as we attempt to build a dike the corps tries to undo some of the damage caused by flood control. brian bates macgrove
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Show me the money! Show me the money!
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 09:19:47 -0600
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: "brian bates" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "tom clarke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "mcnc" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Chris Lenhart" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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spacer spacer Missouri and Mississippi rivers would get priority By Bill Lambrecht <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau 02/02/2004
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration wants to give top priority to restoring the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, despite cancellation of many river projects across the country.
The president's budget plan on Monday placed the big rivers on a list of just eight Army Corps of Engineers "priority projects" next year. It asked Congress to spend nearly $100 million to fix problems created by flood control and navigation.
The designation was especially notable for the Missouri. The nation's longest river is the subject of court fights over the collapse of its ecosystem and this year will enjoy wide attention during the bicentennial of Lewis and Clark's journey westward.
By proposing to spend $69 million on the Missouri - nearly five times this year's outlay - the White House ranked the Missouri on a priority list with well-known restoration projects including the Florida Everglades and the Columbia River in the Northwest.
Maj. Gen. Carl Strock, the corps' director of civil works, said the spending plan reflected the controversies over the river's health that have persisted for years.
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"I think it reflects the fact that things came to a point where we had to do something," he said in an interview at corps headquarters.
The corps itself did not fare as well as some of the rivers it tends.
The White House directed a cut of more than $350 million in corps spending, along with orders to reform itself and to avoid starting any new projects.
The president's budget message said the White House and Congress must work together to change the "cultural attitudes" of the corps, which has been accused in Congress and by advocacy groups of building unneeded, destructive projects for flood control and navigation.
"Unfortunately, many of these new projects have benefits that only marginally exceed their costs," the president's budget message said bluntly.
The White House ordered cancellation or suspension of $100 million in river construction already approved by Congress, where the corps has many allies as a result of the jobs and spending it brings to members' districts.
Among disputed projects put off were: the Grand Prairie Irrigation project in Arkansas, which would divert water from the White River for rice farming; and the Yazoo Pumps plan in Mississippi, which would drain tens of thousands of acres of Mississippi River wetlands to improve farming and flood control.
A controversial project in the Missouri Bootheel survived the cuts. The White House proposed spending $8.3 million next year on the $85 million St. John's Bayou-New Madrid Floodway flood control project, which would cut off the last Missouri portion of floodplain connected to the Mississippi River.
The upper Mississippi north of St. Louis would get $28 million for restoration next year - a $10 million increase.
Corps spokesman Ron Fournier said his Rock Island District can use the money for any of several dozen potential projects, many of which involve pumping sediment to open backwaters and rebuilding islands that have eroded away.
"It is a good amount of money to work with to try to get the river back where it was many years ago," he said.
Paul Johnston, corps spokesman for the Omaha District, said his office would spend a large portion of its new Missouri River money on re-creating shallow waters to help revive the nearly extinct pallid sturgeon.
Reporter Bill Lambrecht E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: 202-298-6880
[NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for research and educational purposes.]
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