This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Oct. 18, 2011 - WASHINGTON - River levels may be falling now, but fears are rising in some states along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers that another extremely wet season and slow progress in levee repairs could lead to more flooding next spring. At a U.S. Senate hearing on Tuesday, a parade of senators -- including Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo. -- took the Army Corps of Engineers to task for its river management and urged the agency to make flood control a higher priority in its master plan for the Missouri River.
"Failing to account for disaster events and mistakes and dismissing disasters as unlikely to occur again simply isn't good enough," Blunt testified. He said that, between the Mississippi floods in the southeastern part of the state and the Missouri River flooding in the northwest, about 400,000 acres in Missouri were inundated this spring and summer.
Corps officials downplayed the chances of a repeat of last spring's record snow and rainfall in the upper Missouri watershed as a "low probability" -- but also warned that lagging federal funding levels is slowing levee repairs.
And the assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, Jo-Ellen Darcy, reminded the senators that revising the master plan takes years and involves extensive public hearings; the last time around, revamping the plan took 14 years and cost about $33 million.
Predicting that a master plan revision would take "from one to X years," Brig. Gen. John McMahon, who commands the Corps' northwest division, including the upper Missouri, told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that the Corps has been taking steps to limit the potential for a major flood in 2012, even though "the system is more vulnerable" because of this year's damage to levees and reservoirs.
"Nobody can see the future" in terms of precipitation, McMahon said, but he said the data and long-term weather predictions indicate "very little likelihood" of another 500-year flood along the Missouri River next year.
Major. Gen. Michael Walsh, commander of the Mississippi Valley Division, agreed that "there is a concern about a flood of a lesser magnitude" along the lower Mississippi that might compromise some of the damaged levees and other structures that have not yet been fully repaired -- in part, due to funding shortages.
Even though the Corps has been shifting funds from longer-term accounts, Darcy told senators that about $2 billion is needed nationwide to repair all the damaged levees and other flood-control structures. Of that, it would cost about $800 million to repair levees and floodways on the lower Mississippi's extensive flood control system, which includes the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway in Missouri's Bootheel.
Walsh, who made the decision in May to breach that Birds Point floodway to relieve floodwaters in Cairo, Ill, and elsewhere, told senators that the main lesson he learned from the record 2011 flooding on the lower Mississippi was that "systems thinking works" -- a reference to the extensive Mississippi River and Tributaries project that includes the Birds Point floodway.
"The system did work," said Walsh, noting that the massive 2011 flood had inundated far less acreage than the 1927 flood that had led to the creation of the MR&T system.
While there was little criticism of that lower Mississippi system, senators at the hearing were sharply critical of how the Corps managed the reservoirs along the Missouri River during this summer's flooding. North Dakota's senators, Democrat Kent Conrad and Republican John Hoeven, called for an extensive reevaluation of the nation's flood-control systems and how they are managed.
"Many of my constituents in North Dakota are concerned that they will face another round of devastating floods next year," Conrad said, adding that victims of this year's flooding "are concerned that the Corps is not building in a sufficient safety valve for next year's run-off."
Governors meeting
Similar concerns were expressed earlier this week by governors from the Missouri River states who met in Omaha with McMahon and other Corps officials to discuss ways to repair damage from this year's floods and discuss how to mitigate future flooding.
The closed meeting was hosted by Nebraska's Republican governor, Dave Heineman, and included governors Terry Branstad, R-Iowa, Sam Brownback, R-Kan., Jack Dalrymple, R-N.D., Dennis Daugaard, R-S.D., and staff members for Matt Mead, R-Wyo. Missouri's governor, Jay Nixon, took part by phone, as did Montana Gov.
Brian Schweitzer, who expressed concern that Montana's irrigation and recreation would be hurt if the Corps would make downstream flood control the top priority in managing the Missouri River.
According to one report, McMahon also told the governors that some of the levees and other parts of the river's flood-control system would not be repaired by next spring's flood season, making some areas "very vulnerable."
At the Senate hearing, some Democratic lawmakers suggested that the Corps should place more emphasis in the future on floodplain management and diverting floodwaters to floodways or wetlands. Gerald E. Galloway, the main author of the "Galloway Report" on the devastating 1993 Midwest floods, told senators that it makes more sense to think in terms of floodplain management that flood control.
Galloway, a retired Corps general who is now an engineering professor at the University of Maryland, testified that this year's flooding "brought into question the efficacy of our nation's efforts to reduce ever-growing flood damages and ensure the sustainability of our riverine and coastal natural resources."
Other than the MR&T system and a couple of smaller projects, Galloway said, "the nation essentially does not have flood control systems . . . There is no national plan, national goal or national objective of flood risk management."
Because absolute protection from floods is impossible, Galloway said, more and more experts around the globe are shifting away from a focus on "reducing flood damages by controlling where floodwaters go," and instead "accepting the premise that floods are natural events and that, in the long run, only through the use of a portfolio of both structural and non-structural measures can flood damages be reduced or mitigated."