. Any discontinuation of barge traffic would be significant because the barge season is already limited to eight months.
Johnston, said "Right now we're meeting target flows at Nebraska City and Kansas City...in a relatively short time there will essentially be no navigation from Kansas City to Sioux City (Iowa)."
According to the corps, navigators are reporting that barges are often hitting river bottom.
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River
Barge - River Explorer
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In addition to worries about fulfilling commercial barge contracts made a year ago, promoters of
the River Barge Excursions cruise barge, which is now booked full of 195 passengers who paid $2,450 apiece to ride from Kansas City,
to Sioux City, are afraid the boat won't be able to arrive at it's
upriver destination of Sioux City, IA on August 15 as planned. The
city now fears that plans for a huge kickoff event for the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial celebration anchored to
the River Barge's arrival will fall flat.
In the end, it seems, only rainfall will make enough difference to guarantee barge traffic won't grind to a halt next month. The
corp's Kansas
City District as of July 1 has been releasing an additional
2000 cfs into the lower Missouri via the Kansas River on which it controls three reservoirs: the Tuttle Creek, Milford and Perry. It can draw down each reservoir as much as 3 feet.
The corps expects the State of Kansas to file a Temporary
Restraining Order or Injunction to halt the reservoir release
increases, similar to last year when suit was filed to stop release
increases for lower river navigation support from the Kansas River
reservoirs.
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Comments
from Readers |
| What a bunch of crap! Are these birds that important? What is
the price in $$$ of saving these birds? Why don't we just blow up all the
damns, and let all the cities flood out every 3 or 4 years again. That
should keep the tree huggers happy! What do you suppose the Less Turn did
before the dams were in place when the water fluctuated during nesting??
- Tom |
I can see both side of this one and possibly a compromise is the answer.
My first question would be "What is the breeding period of these birds?" Is
there a time when we're pretty sure the eggs have hatched and rising water
levels will not affect/kill them? In SD, they stopped releases from Lake
Oahe for 3 weeks to allow a smelt hatch. Once they had hatched, they
started releasing again. Problem solved. - Dave Jones |
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Least Tern 
Piping
Plover 