Endangered sturgeon policy muddies the water

This piece is about the Missouri River. I have written before about the public policy relating to the Missouri River, and I have done so for many years. In the spirit of proper disclosure of bias, you should know that I represent parties with regard to activities on the Missouri River. That doesn’t change the fact that the public policy on this river is a mess.

The one thing that Attorney General Jay Nixon and Gov. Matt Blunt can agree on is that Missouri is being shortchanged when it comes to the river. Both have fought diligently to try to ensure that Missourians continue to get a more appropriate volume of water in this river system. Many times they have been thwarted by being outnumbered and outgunned.

But river management extends beyond how much water you get.

The river is now being operated to protect an endangered fish — the pallid sturgeon. Now, I could complain about this poor, ancient critter and it thwarting activities on the river, but that is not my point. My point relates to the inconsistency of public policy regarding protection of this fish.

It appears that the pallid sturgeon responds sexually to certain cues. The Fish & Wildlife Service has determined these cues are primary to its success. Huge volumes of reports have been written on this fish, creating the public policy — dictated by the fish’s potential survival —regarding the longest river in the entire country.

The Army Corps of Engineers has the heavy burden of successfully weighing all the interest groups demanding the river, including the fish. It is a very difficult choice. No one is ever happy, including the fish. Sometimes that’s the sign of a good decision.

In order for the pallid sturgeon to survive, one of the elements it requires is sediment in the river system. It likes the water cloudy, dirty and muddy. But historically, huge dams impound sediment behind them, blocking it in the lower portion of the river. In order to increase sediment in the lower river, the corps has been mandated to increase erosion capability along the banks of the river. To do this, it has cut massive notches in revetments — those things sticking out into the river — to allow the river to cut the banks and get more dirt into the water. Dirt is good when it comes to the pallid sturgeon. The corps has also modified and created chutes by cutting into the riverbanks to increase the likelihood of the pallid sturgeon’s survival.

You may have read about one of these controversial chutes, called the Jameson Island Project, whereby the contractor is being paid to dig a big ditch and dump all the debris into the Missouri River. Both the chutes and the debris will help the fish. Of course, throwing the debris in the river will make it muddier and increase the sediment load, creating conditions that allegedly allow this fish to thrive.

So far, the formula is pretty simple. Get more sediment in the river, erode the banks, dump more stuff in, and maybe the endangered species will do better. I get it. I’ll buy in. I love this ugly fish. But then I scratch my head.

The EPA, another federal agency, and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, carrying forward the EPA’s will, is telling everyone that you can’t put any dirt or sediment into any of the streams that flow into the Missouri River, you can’t have any erosion, and that dirty streams are bad. Yet, the Endangered Species Act trumps everything — at least that’s what we’re told.