Governors to meet, talk flooding

The muddy politics of the Missouri River wash into Omaha this week as governors from Montana to Kansas gather to talk about how to better corral and harness the nation's longest river.

Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman organized the closed-door meeting in response to unprecedented, prolonged Missouri River flooding across the heart of the continent.

The six governors who plan to meet Friday are unified in saying that flood control should receive greater weight than even its current spot as the federal government's top priority in managing the river.

But every step the governors take toward that end will tug at the differences and disagreements between upstream and downstream states.

The snag comes when lawmakers try to balance enhanced flood prevention with water for barges carrying sand and gravel around St. Louis or the $30 million recreational fishing industry at South Dakota's Lake Oahe.

"I'll come, but I'll probably be viewed as the skunk at the tea party,'' said Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a critic of managing the river for declining barge traffic on the lower Missouri.

Squabbles among river states — with different priorities depending on where they sit along the river — have been common since Congress gave the Army Corps of Engineers marching orders for managing the river in the middle of the last century.

Tensions climbed this summer as flooding fed by heavy spring rains that forced corps releases from upstream dams swamped dwellings, businesses, farmland and highways across the basin.

Flooding closed 425 miles of the river to boat traffic from Leavenworth, Kan., to Yankton, S.D., and breached or overtopped levees in Iowa, Nebraska and Missouri. The river is expected to remain out of its banks at Omaha until at least mid-September.

The Corps of Engineers is responsible for managing major American rivers. Its Omaha reservoir office has come under sharp criticism for how it managed the Missouri this year.

Corps officials defend their actions, saying that they were prepared for a high-water season but that no one could have anticipated the record May rains that bloated the reservoir system.

The focus of the governors' meeting will be flood control, said Jen Rae Hein, a spokeswoman for Heineman, chairman of the National Governors Association.

Heineman has said the corps' top priority must be flood control and its future responses "must be significantly better than their response this year."

Governors planning to join him are Montana's Schweitzer, North Dakota's Jack Dalrymple, South Dakota's Dennis Daugaard, Iowa's Terry Branstad and Kansas' Sam Brownback.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon was invited but has not said if he will attend. Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead will send a representative.

Officials from the corps and the Federal Emergency Management Agency will attend the meeting held on the Gallup campus overlooking the river.

The current flooding began in late May, when the corps announced drastically increased releases from its dams in Montana, the Dakotas and Nebraska to flush reservoirs swollen with water from record rains in the Northern Plains.

As floodwaters inched higher, the governors collectively rallied contractors and deployed inmates to help fight the flooding, activated National Guard troops, encouraged people to support relief funds, led federal officials on tours and sparred with relief agencies for aid.

While critical of the flooding, they thanked the corps for its flood-fighting operations.

Still, the governors have questions.

North Dakota's Dalrymple wonders how the corps could have been so overwhelmed by spring rainstorms. He asks how river managers in Omaha made their decisions as water poured into the system.

Dalrymple, a Republican, notes that other river systems are managed by agreements among states. He says such an arrangement might better balance the competing interests of upstream states, which want more water for recreation, and those downstream, which value water for barge traffic.

He plans to suggest the change in Omaha, although it would require a new federal law to override the corps' authority.

Dalrymple says the corps needs to better explain how it prioritizes flood control on the river. He also wants to know what flexibility the corps' master operations manual allows.

Montana's Schweitzer, a Democrat, is skeptical about what the meeting will achieve.

"I can stand on a stump and yell at the corps as well as anybody,'' he said. "It's easy to point a finger at the corps, but nobody was complaining when all the levees were built and people were building and investing in the flood plain."

Schweitzer said he attended many meetings during drought years over the past decade as downstream states called for more water to be released from virtually empty corps reservoirs in Montana and the Dakotas, mostly to benefit barge traffic in the lower Missouri.

"When Fort Peck (Reservoir in Montana) had 100,000 acres of empty surface, all we heard was that we had to dump our water late into the season so they could float a couple of boats without any regard for our irrigation or recreation industries," he said. "Nebraska is not completely pure in this. Kansas is not completely pure. Missouri is absolutely guilty."

Schweitzer said the northern basin states' voices need to be heard because they are the headwaters of the Missouri.

"Seventy percent of the water that flows in the Missouri is from snowmelt," he said. "Your river is our snow. That should give us some stroke."

South Dakota's Daugaard, a Republican whose state capital, Pierre, was flooded, says he believes the basin states can find a way to work together.

He has said that Mother Nature, not faulty corps planning, caused the flooding, but that the Army must remain vigilant to prevent a recurrence next year.

Iowa's Branstad, a Republican, has urged the governors of Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri to join Iowa in a new group of downstream states to promote their unique interests.

He says that downstream states have not been adequately protected by the corps from flooding, but that a review of corps decisions can wait until the current flood ends.

Branstad's concerns over the way the corps manages reservoir releases date back to his earlier time as governor.

Kansas' Brownback has called for a federal commission to probe the corps' role in providing flood control, a commission similar to the one that examined intelligence-gathering after the 9/11 terror attacks.

Brownback, a Republican, has not said he thinks the corps mismanaged the floods. He is concerned, however, that federal law requires the corps to put too much emphasis on other concerns, such as floating river barges downstream or providing for recreation upstream.

He says it's time to review how the reservoirs were managed last winter and to ask if the system is operating effectively.

Missouri's Nixon, a Democrat, has not pointedly criticized the corps but has said he would support a major study of the organization's decision-making.

And the political pushback stretches beyond statehouses. Congressional delegations from the river states also have called for investigations and changes.

Rep. Sam Graves, a Republican from flooded northwest Missouri, plans to introduce legislation to change the way the corps manages flows in the basin.

U.S. senators from the Dakotas to Missouri have asked the corps to explain what it will do to reduce future flooding risks.

Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., has called for a full Senate hearing to examine how the river was managed into this summer's floods.

This report includes material from the Associated Press.

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